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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Fiction In The Code: Reading Legislation As Literature, Thomas J. Mcsweeney Sep 2019

Fiction In The Code: Reading Legislation As Literature, Thomas J. Mcsweeney

Thomas J. McSweeney

One of the major branches of the field of law and literature is often described as "law as literature." Scholars of law as literature examine the law using the tools of literary analysis. The scholarship in this subfield is dominated by the discussion of narrative texts: confessions, victim-impact statements, and, above all, the judicial opinion. This article will argue that we can use some of the same tools to help us understand non-narrative texts, such as law codes and statutes. Genres create expectations. We do not expect a law code to be literary. Indeed, we tend to dissociate the law …


Mimesis, Imagination And Law, Marcelo C. Galuppo Feb 2015

Mimesis, Imagination And Law, Marcelo C. Galuppo

Marcelo C Galuppo Phd

This paper assumes that a trial consists of a narrative that encompasses other narratives held in the Lawsuit. As such, the first question that arises is whether it is possible to transpose events into discourse, i.e., if it is possible to represent mimetically the reality in the judicial discourse. In order to this narrative process be legitimate, it needs to present narrative coherence so that it makes possible that other narratives (plaintiff`s, defendant`s, and witnesses` ones) be understood as dialectically overcame in sentence’s narrative. Imagination plays a key role in narratives, and especially in judicial narratives, linking the events, disconnected …


Unexpected Insights Into Terrorism And National Security Law Through Children’S Literature: Reading The Butter Battle Book As Monstrosity, Nick J. Sciullo Dec 2013

Unexpected Insights Into Terrorism And National Security Law Through Children’S Literature: Reading The Butter Battle Book As Monstrosity, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Legal knowledge often comes from unexpected encounters with legal theory. In this Essay, I critically analyze Dr. Seuss’s The Butter Battle Book as a source of international legal knowledge. Although this text was originally written as a criticism of the Cold War, I find modern parallels to the evolution of terrorism and national security law theorizing in the United States. As a result of this investigation, I provide a unique window onto civil society, and our continued fascination with the specter of terrorism.


The Law Review Approach: What The Humanities Can Learn, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2012

The Law Review Approach: What The Humanities Can Learn, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

This essay describes how the law review process generally works and then discusses what the humanities can learn and borrow from the law review process. It ends by advocating for a hybrid law review/peer review approach to publishing. The law review process is not a panacea for our publishing ills. It has several drawbacks and shortcomings. This essay highlights the positives and notes some of the negatives of the law review publishing process, but a lengthy explanation of all that is good or bad about law reviews is not my aim. Every law review has its idiosyncrasies and methodologies, but …


'Mass Of Madness': Jurisprudence In E.M. Forster's A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2010

'Mass Of Madness': Jurisprudence In E.M. Forster's A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Law-and-literature scholars have paid scant attention to E. M. Forster’s oeuvre, which abounds in legal information and which situates itself in a unique jurisprudential context. Of all his novels, A Passage to India (1924) interrogates the law most rigorously, especially as it implicates massive programs of ‘liberal’ imperialism and ‘humanitarian’ intervention, as well as less grand but equally dubious legal apparatuses – jail, bail, discovery, courtrooms – that police and pervert Chandrapore, the fictional Indian city in which the novel is set. The study of law in Anglo-India is particularly telling, if troubling, because India served as ‘a model for …


Transnational Law: An Essay In Definition With A Polemic Addendum, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2010

Transnational Law: An Essay In Definition With A Polemic Addendum, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

What is transnational law? Various procedures and theories have emanated from this slippery signifier, but in general academics and legal practitioners who use the term have settled on certain common meanings for it. My purpose in this article is not to disrupt but to clarify these meanings by turning to literary theory and criticism that regularly address transnationality. Cultural and postcolonial studies are the particular strains of literary theory and criticism to which I will attend. To review “transnational law,” examining its literary inertia and significations, is the objective of this article, which does not purport to settle the matter …


Shakespeare's Place In Law-And-Literature, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2010

Shakespeare's Place In Law-And-Literature, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Nearly every Anglo-American law school offers a course called Law-and-Literature. Nearly all of these courses assign one or more readings from Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Why study Shakespeare in law school? That is the question at the heart of these courses. Some law professors answer the question in terms of cultivating moral sensitivity, fine-tuning close-reading skills, or practicing interpretive strategies on literary rather than legal texts. Most of these professors insist on an illuminating nexus between two supposedly autonomous disciplines. The history of how Shakespeare became part of the legal canon is more complicated than these often defensive, syllabus-justifying declarations allow. This …


The Oft-Ignored Mr. Turton: The Role Of District Collector In A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2009

The Oft-Ignored Mr. Turton: The Role Of District Collector In A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India presents Brahman Hindu jurisprudence as an alternative to British rule of law, a utilitarian jurisprudence that hinges on mercantilism, central planning, and imperialism. Building on John Hasnas’s critiques of rule of law and Murray Rothbard’s critiques of Benthamite utilitarianism, this essay argues that Forster’s depictions of Brahman Hindu in the novel endorse polycentric legal systems. Mr. Turton is the local district collector whose job is to pander to both British and Indian interests; positioned as such, Turton is a site for critique and comparison. Forster uses Turton to show that Brahman Hindu jurisprudence is …


El Derecho Como Tema Literario, Fernando De Trazegnies Granda Jan 1996

El Derecho Como Tema Literario, Fernando De Trazegnies Granda

Fernando de Trazegnies Granda

No abstract provided.