Legal Concept of Art - by Paul Kearns Hardcover

About the Book

This book examines the treatment of art within the legal subjects of obscenity, copyright, libel, customs, public art funds, charitable trusts and movement of national treasures. The text includes comparisons with French, American and EU Law.

Book Synopsis

In this analysis of the regulation of art by law, Dr. Kearns has produced an innovative treatise with both practical and jurisprudential implications. He examines the treatment of art within seven distinct traditional legal subjects, namely obscenity law, copyright law, libel law, the public funding of art, the law of charitable trusts, customs law and the law on the movement of national treasures, identifying in each the specialised problems law faces, not least given the lack of a universally acceptable definition of art. Based primarily on English law, the text achieves an added richness by a comparative dimension including French, American and European Union Law. In this way a unitary idea of how law tackles its operation on art is achieved. This is the first monograph on the holistic treatment of art law in the United Kingdom.

Review Quotes

"The book under review is a first. It addresses the relationship between the law of three jurisdictions (England, France and the USA) and art (including literature) and inaugurates a doctrinal and theoretical field which has been neglected in English Scholarship... Its main achievement lies in bringing together disparate areas of law dealing with art, and in suggesting that the concept of art should acquire juristic value and lead to doctrinal modifications in civil and criminal law... Offering a cogent argument for turning art into such a concept, which would cut across substantive classifications and procedural distinctions, is an important contribution to scholarship and policy." --Legal Studies

About the Author

Paul Kearns is a Lecturer in Law at Manchester University.