It is a real privilege to have been asked by Gary Watt to step into Paul Raffield’s rather large shoes as his co-editor of Law and Humanities, and a pleasure to find myself in the position of reading and editing the diverse and often fascinating legal and humanities scholarship that the journal receives. The current issue may not be a ‘special’ one in the sense of a collection of articles purposely unified around a single theme, and textual reference points here range from high literature to popular culture. At the same time however, recurring themes are here to be discerned and enjoyed if needed, and without (hopefully) doing violence to the articles, I would draw attention here to ambiguity, ambivalence and tragedy. The event that launched Law and Humanities in 2007 was a conference at the University of Warwick that celebrated Shakespeare and interdisciplinary Shakespeare scholarship. I recall that it was at this event that I met Paul Raffield for the first time, and learned from the students present about the inspiring and popular undergraduate modules that he and Gary Watt had introduced at Warwick Law school. And of the many memorable papers presented, Erika Rackley’s on Measure for Measure in particular comes to mind again now for the debate that it generated in the auditorium about how we should understand the pivotal scene in the play. The scene is of course that in which the puritanical (but corrupt) ruler Angelo comes to extract from Isabella (in fact secretly swapped by Angelo’s absent boss Duke Vincentio for Angelo’s former fiancé Marriana) the price for pardoning Isabella’s brother Claudio for the crime of fornication. In his article for this issue “When evil deeds have their permissive pass”: Broken Windows in William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Jeffrey R. Wilson provocatively reminds us that the scene depicts Angelo as victim of rape by identity deceit. Angelo’s victimisation, instigated by the powerful Duke, only intensifies Shakespeare’s prescient critique (more readily identifiable in Angelo’s sexual coercion of Isabella) of Kelling and Wilson’s influential and controversial ‘broken windows’ theory of crime and disorder and the corrupting discretionary licence it allegedly confers on agents of the state. That Measure for Measure was classified in the First Folio of 1623 as a comedy and not a tragedy arguably owes not only to the fact that in the end sins are forgiven, but also to the fact that its conclusion is not arrived

中文翻译：

---

法律与人文社论

加里•瓦特（Gary Watt）要求他作为法学和人文科学的共同编辑，走进保罗·拉菲尔德（Paul Raffield）的那双相当大的鞋子，这是一种真正的荣幸，而且很高兴能找到自己来阅读和编辑各种多样且通常引人入胜的法律和法律书籍。该杂志获得的人文奖学金。从专门围绕一个主题统一的一系列文章的意义上讲，当前的问题可能不是“特别的”问题，这里的文本参考点范围从高级文学到流行文化。但是，与此同时，如果需要的话，可以识别并享受重复出现的主题，并且在没有（希望）对条款进行暴力的情况下，我在这里提请注意歧义，歧义和悲剧。2007年发起法律与人文科学的活动是在沃里克大学举行的一次会议，旨在庆祝莎士比亚和跨学科莎士比亚奖学金。我记得是在这次活动中，我第一次遇到了保罗·拉菲尔德，并向在场的学生们学习了他和加里·瓦特在沃里克法学院引入的鼓舞人心且受欢迎的本科课程。在提出的许多令人难忘的论文中，埃里卡·拉克利（Erika Rackley）的《为度量而衡量》现在再次引起人们的注意，因为它在礼堂引发了关于我们如何理解剧中关键场景的辩论。当然是这样的场景：清教徒（但腐败的）统治者安杰洛从伊莎贝拉（实际上是由安杰洛的缺席老板杜克·文森蒂奥秘密换来安杰洛的前未婚夫玛丽亚娜）中，以赦免伊莎贝拉的兄弟克劳迪奥为奸淫罪的代价。杰弗里·威尔逊（Jeffrey R. Wilson）在他的文章“当邪恶行为得到放任时”：威廉·莎士比亚（William Shakespeare）的《度量衡》中的窗户破损时，挑衅性地提醒我们，该场景将Angelo描绘成身份欺骗的强奸受害者。在强大的公爵的煽动下，安吉洛的受害，仅加剧了莎士比亚的先见之明的批评（在安吉洛对伊莎贝拉的性强迫中更容易辨认）对凯灵和威尔逊的有影响力和有争议的“断窗”犯罪与无序论以及据称授予国家代理人的腐败的酌处权。措施的措施在1623年的《第一对开本》中被列为喜剧而不是悲剧，这不仅是因为最终可以宽恕犯罪，而且还没有得出结论