Law and Literature - Softcover

The law and literature movement, which is currently gaining momentum on US campuses, argues that lawyers can benefit from studying the literary merits of legal documents and from reading works of literature which deal with law...[The] movement is now courting controversy with suggestions that the Anglo-American legal system is intrinsically biased both sexually and racially. Some proponents claim trials should be radically restructured along narrative, rather than adversarial principles, and that this would allow marginalised voices to be heard. Richard A. Posner, chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the seventh circuit, is sceptical about these arguments. His book is a sensible and forthright introduction to the law and literature movement, which enlightens without blinding.--Jessica Smerin "Weekly Journal of the Law Society(UK) "

This edition continues to emphasize the essential social functions of legal and literary texts, but it also explores areas of mutual illumination and expands its range. It includes topics such as popular fiction about law, literary education for lawyers, the legal narrative, and judicial biography. Literary works from Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Melville, Kafka, and Camus to contemporary fiction by William Gadis, Tom Wolfe, and John Grisham come under Posner's scrutiny, as do recent attempts to apply the techniques of literary analysis to statutes, judicial opinions, and the Constitution. Posner discusses the increasing efforts of legal scholars to enrich their scholarship by borrowing the methods and insights of literature - even by insisting that legal education is incomplete without the ethical insights afforded by an immersion in literature.