Literary Criticisms of Law (ebook)

Argumento de Literary Criticisms of Law (ebook)

"Literary Criticisms of Law shows what can happen when two shrewd law professors take the time and have the theoretical sophistication to master the wide variety of today's state-of-the-art literary criticism. This absorbing book both maps efforts in the last two decades to understand law as a kind of literature and makes a compelling case for the most productive way to do so. Avoiding the twin traps of radical skepticism and moralizing sentimentality that have snared even some of the best work in the field, Binder and Weisberg demonstrate how law shapes culture and vice versa."--Brook Thomas, author of Cross-Examinations of Law And Literature, The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics, and American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract

"No other work attempts what this one does, a synthetic account of all the genres within the field of law and literature. As a synthesis, this book is first-rate. It not only summarizes but also puts to work a strong, acerbic critical intelligence, clarifying what the authors think is valuable in some approaches and deficient in others. The ability to provoke argument is one of the qualities that makes Literary Criticisms of Law consistently interesting. It is more theoretically sophisticated, historically informed, and deeply reflective than any similar work in its field."--Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School

"A very impressive book. Each chapter contains numerous original, sweeping, and, for the most part, convincing arguments about large swaths of current legal intellectual history. As the first and only attempt so far to synthesize and assess this interdisciplinary field, the book will be extremely useful to many scholars in the humanities and social sciences."--Robin West, Georgetown University Law Center0PREFACE 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