Mountain Rescue in Translation

This brief essay, drawn from my historical research for “The Volunteers,” the first installment of Hidden Cabinet’s “Tending the Wounded” series, appeared today on the website of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.

90% and beyond

The non-profit video production company that I founded, Hidden Cabinet Films, which includes a fantastic Board of Directors, is hosting a fundraiser for our latest project, “Tending the Wounded: A Social and Political Theory of Emergency Medical Services”:

The brave men and women of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are heroes of the medical world, but can we also understand what they do in social and political terms? Can the way that emergency medics tend to the wounded show us how to organize our societies better? What do they have to teach us about how liberal democracies can be resilient and endure? We believe that asking these questions is especially important in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the divisiveness of our current politics.

The brave men and women of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are heroes of the medical world, but can we also understand what they do in social and political terms? Can the way that emergency medics tend to the wounded show us how to organize our societies better? What do they have to teach us about how liberal democracies can be resilient and endure? We believe that asking these questions is especially important in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the divisiveness of our current politics.

In two weeks we have raised 90% of our fundraising goal, bringing us very close as a 501(c)(3) to being able to absorb two significant institutional grants. Can you help us reach the finish line? All gifts are tax deductible. Contributions can be made by credit card by clicking “Donate” on our GoFundMe page, via PayPal, or by check (contact me for details). Small donations stand right alongside larger ones in helping us remain a publicly supported organization and enabling us to bring “Tending the Wounded” to fruition.

Our previous major video project was a set of five films for the exhibition “Law’s Picture Books” for the Grolier Club, including “A Philosophical Question.” 

Preservation Waltz

The latest video in my series about Austrian concepts of law and the Austrian experience of landscape is called “Preservation Waltz.” Rare books, forests, and domestic architecture. Sustainability is the key principle:

I discuss the video in this guest post on Environment, Law and History.

A River Runs Through It

I have a guest post today on Environment, Law, and History discussing my latest video. Thanks to editor David Schorr for giving me the chance to contribute again to his blog. David directs the Berg Institute for Law and History and the Law and Environment Program at the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University.

 

Water, Water, Everywhere, and Every Drop to Drink

I’m pleased to share the latest video from my developing film about law and landscape in Austria. This segment is called “Florian & Friends Talk about Purity”:

The video is about water, water law, Austrian identity, legal philosophy, concepts of the state, ideas of the public, approaches to time and tradition, metaphor, and some great old books. Plus, there’s a cameo appearance by a sweet Alpine cow.

If Your Law Were an Animal … or a Tool … or Music?

When I was in Europe last November, I asked a group of legal professionals some unusual questions. The results are in my new video.

 

Beauty & Dignity: How is German Law Like Music?

My latest video is about the concept of human dignity in German constitutional law. The video also considers the relation between law and art—in this case, music—which I’ve also examined in two other videos: “The Beauty of the Code” and “Law in Stone & Glass.”

A World of Students in Salzburg

Greetings from Salzburg, Austria! My wife and I are having a grand time in this beautiful city, surely one of the most charming in the world. “This is what happens when you combine great wealth, clerical density, and gorgeous mountains,” exclaimed Stephanie happily as we sipped mulled wine tonight beneath the arches of an old monastery, huddling together as the snow fell lightly on the cobbled streets. We arrived here yesterday from Hannover, sped to our destination by the miracle of an Intercity Express train.

This morning I taught the first of three intensive classes on U.S. constitutional law at the University of Salzburg, and before another day goes by, I wanted to share an interesting fact about the students in my class: most of them aren’t Austrian. Instead, in addition to three Austrian students, they hail from Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Wales—all participants in the Erasmus student exchange program. It’s another instance I’ve encountered on my travels of a new way of legal thinking slowly being born within multi-national Europe.

I saw it in the gleaming halls of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where I talked with faculty and students from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Romania, Poland, Turkey, and Albania. I saw it in Brussels, where the office of legal advisor to the European Parliament includes lawyers from every EU member state. I saw it in Würzburg, where my students included Germans from migrant backgrounds, most notably from Azerbaijan, with which the law school has a history of educational exchange. And I saw it this morning in a dramatic way here in Salzburg. The parallel that comes to my own mind repeatedly is the transformation of the law of England after the Norman Conquest—the development of a new law, a new outlook, and ultimately a new people, under changed political and institutional circumstances.