Binder / Weisberg Literary Criticisms of Law

Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2363-5
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 440 Seiten, EPUB3

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Binder, Guyora

Weisberg, Robert

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PREFACE ix

INTRODUCTION

Law as Literature 3

From Letters to Literature 7

Literary Canons and Academies 13

The Risks and Possibilities of Law and Literature 16

Genres of Criticism 20

CHAPTER ONE Interpretive Crises in American Legal Thought 28

Introduction 28

1.1 The Crisis of Whig Hermeneutics 31

1.2 Progressive Interpretation 56

1.3 The Crisis of Progressive Interpretation 87

Conclusion 109

CHAPTER TWO Hermeneutic Criticism of Law 112

Introduction 112

2.1 Literary Theories of Interpretation 114

2.2 Law as Literary Interpretation 154

2.3 Legal Hermeneutics in Practice 188

Conclusion 199

CHAPTER THREE Narrative Criticism of Law 201

Introduction: The Law as Narrative Trope 201

3.1 Literary Theories of Narrative 209

3.2 Instrumental Claims: Narrative as Law's Antagonist and Salvation 232

3.3 Law and Narrative as Mutually Inherent 261

Conclusion: Performing the Law and Narrating the Nation 287

CHAPTER FOUR Rhetorical Criticism of Law 292

Introduction: Law, Rhetoric, and the Problem of Authoritarianism 292

4.1 A Very Brief History of Rhetoric 299

4.2 The Conservative Model o Rhetoric 309

4.3 Is a Liberal Rhetoric Possible? 330

Conclusion 376

CHAPTER FIVE Deconstructive Criticism of Law 378

Introduction 378

5.1 Derridean Deconstruction 380

5.2 Deconstruction as Epistemological Criticism 408

5.3 Deconstruction as Ethical Criticism 440

Conclusion 460

CHAPTER SIX Cultural Criticism of Law 462

Introduction 462

6.1 Theoretical Sources for Cultural Criticism of Law 464

62 Cultural Readings of Disputes 480

6.3 Cultural Readings of Capitalism 507

Conclusion 538

INDEX 541

Über Autor(innen)

Guyora Binder, Professor of Law at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is the author of Treaty Conflict and Political Contradiction and a coauthor of Criminal Law. Robert Weisberg, Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr., Professor of Law at Stanford University, is a coauthor of Criminal Law.