Literary criticisms of law / Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Binder, Guyora.

Contributor:

Weisberg, Robert, 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law and literature.

Culture and law.

Law--Interpretation and construction.

Law.

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (557 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this book, the first to offer a comprehensive examination of the emerging study of law as literature, Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg show that law is not only a scheme of social order, but also a process of creating meaning, and a crucial dimension of modern culture. They present lawyers as literary innovators, who creatively interpret legal authority, narrate disputed facts and hypothetical fictions, represent persons before the law, move audiences with artful rhetoric, and invent new legal forms and concepts. Binder and Weisberg explain the literary theories and methods increasingly applied to law, and they introduce and synthesize the work of over a hundred authors in the fields of law, literature, philosophy, and cultural studies. Drawing on these disparate bodies of scholarship, Binder and Weisberg analyze law as interpretation, narration, rhetoric, language, and culture, placing each of these approaches within the history of literary and legal thought. They sort the styles of analysis most likely to sharpen critical understanding from those that risk self-indulgent sentimentalism or sterile skepticism, and they endorse a broadly synthetic cultural criticism that views law as an arena for composing and contesting identity, status, and character. Such a cultural criticism would evaluate law not simply as a device for realizing rights and interests but also as the framework for a vibrant cultural life.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: Law as Literature

CHAPTER ONE. Interpretive Crises in American Legal Thought

CHAPTER TWO. Hermeneutic Criticism of Law

CHAPTER THREE. Narrative Criticism of Law

CHAPTER FOUR. Rhetorical Criticism of Law

CHAPTER FIVE. Deconstructive Criticism of Law

CHAPTER SIX .Cultural Criticism of Law

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612767036

9781282767034

1282767038

9781400823635

1400823633

OCLC:

705527112