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14 Law & Human. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/lawhuman14 and id is 1 raw text is: LAW AND HUMANITIES Routledge 2020, VOL. 14, NO. 1, 1-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/17521483.2020.1752430 Taylor &Francis Group Editorial This issue of the journal was finalized in April 2020 in the midst of a global lock- down enforced by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We can only hope that that the pestilence has passed by the time this journal reaches you in print, or, which may be later, by the time you read this editorial. Maybe by that time we will have made social sense of the phenomenon. As we write, all efforts are focused rather more upon the scientific sense and, for many, upon something beyond sense - the instinct to survive. We will, one day, look back on a period in which life was lived in extremis and also, at the same time, de minimis. For example, in the UK, the Government has decreed, with exceptions, that people can leave their homes for only one form of outdoor exercise per day. What has not been answered is the question pervading everything - for how long? As we look back, one day, we will perhaps find lessons for law in the use of emergency regulatory powers and in the willingness of the populace to obey, or wilfully to disobey. We will hopefully have time to reflect upon the socio-legal implications of the following headline in The Guardian newspaper: New Zealand site to report Covid-19 rule-breakers crashes amid spike in lock- down anger.' One of the articles in this issue homes in upon New Zealand for very different reasons, but we will say no more of that. Regular readers of this journal will know that this editorial invariably takes the form of an introduction to the contents of the current issue, usually with an attempt to draw out common themes like threads and then to weave the threads back in to make something with the sem- blance of a coherent whole. The truth behind the fabrication is, in fact, that the contents come to us in unpredictable forms and usually with unplanned themes. The editorial is our effort - a quite lawyerly one, on reflection - to produce order out of happenstance. Sometimes our contributors offer us images to reflect on, sometimes they offer us sounds. In this issue we have examples of both. Always, though, there is a weaving of words. In Hamlet's phrase words, words, words (Hamlet, 2.2.192), uttered dismissively or despair- ingly as he pored over a book in Elsinore, one can sense a certain fatigue and lack of faith in the fabrication; in the texts and textiles that words weave. His dis- trust of fabricated forms pervades the play from the earliest scenes: 'Tis not alone my inky cloak ... / ... / That can denote me truly (1.2.77-83.). Nor inky words neither. Perhaps, more speculatively, we might hear something of Shakespeare's own introspection in that tired tricolon words, words, words. Might it be the sound of a wordsmith downing tools, and, who knows, perhaps feeling somewhat 'Feature by Eleanor Ainge Roy (30 Mar 2020). The subtitle reports that Since going live over the weekend, the site has crashed at least once due to complaints over people playing rugby or frisbee and holding parties. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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