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Raul Garcia Hemonnet
Legal conflicts often arise in literature, there is even a genre of lawyer novels with authors such as John Grisham as references. The jurists, in addition, can find in the literature keys from which to approach the issues of the Law.
With the aim of mixing these two worlds, next Thursday, March 24 and Friday, March 25, the international seminar will take place on the Madrid campus 'Understanding hot legal issues through literature'. It is held entirely in English and will be attended by speakers from universities such as Ghent, Groningen, Athens or Nicosia, as well as several professors from the URJC.
"We want to offer students a different approach than what they normally see, analyzing legal issues from all kinds of literature, including comics," says Inés García Saillard, from the Institute of International Legal Studies of the URJC, organizer of the seminar. "We have chosen this approach because if we look at literature in all its periods, we see that a legal problem can be at the base of many of the fictional narratives that have been written, there is the example of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or the literature of Don Winslow when analyzing drug trafficking in Mexico and places where the law does not exist”, indicates García Saillard.
Among the issues that will be discussed are constantly current issues such as freedom of expression, prohibition or legalization of drugs, the legal situation of Prince Andrew of England or issues related to diversity.
As Inés García Saillard points out, “this is an approach that emerged about 30 years ago in the United States and has been little explored in Spain. In addition, the two disciplines are always related looking at classics such as Cervantes or Shakespeare, here we are going to use from Antigone to political comics, passing through Don Winslow or Ian McEwan, among many others.
Lorenzo Silva, lawyer and famous crime novel writer and author of the adventures of the couple of Civil Guards Bevilacqua and Chamorro, will close the session. In his intervention, he will address the communicating vessels between Law and literature and how one field feeds back to the other.
The seminar will be face-to-face and may be followed by TVURJC and a B1-B2 level of English is required to follow the event well. Anyone interested in knowing a new perspective on current issues can attend, since the approach is informative.