Laws Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law
by Peter Brooks
2020-12-31 23:01:54
Laws Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law
by Peter Brooks
2020-12-31 23:01:54
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 live...
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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
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