Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the LawPeter Brooks, Paul Gewirtz The law is full of stories, ranging from the competing narratives presented at trials to the Olympian historical narratives set forth in Supreme Court opinions. How those stories are told and listened to makes a crucial difference to those whose lives are reworked in legal storytelling. The public at large has increasingly been drawn to law as an area where vivid human stories are played out with distinctively high stakes. And scholars in several fields have recently come to recognize that law's stories need to be studied critically.This notable volume-inspired by a symposium held at Yale Law School-brings together an exceptional group of well-known figures in law and literary studies to take a probing look at how and why stories are told in the law and how they are constructed and made effective. Why is it that some stories-confessions, victim impact statements-can be excluded from decisionmakers' hearing? How do judges claim the authority by which they impose certain stories on reality?Law's Stories opens new perspectives on the law, as narrative exchange, performance, explanation. It provides a compelling encounter of law and literature, seen as two wary but necessary interlocutors.ContributorsJ. M. BalkinPeter BrooksHarlon L. DaltonAlan M. DershowitzDaniel A. FarberRobert A. FergusonPaul GewirtzJohn HollanderAnthony KronmanPierre N. LevalSanford LevinsonCatharine MacKinnonJanet MalcolmMartha MinowDavid N. RosenElaine ScarryLouis Michael SeidmanSuzanna SherryReva B. SiegelRobert Weisberg. |
Contents
2 | |
14 | |
Stories in Law | 24 |
The Medium and the Message | 37 |
Leontius Tale | 54 |
Storytelling on Its Own Terms | 57 |
Premises and Pretenses | 61 |
Untold Stories in the Law | 84 |
Some Stories About Confessions and Confessions About Stories | 162 |
Speech Acts in Criminal Cases | 165 |
Legal Rhetoric | 176 |
The Rhetoric of the Judicial Opinion | 187 |
Judicial Opinions as Literature | 206 |
The Reason of Legal Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Legal Reason | 211 |
Reflections on the Authority of Legal Discourse | 225 |
Laws Stories as Reality and Politics | 232 |
Other editions - View all
Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law Peter Brooks,Paul D. Gewirtz No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
American analysis Arendt argues argument audience authority Booth claim client color blindness confession context courtroom crime criminal trial critical legal critical legal studies cultural death penalty debate decision defendant defendant's discourse discussion dissent emotional essay example fact guilt hate speech Henrico County human indeterminacy thesis interpretation interrogation issue judges judicial opinion jurors jury Justice Kiryas Joel language law and literature lawyers legal narrative legal reasoning legal scholars legal storytelling listeners literary Martha Minow meaning mindset Miranda moral murder O. J. Simpson particular Paul Gewirtz person persuasion Peter Brooks police political pornography problem punishment question race racial rational reality relevant repression rhetoric Robert Weisberg role rules sense sentencing slave social speech act story storytelling supra note Supreme Court survivors Suzanna Sherry tell theory tion told topics traditional truth victim impact evidence victim impact statement White writing Yale