This is a book about jurisprudence--or legal philosophy. The legal
philosophical texts under consideration are--to say the
least--unorthodox. Tolkien, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter,
Legally Blonde, and others are referenced as instances of what the
author calls lex populi--"pop law". Here, however, issues of legal
philosophy are heavily coded, for few of these pop cultural texts
announce themselves as expressly legal. Lex Populi reads these texts
"jurisprudentially", with an eye to their hidden legal philosophical
meanings, enabling connections such as: Tolkien's Ring as Kelsen's
grundnorm; vampire slaying as legal language's semiosis; and Hogwarts
as substantively unjust. Lex Populi attempts not only a
jurisprudential reading of popular culture, but also a popular rereading
of jurisprudence, removing it from the legal experts in order to restore
it to the public at large: a lex populi by and for the people.