The Language of Law and Food: Metaphors of Recipes and Rules (Juris Diversitas)

This book reconsiders the use of food metaphors and the relationship between law and food in an interdisciplinary perspective to examine how food related topics can be used to describe or identify rules, norms, or prescriptions of all kinds.

The links between law and food are as old as the concept of law. Many authors have been using such links in creative ways to express specific features of law. This is because the language of food and cooking offers legal thinkers and teachers mouth-watering metaphors, comparing rules to recipes, and their combination to culinary processes. This collection focuses on this relationship between law and food and takes us far beyond their mere interaction, to explore different ways of using these two apparently so diverse elements to describe different phenomena of the legal reality. The authors use the link between food and law to describe different aspects of the legal landscape in different areas and jurisdictions. Bringing together metaphors and indirect correlations between law and food, the book explores different models of approaching legal issues and considering different legal challenges from a completely new perspective, in line with the multidisciplinary approach that leads comparative legal studies today and, to a certain extent, revisiting and enriching it.

With contributions in English and French, the book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of law and food, law and language, and comparative legal studies.

Salvatore Mancuso was born in Palermo (Italy) on 26 October 1963. He got his Bachelor of Law at the University of Palermo (Italy) and has obtained its Ph.D. in Comparative Law at the University of Trieste (Italy) with specialization on African law. He is a Professor of Comparative Law and Legal Anthropology at the University of Palermo (Italy), and Honorary Professor of African Law at the Centre for African Laws and Society of Xiangtan University, China. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University, Chicago, John Felice Rome Center, Italy, and a Visiting Professor at the Somali National University, Mogadishu, Somalia.

He has been the Chair, Centre for Comparative Law in Africa, University of Cape town, Professor of Comparative Law and Legal Anthropology at the University of Macau, Adjunct Professor at the University of Trieste, Visiting Professor at the Universities of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (France), Limoges, Réunion and Lisbon, and has given lectures, among the others, at the Universities of Milan, Turin, Trento, and Salerno (Italy), Asmara (Eritrea), Bissau (Guinea-Bissau) , Hargeisa (Somalia), Omar Bongo (Gabon), Ghana – Legon in Accra (Ghana), Mauritius, Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo (Mozambique), Instituto Superior de Ciências Jurídicas e Sociais (Cape Verde), National Taipei University in Taiwan, China University of Political Sciences and law in Beijing, and East China University of Political Sciences and law in Shanghai (P.R. of China).

He has published and edited some books and several articles on Comparative and African Law. He is a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and Vice President (Events) of the Juris Diversitas group. He is co-coordinator of the TWG on Rule of Law & Justice Reform at the World Bank GFLJD. He is a member of the editorial board of several law journals focused on comparative law and African law.