Recent research in legal aesthetics argues that law cannot be separated from its form: content & expression are fundamentally intertwined. This workshop explores what this means for religious & secular legal traditions, asking whether they differ not only in legal content but also in the forms and modes through which law is represented.

Do these traditions require different forms to express what they understand as “law”? And what do their modes of representation reveal about their respective concepts of law? A central focus is the role of performativity (“doing law”), which is increasingly relevant in the study of both religious traditions (such as Jewish and Islamic law) & secular legal systems. Bringing together scholars from law, theology, philosophy, and history, the workshop takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. It examines whether aesthetic categories such as narrative, form, and performance can help clarify similarities and differences between legal orders.