Politics of Parking

Book excerpt: There is more to parking law than just parking penalties. Considering the ways in which law works in everyday life, and in familiar places of common experience where the presence of law is not obvious, this book explores the various notions of the right to park, which jurisprudentially is enacted between individuals in everyday parking. From parking areas to the courtroom, parking engenders disputes over equality, speech, legitimacy, and entitlement that reach beyond the stated scope of policy. Looking beyond the obvious, this book examines the contested site of the parking space as a place of socio-legal meaning where property claims and rights shape identities. Adopting a constitutive approach to the study of law, the book examines how regulation of parking policy is at odds with the force of localised politics, producing competing notions of legality and examples of legal semiotics within the terrain of legal geography.