Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
On The Scent: A History Of “The King Of The Foxes” Autograph Manuscript, Jennifer L. Behrens
On The Scent: A History Of “The King Of The Foxes” Autograph Manuscript, Jennifer L. Behrens
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey, Zahr Said
Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey, Zahr Said
Faculty Scholarship
Decades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital …
Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey
Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
This commentary takes a new look at law and film studies through the lens of film as memory. Instead of describing film as evidence and foreordaining its role in truth-seeking processes, it thinks instead of film as individual, institutional and cultural memory, placing it squarely within the realm of contestability. Paralleling film genres, the commentary imagines four forms of memory that film could embody: memorabilia (cinéma vérité), memoirs (autobiographical and biographical film), ceremonial memorials (narrative film monuments of a life, person or institution), and mythic memory (dramatic fictional film). Imagining film as memory resituates film’s role in law (procedural, substantive …
Who Wants To Be A Muggle? The Diminished Legitimacy Of Law As Magic, Mark Edwin Burge
Who Wants To Be A Muggle? The Diminished Legitimacy Of Law As Magic, Mark Edwin Burge
Faculty Scholarship
In the Harry Potter world, the magical population lives among the non-magical Muggle population, but we Muggles are largely unaware of them. This secrecy is by elaborate design and is necessitated by centuries-old hostility to wizards by the non-magical majority. The reasons behind this hostility, when combined with the similarities between Harry Potter-stylemagic and American law, make Rowling’s novels into a cautionary tale for the legal profession that it not treat law as a magic unknowable to non-lawyers. Comprehensibility — as a self-contained, normative value in the enactment interpretation, and practice of law — is given short-shrift by the legal …
Introduction To Symposium: Reasoning From Literature, Jessica Silbey
Introduction To Symposium: Reasoning From Literature, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
The “literary turn” in legal studies manifests in many ways in our legal discipline and practice. Be it with the birth of the study of law and literature in the 1980s, the growing attention to narrative theory and storytelling in the law in the 1990s, or the “cultural turn” in legal studies in the 21st century (as some scholars have called the cultural analysis of law), reasoning from literature seems commonplace. And yet it is still marginalized in legal studies as interdisciplinary, not “really law,” and lacking the core persuasive power that legal argumentation and doctrinal analysis do. This Symposium …