The Demise of Legality

In an essay called "The Twilight of Legality," John Gardner theorises the demise of legality in the modern age. He describes the increasing invasion of legislative regulations in every aspect of life. Think, the complicated and mistake-prone process of filling out your taxes, requirements to link government IDs to your bank account, or intellectual property rights and their muddy disputes. Gardner sees this barrage of legal paraphernalia as antithetical to democratic justice and freedom. He calls the current state of affairs, in the twilight of legality, 'juridification,' and explicates its two axes:

1. The sheer breadth of laws renders "the law" in its entirety, unknowable.

2. This vastness means that the law cannot be enforced evenly.

Selective judicial enforcement operates with biases, fears, and vested interests. Powerful groups can exploit the vastness of law to further their particular ends, while marginalised groups are disproportionately vulnerable to eccentric enforcement. In a juridified climate, citizens are turned into large moving targets acting within the omnipotent framework of ever-burgeoning laws. So, the law has become an unwieldy tool of the ruling class. Perhaps it has always been this way, but well, size matters – and in the case of the law, the bigger it gets, the less fair it becomes.

In Taylor Swift's 72 Questions with Vogue, back in 2014, when asked "What advice would you give to anyone who wants to become a singer?" she replies, "um, get a good lawyer." In what follows, I show that juridification is a weapon in Taylor Swift's arsenal. And metaphorically speaking, juridification has done to legality what Taylor Swift has done to culture.

Sanjana, Taylor Swift and Totalitarianism (April 14, 2024)

• critical theory
• legality