Literary criticisms of law
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
eBook, English, ©2000
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., ©2000
Electronic books
1 online resource (xi, 544 pages)
9781400811069, 9781400823635, 1400811066, 1400823633
51443995
Cover13;
Contents13;
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION Law as Literature
From Letters to Literature
Literary Canons and Academies
The Risks and Possibilities of Law and Literature
Genres of Criticism
CHAPTER ONE Interpretive Crises in American Legal Thought
Introduction
1.1 The Crisis of Whig Hermeneutics
1.2 Progressive Interpretation
1.3 The Crisis of Progressive Interpretation
Conclusion
CHAPTER TWO Hermeneutic Criticism of Law
Introduction
2.1 Literary Theories of Interpretation
2.2 Law as Literary Interpretation
2.3 Legal Hermeneutics in Practice
Conclusion
CHAPTER THREE Narrative Criticism of Law
Introduction: The Law as Narrative Trope
3.1 Literary Theories of Narrative
3.2 Instrumental Claims: Narrative as Laws Antagonist and Salvation
3.3 Law and Narrative as Mutually Inherent
Conclusion: Performing the Law and Narrating the Nation
CHAPTER FOUR Rhetorical Criticism of Law
Introduction: Law, Rhetoric, and the Problem of Authoritarianism
4.1 A Very Brief History of Rhetoric
4.2 The Conservative Model of Rhetoric
4.3 Is a Liberal Rhetoric Possible?
Conclusion
CHAPTER FIVE Deconstructive Criticism of Law
Introduction
5.1 Derridean Deconstruction
5.2 Deconstruction as Epistemological Criticism
5.3 Deconstruction as Ethical Criticism
Conclusion
CHAPTER SIX Cultural Criticism of Law
Introduction
6.1 Theoretical Sources for Cultural Criticism of Law
6.2 Cultural Readings of Disputes
6.3 Cultural Readings of Capitalism
Conclusion
INDEX
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