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Series

1995

University of Georgia School of Law

Law and literature

Discipline

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Law And Literature Defining Itself, Paul J. Heald Mar 1995

Law And Literature Defining Itself, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

Earlier this spring, the University of Chicago Law School convinced Martha Nussbaum, University Professor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Classics at Brown University, to join its faculty to teach law and literature. At Michigan and Duke, James B. White and Stanley Fish have long held joint appointments in their respective law schools and English departments. What use can law schools possibly have for literary critics? Although over 60 law schools, including Georgia, currently offer a class in law and literature, the focus of this interdisciplinary enterprise remains somewhat fuzzy.


Medea And The Un-Man: Literary Guidance In The Determination Of Heinousness Under Maynard V. Cartwright, Paul J. Heald Feb 1995

Medea And The Un-Man: Literary Guidance In The Determination Of Heinousness Under Maynard V. Cartwright, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

In particular, this Essay brings Dante, C.S. Lewis, and Euripides to bear on a discrete problem examined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Maynard v. Cartwright. Reading Dante's Inferno, Lewis's Perelandra, and Euripides's Medea provides guidance in responding to the Court's mandate that the state channel discretion in capital sentencing. Specifically, these works imply an ethical framework for determining what constitutes an "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" murder. Other literary texts are certainly relevant to Maynard. This Essay, however, is not an attempt to survey comprehensively and distill the insights provided by all relevant material, but rather …