Peter Goodrich

About

Professor Peter Goodrich embarked upon his ontological journey as a foetus in India and then a childhood in Singapore. His epistemological trajectory was triggered by encountering the work of the philologist jurist turned Lacanian legal theorist, Pierre Legendre. While this could well have led to the demise of his career, he picked up the pieces, kept quiet, and published his thesis, Legal Discourse, and then a later day enchiridion, Reading the Law, in quick succession. Working to expand his conusances and the amplitude of theoretical jurisdictions, later works combined semiotics, history and psychoanalysis, and Languages of Law and Oedipus Lex vied (largely unsuccessfully) for shelf space beside the bibliomysteries and existential noir that you were reading back then. The inevitable emotional crises engendered by being English resulted in works on Law in the Courts of Love and Laws of Love, and departure to the United States in the hope of irritating a larger cohort of complacent academic lawyers than are available targets in the shrinking United Kingdom. Things are different in the United States. You teach cases and publish exclusively in law reviews. Despite these distractions, Goodrich, bonus dives, has adapted and refused in equal measure. He publishes regularly, which is to say not very often, in Critical Inquiry, and Legal Emblems and the Art of Law appeared in stylish print, much to the surprise of his colleagues, in 2014. He is Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, NY, USA.