| Laws Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law Revised Edition Contributor(s): Brooks, Peter (Editor), Gewirtz, Paul (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0300074905 ISBN-13: 9780300074901 Publisher: Yale University Press OUR PRICE: $37.62 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 1998 Annotation: In this notable volume, well-known authorities from the worlds of law and literature take a probing look at how and why stories are told in the law. Such experts as Alan Dershowitz, Martha Minow, Janet Malcolm, Catharine MacKinnon, and John Hollander discuss how narratives presented at trials and in Supreme Court opinions are told and listened to, and how they affect legal thinking and judgment. "Those who are unfamiliar or untutored in narrative and rhetoric will find the contributions accessible and provocative. Those who are more experienced will enjoy sorting out the disagreements among the contributors and acquire a clearer sense of what is at stake here". -- Ira L. Strauber, The Law and Politics Book Review "Law's Stories offers an unusually rich perspective on the developing scholarship of narrative and rhetoric in the law ... The book succeeds in bringing to the forefront of 'law as literature' studies a very crucial aspect of investigation and will undoubtedly become one of the touchstones of law and literature scholarship". -- Wendy Chon, New York Law Journal "Indispensable to anyone interested in legal reasoning". -- Choice "Well edited and highly readable". -- Judge Richard A. Posner, University of Chicago Law Review "Each contribution is impressively individualistic, and the grateful reader can hardly avoid being drawn into strong-minded, largely unresolvable, controversy". -- Thomas Morawetz, Connecticut Law Review |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Law Enforcement - Law - Language Arts & Disciplines | Rhetoric |
| Dewey: 340.1 |
| LCCN: 95026410 |
| Physical Information: 0.72" H x 5.9" W x 9.25" (0.99 lbs) 298 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. Contributors J. M. Balkin Peter Brooks Harlon L. Dalton Alan M. Dershowitz Daniel A. Farber Robert A. Ferguson Paul Gewirtz John Hollander Anthony Kronman Pierre N. Leval Sanford Levinson Catharine MacKinnon Janet Malcolm Martha Minow David N. Rosen Elaine Scarry Louis Michael Seidman Suzanna Sherry Reva B. Siegel Robert Weisberg |