Chris Dent

Science fiction rarely describes a future law that is significantly different from that of the late twentieth century. This is not surprising, given that a key challenge to imagining a different law is the lack of understanding of where the law has come from. The rate of change in society is increasing, and the same could be said for legal processes and rules. Given the shifts in law and culture since the nineteenth century and even those throughout the twentieth, predicting how the law will operate in even two generations’ time is fraught with difficulty. This chapter does three things to engage with the issue. First, it considers the changes in the ‘source’ and ‘subject’ of law from the medieval period to now. Every aspect of law has been subject to change over the centuries. The role of the individual in society is also changing; there should be little doubt that law's engagement with the individual will also change. The law now and the law of science fiction focus on the classic liberal model that was formed in the nineteenth century. This will be demonstrated in the second aspect of the chapter – an overview of key science fiction movies released since the 1990s. This shows how current portrayals of law in the genre are founded on liberal assumptions. Finally, there will be a brief exploration of the possibilities for future change – based partly on the already evident challenges to governance, and the understanding of the individual, presented by the digital sphere.

Regulation is the broad term for attempts to control or delimit the behaviour of individuals. When it comes to regulating the work of visual artists, there are a number of legal regimes that impact on what a visual artist may create – including copyright law and contractual obligations. These regimes can be understood in terms of normative practices. Other normative practices also bind the behaviour of visual artists, some of which stem from their discipline, others are simply societal. In order to consider the role of these systems, a multi-dimensional approach will be used. First, there is Julia Black’s theory of ‘decentred regulation’, infused with the work of Michel Foucault, and secondly, there is the notion of ‘motivators’ as adapted from behavioural economics. Taken together, these complementary frameworks facilitate a more complete understanding of the intersection of the work of artists and the law.