Matteo Nicolini: Legal Geography, Comparative Law and the Production of Space

The monograph of Matteo Nicolini explores an unknown land: the relationship and the interplay between law and space. The monograph is the result of the extraordinary intellectual curiosity of the author and is characterized by originality and breadth of scope. The author develops the central theme of the relationship between law and space by easily and courageously crossing the disciplinary boundaries of geography and law. Nicolini’s on Legal Geography perfectly reflects the conception of relative space, understood as a container of social and, therefore, also legal processes.[1] Indeed, the oldest geography embraced the ‘Newtonian’ conception of homogeneous, empty and absolute space. The transition from one to the other conception is due, among others, to the thesis of the triple dialectic of space by Lefebvre, author of the 1974 text The Production of Space.[2] More recently, it was not a geographer who drew attention to the existence of so many different spaces, but a philosopher: Foucault, who, although he dedicated only a few (but illuminating) explicit interventions to space, was nevertheless always sensitive to the space-time dimension in his ‘major’ writings, so much so that the new geography drew important stimuli from his reflection and lively dialogue with him. In a short essay in 1984, Foucault evokes the existence of the many dimensions of spaces to develop his conceptualisation of “heterotopias”.[3] In the opening part of the essay, Foucault, in order to emphasise that the spaces in which we live are not homogeneous but articulated and qualitatively different from one another, distinguishes places of transit, places of temporary rest and places of rest. In Nicolini’s work, there appears the reconstruction of the concept of space in its multiple dimensions, identifying physical (atmosphere, climate change) space, social space (critical geographies) and, finally, space in the abstract sense, as individual perception. Now, the very idea of ‘abstract’ space, i.e. as a ‘mental’ space, allows for a very shrewd analysis of the factors involved in spatial determinations and the complexity of their links and dynamics. These factors include social processes and, as will be better said, also law. Nicolini’s book brings the insights and resources of the geographical sciences into the legal sphere, and, in the opposite direction, to enrich the understanding of geography in the light of the role of the other social sciences and, in particular, of law. And it is clear that this project is, by its very nature, cross-disciplinary and, therefore, structurally different from the two original disciplines and aimed at creating a new field of research that can enjoy its own autonomy and independence. In the following paragraphs, the main parts of the monograph will be examined and contextualised in the current debate about legal geography. Considered the above, only crossdisciplinarity could, in the intentions of its authors, unveil this overlap of the geographical, the social and even the legal. A reading of the recent literature in legal geography, despite the diversity of topics ranging from animals to satellites,[4] allows us to conclude how the distinctive characteristic of the discipline consists in understanding how the geographical and legal dimensions influence each other in an extremely wide sense, so that topics, such as cultural protection,[5] emotions,[6] prison visitation[7] and consumption[8] are also addressed. Nicolini touches the main lines of research in the field and, by adopting a very convincing structure of four parts offer to the reader a much-needed systematisation of the main theories of legal geographies. Precisely, Part 1 of the monograph concerns taxonomies and methodologies, Part 2 focuses on spatial normatives and, particularly, on topics related to the never-ending processes associated with the colonization and decolonization of legal thought, and it also deals with critical legal geographies. Part 3 deals with territorial nomenclatures, including reflections about borders and linguistics. Finally, Part 4 addresses the de-territorialised legal geographies. The following sections analyse and discuss the above-mentioned parts of Nicolini’s book