Law Commons^™

What If The Wolf Wasn’T Really The Big Bad In All Those Fairy Tales But Was Just Misunderstood?: Techniques For Maintaining Narrative Rationality While Altering Stock Stories That Are Harmful To Your Client’S Case, Jennifer L. Sheppard

Jennifer L. Sheppard

This article explores the cognitive effects of narrative, including the effects that stock stories have on judges and jurors. It also explores what a lawyer can do when an unfavorable stock story is so pervasive that it will not allow a lawyer to ignore it and a more favorable alternative story does not exist. This article posits that a lawyer can present the client’s story from an alternative perspective that will not evoke the embedded knowledge structures triggered by the unfavorable stock story by manipulating the various threads of narrative rationality (the traits that makes one story more persuasive than …

Beyond Saints And Sinners: Discretion And The Need For New Narratives In The U.S. Immigration System, Elizabeth Keyes

Elizabeth Keyes

This article examines the forces affecting the exercise of discretion in American immigration courts, and argues that in this present age of immigration anxiety, the same facts that place an individual in deportation proceedings may constitute the reasons a judge will, relying on discretion, deny them relief for which they are otherwise eligible. The article explores the polarized narratives told about “good” and ”bad” immigrants, the exceptionally difficult task of adjudicating in overburdened immigration courts, and the ways in which these polarized narratives interact with psychological short-cuts, or heuristics, that affect judicial exercises of discretion. After engaging in this analysis, …

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll Versus Beardon, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon, occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a “madam” sold a house used for prostitution to another “madam.” The opinion is the last in a long line of cases to speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner arguably involve or are related to prostitution and is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law …

Come A Little Closer So That I Can See You My Pretty: The Use And Limits Of Fiction Point Of View Techniques In Appellate Briefs, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Come a Little Closer so That I Can See You my Pretty, The Use and Limits of Fiction Point of Techniques in Appellate Briefs began when I was struggling to explain point of view to my students in Appellate Advocacy. They represented a fictional criminal defendant whose bag was searched when the police were executing a premises warrant at his friend’s house. My students scrunched up their faces when I tried to explain why they should not start their facts with the friend’s crime that spurred the search. The crime happened first in time, so to them it came first. …

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll V. Beardon, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon, occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a “madam” sold a house used for prostitution to another “madam.” The opinion is the last in a long line of cases to speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner arguably involve or are related to prostitution and is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law …

Halacha And Aggada: Translating Robert Cover’S Nomos And Narrative, Samuel J. Levine

Samuel J. Levine

Levine takes a look at Robert Cover's 1983 Harvard Law Review article, Nomos and Narrative. Nomos is characterized by its heavy reliance on Jewish sources as a basis for analyzing contemporary American legal theory. The basis of narrative is the thesis that no set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning, so law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live. Cover's explanation of these ideas coincided with and influenced the emergence of what has become known as "legal storytelling". In …

(Re)Constituting The Immigrant Body Through Policy: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Narratives Within The Discourses Of The Development, Relief, And Education For Alien Minors Act (Dream Act), Emily Rae Ironside

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using the testimonies surrounding the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) as a primary case study, this project provides a rhetorical investigation of the interplay between narratives, nation building, national identity, policymaking, and the American immigrant. This project first identifies the grand narrative of exclusionary nationalism as the primary narrative constituting the American identity. Then, this project examines the rhetoric of policymakers to demonstrate how an Anglo-Saxonized, elitist notion of American identity is rhetorically constituted by assimilationist, racist, xenophobic, and classist discourses. Moreover, it argues policymakers maintain the narrative dominance of exclusionary nationalism through restrictive immigration …

Rehumanizing Law: A Theory Of Law And Democracy (Preface & Introduction), Randy D. Gordon

Randy D. Gordon

Narrative Implications Of Evidentiary Rules, Bruce Ching

Journal Articles

Advocates are increasingly conscious of courtroom disputes as forms of story-battles, in which the parties present competing narratives. But the rules of evidence -- determining which facts can be incorporated into the presentation of the parties' stories -- can also often best be understood from a narrative point of view. This paper examines narrative features underlying evidentiary rules dealing with leading questions, "speaking objections," and hearsay.

Feeling At Home: Law, Cognitive Science, And Narrative, Lea B. Vaughn

Lea B Vaughn

What is the “how and why” of law’s affinity for narrative? In order to explain why the use of stories is such an effective teaching and presentation strategy in the law, this paper will consider theories and accounts from cognitive as well as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and, briefly, cultural anthropology. This account seeks to address “how” narrative helps us learn and use the law as well as “why” we are so compelled to use stories in teaching and in practice.

Brain science, simplified here, suggests that the first task is to “grab” someone’s attention. Emotionally charged events are more likely …

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. …

Harvesting Intellectual Property: Inspired Beginnings And 'Work-Makes-Work,' Two Stages In The Creative Processes Of Artists And Innovators, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is part of a larger empirical study based on face-to-face interviews with artists, scientists, engineers, their lawyers, agents, and business partners. The book-length project involves the collecting and analysis of stories from artists, scientists, and engineers about how and why they create and innovate. It also collects stories from their employers, business partners, managers, and lawyers about their role in facilitating the process of creating and innovating. The book’s aim is to make sense of the intersection between intellectual property law and creative and innovative activity, specifically to discern how intellectual property intervenes in the careers of the …

The Bramble Bush Of Forking Paths: Digital Narrative, Procedural Rhetoric, And The Law, Lucille Jewel

Scholarly Works

This Article explores ways to harness the persuasive and narrative power of computer games for practical legal purposes. The mental experiences we have when we play computer games relate to what attorneys do every day. Playing computer games and practicing law both require engagement with interactive plots where the outcomes depend on a series of choices in a complex system.

The analogues between computer games and the practice of law are one reason that lawyers should take a deeper look at this emerging narrative theory. The other reason has to do with the fact that millions of people play computer …

Compassion And Critique, Angela Harris

Angela P Harris

This piece will appear in a symposium organized by Anthony Paul Farley on Marxism and race, in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law.

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

Linda L. Berger

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, the article uncovers a …