Loca Infecta: A Jurisprudence of Hauntings

A jurisprudence of hauntings draws on the work of Peter Goodrich and refers to French customary law, The Digest as well as recent case law on stigmatised property. It offers a psychoanalytical approach to what contemporary law and legal science either forget or find difficult to conceptualise: property must be thought of in terms of traces or emotional imprints that early modern law articulated as loca infecta or places infested by spirits. These ideas are read into contemporary case law and the essay speculates on the relationship between a hauntology of law and psychic jurisprudence.