Fiction and the Languages of Law

Fiction and the Languages of Law PDF Author: Karen Petroski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351163825
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 8

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Book Description
Contemporary legal reasoning has more in common with fictional discourse than we tend to realize. Through an examination of the U.S. Supreme Court’s written output during a recent landmark term, this book exposes many of the parallels between these two special kinds of language use. Focusing on linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the dozens of reasoned opinions issued by the Court between October 2014 and June 2015, the book takes nonlawyer readers on a lively tour of contemporary American legal reasoning and acquaints legal readers with some surprising features of their own thinking and writing habits. It analyzes cases addressing a huge variety of issues, ranging from the rights of drivers stopped by the police to the decision-making processes of the Environmental Protection Agency—as well as the term’s best-known case, which recognized a constitutional right to marriage for same-sex as well as different-sex couples. Fiction and the Languages of Law reframes a number of long-running legal debates, identifies other related paradoxes within legal discourse, and traces them all to common sources: judges’ and lawyers’ habit of alternating unselfconsciously between two different attitudes toward the language they use, and a set of professional biases that tends to prevent scrutiny of that habit.

Fiction and the Languages of Law

Fiction and the Languages of Law PDF Author: Karen Petroski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351163825
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 8

Get Book

Book Description
Contemporary legal reasoning has more in common with fictional discourse than we tend to realize. Through an examination of the U.S. Supreme Court’s written output during a recent landmark term, this book exposes many of the parallels between these two special kinds of language use. Focusing on linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the dozens of reasoned opinions issued by the Court between October 2014 and June 2015, the book takes nonlawyer readers on a lively tour of contemporary American legal reasoning and acquaints legal readers with some surprising features of their own thinking and writing habits. It analyzes cases addressing a huge variety of issues, ranging from the rights of drivers stopped by the police to the decision-making processes of the Environmental Protection Agency—as well as the term’s best-known case, which recognized a constitutional right to marriage for same-sex as well as different-sex couples. Fiction and the Languages of Law reframes a number of long-running legal debates, identifies other related paradoxes within legal discourse, and traces them all to common sources: judges’ and lawyers’ habit of alternating unselfconsciously between two different attitudes toward the language they use, and a set of professional biases that tends to prevent scrutiny of that habit.

Teaching Law and Literature

Teaching Law and Literature PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
ISBN: 9781603290920
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume provides a resource for teachers interested in learning about the field of law and literature and shows how to bring its insights to bear in their classrooms, both in the liberal arts and in law schools. Essays in the first section, "Theory and History of the Movement," provide a retrospective of the field and look forward to new developments. The second section, "Model Courses," offers readers an array of possibilities for structuring courses that integrate legal issues with the study of literature, from The Canterbury Tales to current prison literature. In "Texts," the third section, guidance is provided for teaching not only written documents (novels, plays, trial reports) but also cultural objects: digital media, Native American ceremonies, documentary theater, hip-hop. The volume's forty-one contributors investigate what constitutes law and literature and how each informs the other.

Legal Stagings

Legal Stagings PDF Author: Kjell Å Modéer
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763531615
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
In this book, a group of lawyers and legal historians help to identify the new Nordic legal map, which is under construction. This book is a collection of papers addressing legal staging, and most of the articles combine theoretical approaches to the visuality of law with practical experiences and effects. The texts show that law is so much more than law in action and law in books: law is also part of a visual culture. It contributes to that culture and is, in turn, analyzed, maintained, and criticized by that culture. At the same time, the cultural manifestations of law change the way we understand law and, thus, change law itself.

Literature and Law

Literature and Law PDF Author: Mark Fortier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351203819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
The fields of literature and law intersect in frequent, and often surprising ways. This clear and concise book offers an introduction to the area, covering the history, key thinkers and ideas as well as detailed and fascinating studies into areas such as evidence and truth, inheritance, sex, vigilantism and justice. Each chapter examines a number of familiar authors and texts including Shakespeare, Brecht, Austen, Dickens, Ishiguro, Beecher-Stowe, Atwood, Miller. The book also opens up the broader study of law as it relates to culture in such areas as film, television, and digital media and how they affect such issues as a right to privacy, copyright and creative reworking, and censorship. Mark Fortier offers a concise, systemic introduction to the law and legal system for the lay person, covering basic notions of justice and law (fundamental justice, natural law, positive law) and the legal system (common law vs civil law, case law, statute, constitutional law, private law [tort, contract, property], criminal law, equity, basic rules of evidence, stare decisis, the adversarial system) as well as a very handy glossary of legal terms. This is a fascinating guide to a very topical and increasingly relevant area of literary studies.

Constitutional Law as Fiction

Constitutional Law as Fiction PDF Author: L. H. LaRue
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271039272
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description


Just Words

Just Words PDF Author: John M. Conley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022648453X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Is it “just words” when a lawyer cross-examines a rape victim in the hopes of getting her to admit an interest in her attacker? Is it “just words” when the Supreme Court hands down a decision or when business people draw up a contract? In tackling the question of how an abstract entity exerts concrete power, Just Words focuses on what has become the central issue in law and language research: what language reveals about the nature of legal power. John M. Conley, William M. O'Barr, and Robin Conley Riner show how the microdynamics of the legal process and the largest questions of justice can be fruitfully explored through the field of linguistics. Each chapter covers a language-based approach to a different area of the law, from the cross-examinations of victims and witnesses to the inequities of divorce mediation. Combining analysis of common legal events with a broad range of scholarship on language and law, Just Words seeks the reality of power in the everyday practice and application of the law. As the only study of its type, the book is the definitive treatment of the topic and will be welcomed by students and specialists alike. This third edition brings this essential text up to date with new chapters on nonverbal, or “multimodal,” communication in legal settings and law, language, and race.

Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice

Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice PDF Author: Maksymilian Del Mar
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319092324
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
This multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional collection offers the first ever full-scale analysis of legal fictions. Its focus is on fictions in legal practice, examining and evaluating their roles in a variety of different areas of practice (e.g. in Tort Law, Criminal Law and Intellectual Property Law) and in different times and places (e.g. in Roman Law, Rabbinic Law and the Common Law). The collection approaches the topic in part through the discussion of certain key classical statements by theorists including Jeremy Bentham, Alf Ross, Hans Vaihinger, Hans Kelsen and Lon Fuller. The collection opens with the first-ever translation into English of Kelsen’s review of Vaihinger’s As If. The 17 chapters are divided into four parts: 1) a discussion of the principal theories of fictions, as above, with a focus on Kelsen, Bentham, Fuller and classical pragmatism; 2) a discussion of the relationship between fictions and language; 3) a theoretical and historical examination and evaluation of fictions in the common law; and 4) an account of fictions in different practice areas and in different legal cultures. The collection will be of interest to theorists and historians of legal reasoning, as well as scholars and practitioners of the law more generally, in both common and civil law traditions.

Law and Literature

Law and Literature PDF Author: Lenora Ledwon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317954181
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
First published in 1996. The first anthology of its kind in this dynamic new field of study, this volume offers students the best of both worlds-theory and literature. Organized around specific themes to facilitate use of the text in a variety of courses, the material is highly accessible to undergraduates and is suitable as well for graduate students and law students. The anthology includes important articles by key figures in the law and literature debate, and presents seven thematically arranged sections that: Survey the various theoretical perspectives that inform the relationship of law and literature Examine the interplay of ethics, law, and justice * Highlight the great scope and variety of the law's contributions to the creation of a world view * Illustrate various legal approaches to punishment * Detail and analyze the law's inherent capacity for the oppression of individuals and groups * Demonstrate that law is grounded in language and storytelling * Show that despite its solemnity, the law has a comic side Each section includes excerpts from poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. The excerpts include writings addressing the law's impact on the "outsider" (women, Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and homosexuals), as well as writings by lawyers, judges, and law professors, giving the reader an "insider's" view of the legal system. The selections range from Plato to John Barth and Wallace Stevens. At this time of increased interest in the quality of legal writing, this course material illustrates the importance of language, word choice, metaphor, and narrative. It demonstrates the practical application of literary effects, techniques, and devices, and provides valuable insights into law as a vital component of the social fabric. SPECIAL FEATURES All law schools that do not already have one in place are required to institute a course in Law and Literature. This new anthology is the first of its kind, and has been specifically designed to meet the requirements of a Law and Literature course * Selections from judges, lawyers, and professors of law give students an insider's view of the legal system * Chronological coverage-from Plato to such 20th-century writers as John Barth and Wallace Stevens-offers students a broad range of selections that examine the relationship between law, justice, ethics, and literature * Multicultural writings address the law's capacity for the oppression of individuals and groups, including women, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, and homosexuals * Law and punishment-several selections examine this area from various points of view. Suitable for courses in: Law and literature courses in law schools and undergraduate divisions as well as interdisciplinary courses in English literature.

Rhetoric and Evidence

Rhetoric and Evidence PDF Author: Peter Schneck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110253771
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The book traces the changing relation and intense debates between law and literature in U.S. American culture, using examples from the 18th to the 20th century (including novels by Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Harper Lee, and William Gaddis). Since the early American republic, the critical representation of legal matters in literary fictions and cultural narratives about the law served an important function for the cultural imagination and legitimation of law and justice in the United States. One of the most essential questions that literary representations of the law are concerned with, the study argues, is the unstable relation between language and truth, or, more specifically, between rhetoric and evidence. In examining the truth claims of legal language and rhetoric and the evidentiary procedures and protocols which are meant to stabilize these claims, literary fictions about the law aim to provide an alternative public discourse that translates the law's abstractions into exemplary stories of individual experience. Yet while literature may thus strive to institute itself as an ethical counter narrative to the law, in order to become, in Shelley’s famous phrase “the legislator of the world”, it has to face the instability of its own relation to truth. The critical investigation of legal rhetoric in literary fiction thus also and inevitably entails a negotiation of the intrinsic value of literary evidence.

Singing the Law

Singing the Law PDF Author: Peter Leman
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1789625203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Singing the Law is about the legal lives and afterlives of oral cultures in East Africa, particularly as they appear within the pages of written literatures during the colonial and postcolonial periods. In examining these cultures, this book begins with an analysis of the cultural narratives of time and modernity that formed the foundations of British colonial law. Recognizing the contradictory nature of these narratives (i.e., both promoting and retreating from the Euro-centric ideal of temporal progress) enables us to make sense of the many representations of and experiments with non-linear, open-ended, and otherwise experimental temporalities that we find in works of East African literature that take colonial law as a subject or point of critique. Many of these works, furthermore, consciously appropriate orature as an expressive form with legal authority. This affords them the capacity to challenge the narrative foundations of colonial law and its postcolonial residues and offer alternative models of temporality and modernity that give rise, in turn, to alternative forms of legality. East Africa’s “oral jurisprudence” ultimately has implications not only for our understanding of law and literature in colonial and postcolonial contexts, but more broadly for our understanding of how the global south has shaped modern law as we know and experience it today.