Creating legal worlds : story and style in a culture of argument / Greig Henderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Henderson, Greig E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law--Language.

Law.

Semantics (Law).

Law and literature.

Forensic oratory.

Rhetoric.

Forensic orations.

Physical Description:

x, 180 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, [2015].

Summary:

"A legal judgment is first and foremost a story, a narrative of facts about the parties to the case. Creating Legal Worlds is a study of how that narrative operates, and how rhetoric, story, and style function as integral elements of any legal argument. Through careful analyses of notable cases from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Greig Henderson analyses how the rhetoric of storytelling often carries as much argumentative weight within a judgement as the logic of legal distinctions. Through their narrative choices, Henderson argues, judges create a normative universe--the world of right and wrong within which they make their judgements--and fashion their own judicial self-images. Drawing on the work of the law and literature movement, Creating Legal Worlds is a convincing argument for paying close attention to the role of story and style in the creation of judicial decisions.""--Book jacket.

Contents:

The cost of persuasion: figure, story, and eloquence in the rhetoric of judicial discourse

Pure and impure styles: formalism and pragmatism in the language of decision writing

The perils of analogy: legal world-making and judicial self fashioning in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad

Murder, they wrote: the rhetoric of causation in the language of the law

Narrative theory and the art of judgment: the anatomy of a Supreme Court decision

The look in his eyes: Rusk v. State, State v. Rusk

Rhetoric, philosophy, and law

Postscript: rhetoric, postmodernism, and skepticism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-172) and index.

ISBN:

9781442637085

1442637080

OCLC:

903770103