Law Commons^™

The Moral Of The Story: The Power Of Narrative To Inspire And Sustain Scholarship, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article describes how I discovered the power of story as a tool to inspire scholarship. We think of stories as a means to bring life to legal cases in a way that grounds them and makes them visceral and comprehensible. We use storytelling to teach our students - showing how the emotive power of a story can persuade. However, stories can also serve a different function. In my search for a way to inspire and sustain my own writing, I found out that a good story can be the source of a writer’s motivation to both create and sustain …

The Lady, Or The Tiger? A Field Guide To Metaphor & Narrative, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

Metaphor and narrative reassure us that things hang together, providing a sense of coherence to the patterns and paths we employ for perception and expression. In this field guide, I hope to illustrate - with images and stories when possible - how better understanding of metaphor and narrative can guide those engaged in legal rhetoric and persuasion.

The article briefly summarizes cognitive theory relating to metaphor and narrative, provides snapshots of their use in the field, in real-life legal persuasion, and suggests ways to adapt metaphor and narrative to a specific example of legal persuasion. In the field guide section, …

Reshaping The Narrative Debate, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

In Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, Joan Williams sets out to alter the terms of the public discussion about working, caregiving, and work-family conflicts. In doing so, Williams also reframes part of the conversation about the use of narratives in legal analysis and policy-making.

This essay describes the debate about narrative or storytelling in the legal academy. Two decades ago, a pitched jurisprudential battle surfaced in the pages of law reviews about the value of storytelling as legal scholarship. Since that time, narrative has sifted into academic texts: people are telling stories all over the place. …