Law Commons^™

Law, Literature, And Social Change: Foreword, Sharon A. Mattingly

Vanderbilt Law Review

FOREWORD: Interpreting the meaning of words, whether those words compose a precedent-setting case or a newly enacted statute, is an integral part of the law. Furthermore, the impact of legal texts clearly extends beyond the legal discipline and permeates all layers of society. But from where do we derive the meaning of words and texts? Is the text itself the source of meaning, or is the text an embodiment of a meaning, the source of which is society? What determines textual interpretations-the historical roots of the text itself, the historical gloss of prior interpretations, the private experiences that each new …

Rhetoric Of Silence: Some Reflections On Law, Literature, And Social Violence, James A. Epstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Martha Minow suggests the importance of looking outside of court-rooms and the law to find ways of speaking about social and family violence. Her article underscores the difficulties of breaking silence, and yet the power to impose silence is integral to violence itself. We are called upon, however, not only to speak, but to listen. Respectful listening indeed may be a prerequisite to attempting to frame words and actions of intervention and resistance. We are called upon to speak, but we are hard pressed to summon public language that does justice to private pain and anguish.

Robert Cover, in his …

The Role Of Law In Progressive Politics, Cornel West

Vanderbilt Law Review

What is the role and function of the law in contemporary progressive politics? Do legal institutions represent crucial terrain on which significant social change can take place? If so, how? In what ways? How can progressive lawyers remain relatively true to their moral convictions and political goals?

In this Article I shall attempt to respond to these urgent questions.I will try to carve out a vital democratic space left between the Scylla of upbeat liberalism that harbors excessive hopes for the law and the Charybdis of downbeat leftism that promotes exorbitant doubts about the law. My argument rests upon three …

Social Violence And Political Representation, Michael Ryan

Vanderbilt Law Review

If I were to sum up the revolution that has occurred in the humanities (and increasingly in the social sciences) in the past two decades, it would be to say that what was before seen as substance is now seen as representation. One could expand on that statement in several ways:what was before seen as nature or reason is now seen as convention or artifact; what was before a logic of necessity is now a highly contingent,even random relation of terms whose connections obey no necessary order; what was before a ground or foundation from which reasonable derivatives could be …

Law As Text: A Response To Professor Michael Ryan, Robert N. Covington

Vanderbilt Law Review

Law, Professor Michael Ryan reminds us by his emphasis on law as legitimating representation, is also text. This is the most telling of the many points he sets out in his provocative and thoughtful article; for those of us called to the bar, it is an important reminder. For us lawyers, after all, law is not so much text as it is process, not so much noun as verb. It is not that we disregard the fact that law is in part a pen-and-ink affair. Our shelves sag with books; in academic life, few divisions of a university spend so …

Afterword: Voices And Violence--A Dialogue, Ellen W. Clayton, Jay Clayton

Vanderbilt Law Review

WE: When organizing this Symposium on the topic of "Law, Literature,and Social Change," we asked whether current trends in literature and in literary, social, and legal theory actually could play a role in bringing about social change. The authors gathered at this Symposium responded to this question in very different ways. As we read their articles and comments, however, and as we talked about their various approaches, some common themes began to emerge. Narrative seemed important. The way people split public life off from private experience came up frequently. But violence seemed to be on everyone's mind.

IT: Why violence? …

Holmes As Correspondent, G. Edward White

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article explores the function of letter writing in the life of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. I argue that letter writing was a by-product of an effort by Holmes to compartmentalize his life into professional ("my work") and domestic ("my wife") spheres, a compartmentalization that had its constraining effects. Because of this compartmentalization, a series of pursuits to which Holmes was attracted, ranging from speculation in the realms of literature and philosophy to flirtations with attractive women, were relegated implicitly to secondary stature, causing strain. In this context, letter writing functioned as a release for Holmes: a release from the …

To Quote Or Not To Quote: The Status Of Misquoted Material In Defamation Law, Sharon A. Mattingly

Vanderbilt Law Review

To quote or not to quote' is no longer a valid question in defamation law because courts have lessened the burden on writers to use the exact words of the speaker in quoted language. If individuals feel that the press has misquoted them, they have three realistic options: First,ignore the misquotation; second, contact the media and request a re-traction; and third, file a lawsuit claiming defamation and seeking monetary damages.' The first alternative is the easiest, but given the emotional overtones of defamation, it is also the most unlikely. If the media were more sensitive and less defensive, the second …