Law and Justice in Song

Introduction

This book examines the murder ballad form, songs about death and killing, from a legal history perspective. It is held that taking on the long history of the murder ballad is a way that we can understand how death and killing in song has a function in dealing with the world around us.

Methodology

The book integrates law and humanities scholarship with diverse musical case studies to construct a typology of murder ballads and thus conceptualise the central messages of how murder ballads have treated death and killing.

Significance

Drawing on a cultural form in which assessment and consideration of death and killing are so vigorously and richly enacted gives lawyers a guide to how those who do not see these matters through a primarily legal lens might understand this part of their world.

Audience

The study will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Criminal Law, Legal History, Socio-Legal Studies, Criminology, and Musicology.