Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law

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 Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law The Law as Narrative and Rhetoric Part I. Storytelling in Legal Discourse Stories in Law Legal Storytelling and Constitutional Law: The Medium and the Message Leontius’ Tale Storytelling on Its Own Terms Part II. The Construction of Cases Proclaiming Trials as Narratives: Premises and Pretenses Untold Stories in the Law Life Is Not a Dramatic Narrative The Side-Bar Conference Rhetoric and Result in the Bobby Seale Trial Part III. Excludable Stories Storytelling Without Fear? Confession in Law and Literature Victims and Voyeurs: Two Narrative Problems at the Criminal Trial Some Stories About Confessions and Confessions About Stories Speech Acts in Criminal Cases Part IV. The Rhetoric of the Judicial Opinion Legal Rhetoric The Rhetoric of the Judicial Opinion Judicial Opinions as Literature A Night in the Topics: The Reason of Legal Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Legal Reason In the Eyes of the Law: Reflections on the Authority of Legal Discourse Law’s Stories as Reality and Politics Notes Contributors Index