Law's stories : narrative and rhetoric in the law / edited by Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brooks, Peter, 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law--Language.

Law.

Law--Methodology.

Forensic oratory.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Physical Description:

vii, 290 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1996.

Summary:

This important volume 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. How do legal stories gain or lose their impact? What are the uses and risks of storytelling as opposed to arguments and theories? Why is it that some stories - confessions, victim impact statements - can be excluded from decisionmakers' hearing? What rhetorical strategies do judges use to gain persuasiveness or to claim authority to impose certain stories on reality? Law's Stories opens new perspectives on the law - looking at it not as rules and policies but as stories, narrative exchange, performances, interpretation. It provides a compelling encounter of law and literature, seen as two wary but mutually animating fields.

Contents:

Narrative and rhetoric in the law / Paul Gewirtz

The law as narrative and rhetoric / Peter Brooks

Stories in law / Martha Minow

Legal storytelling and constitutional law : the medium and the message / Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry

Leontius' tale / Anthony Kronman

Storytelling on its own terms / Harlon L. Dalton

Proclaiming trials as narratives : premises and pretenses / Robert Weisberg

Untold stories in the law / Robert A. Ferguson

Life is not a dramatic narrative / Alan M. Dershowitz

The side-bar conference / Janet Malcolm

Rhetoric and result in the Bobby Seale trial / David N. Rosen

Storytelling without fear? Confession in law and literature / Peter Brooks

Victims and voyeurs : two narrative problems at the criminal trial / Paul Gewirtz

Some stories about confessions and confessions about stories / Louis Michael Seidman

Speech acts in criminal cases / Elaine Scarry

Legal rhetoric / John Hollander

The rhetoric of the judicial opinion / Sanford Levinson

Judicial opinions as literature / Pierre N. Leval

A night in the topics : the reason of legal rhetoric and the rhetoric of legal reason / J.M. Balkin

In the eyes of the law : reflections on the authority of legal discourse / Reva B. Siegel

Law's stories as reality and politics / Catharine A. MacKinnon.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0300066759 :

OCLC:

33820418