Law and Literature

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Description
LAW AND LITERATURE are related to each other in interesting ways. LA Innumerable literary works, many of great distinction, take law for a theme, and feature a trial (Eumenides, The Merchant of Venice, Billy Budd, The Trial, The Stranger), abuse of judicial authority (Measure for Mea- sure), conflicting jurisprudential theories (Antigone, King Lear), the p rice of law (Bleak House), crime and punishment (Paradise Lost, Oliver Twist), the relation of law to vengeance (Oresteia, Hamlet), even specific fields of law, such as contract (Marlowe's Doctor Faustus), inheritance (Felix Holt, The Woman in White), and intellectual property (William Gaddis's A Frolic of His Own). These examples could be multiplied manyfold. (Anyone who doubts this claim should glance at Irving Browne, Law and Lawyers in Literature [1883].) Moreover, law is a rhetorical dis- cipline, and the judicial opinions of some of the greatest judges, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, have literary merit and repay literary analysis. Opinions and briefs are like stories; they have a narrative structure. A lit- erary sensibility may enable judges to write better opinions and lawyers to present their cases more effectively. And the literary critic's close atten- tion to text has parallels in the judge's and the lawyer's close attention to their authoritative texts-contracts, statutes, and constitutions.
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Contents
Part I. Literary Texts as Legal Texts
1. Reflections of Law in Literature
2. Law's Beginnings : Revenge as Legal Prototype
3. Antinomies of Legal Theory
4. The Limits of Literary Jurisprudence
5. Literary Indictments of Legal Injustice
6. Two Legal Perspective on Kafka
7. Penal Theory in Paradise Lost
Part II. Legal Texts as Literary Texts
8. Interpreting Contracts, Statutes, and Constitutions
9. Judicial Opinions as Literature
Part III. How Else Might Literature Help Law?
10. Literature as a Source of Background Knowledge for Law
11. Improving Trail and Appellate Avocacy
12. But can Literature Humanize Law?
Part IV. The Regulation of Literature by Law
13. Protecting Nonwriters
14. Protecting (others) Writers
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Author Details
Richard A. Posner