Full Description
In Law by Night Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller asks what we can learn about modern law and its authority by understanding how it operates in the dark of night. He outlines how the social experience and cultural meanings of night promote racialized and gender violence, but also make possible freedom of movement for marginalized groups that might be otherwise unavailable during the day. Examining nighttime racial violence, curfews, gun ownership, the right to sleep, and "take back the night" rallies, Goldberg-Hiller demonstrates that liberal legal doctrine lacks a theory of the night that accounts for a nocturnal politics that has historically allowed violence to persist. By locating the law's nocturnal limits, Goldberg-Hiller enriches understandings of how the law reinforces hierarchies of race and gender and foregrounds the night's potential to enliven a more egalitarian social life.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Interruptions 1
1. Is There a Right to Sleep? 29
2. It Came Upon You in the Night 56
3. Curfew, Legality, and the Social Control of the Night 98
4. Take Back the Night 134
5. Translation in the the Dark 174
Notes 199
Bibliography 263
Index 319
