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'Simple' Takes On The Supreme Court, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay assesses black literature as a medium for working out popular understandings of America’s Constitution and laws. Starting in the 1940s, Langston Hughes’s fictional character, Jesse B. Semple, began appearing in the prominent black newspaper, the Chicago Defender. The figure affectionately known as “Simple” was undereducated, unsophisticated, and plain spoken - certainly to a fault according to prevailing standards of civility, race relations, and professional attainment. Butthese very traits, along with a gritty experience under Jim Crow, made him not only a sympathetic figure but also an armchair legal theorist. In a series of barroom conversations, Simple ably critiqued …

"Simple" Takes On The Supreme Court, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This essay assesses black literature as a medium for working out popular understandings of America’s Constitution and laws. Starting in the 1940s, Langston Hughes’s fictional character, Jesse B. Semple, began appearing in the prominent black newspaper, the Chicago Defender. The figure affectionately known as “Simple” was undereducated, unsophisticated, and plain spoken - certainly to a fault according to prevailing standards of civility, race relations, and professional attainment. Butthese very traits, along with a gritty experience under Jim Crow, made him not only a sympathetic figure but also an armchair legal theorist. In a series of barroom conversations, Simple ably critiqued …

Using Fiction Workshop Techniques In First-Year Legal Writing Classes, Michelle Falkoff

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Great American Tax Novel, Lawrence Zelenak

Michigan Law Review

David Foster Wallace-author of the celebrated novel Infinite Jest and among the most acclaimed American fiction writers of his generation-killed himself in 2008 at the age of forty-six. He left in his office hundreds of pages of The Pale King, an unfinished novel set in the fictional Peoria, Illinois regional examination center ("REC") of the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS" or "the Service") in 1985. Although many chapters of the novel were seemingly complete, Wallace left no indication (other than what could be gleaned from the chapters themselves) of the order of the chapters (pp. vi-vii). Michael Pietsch, who had served …

Professionalism And Matthew Shardlake, Alex B. Long

Scholarly Works

This Essay/Book Review examines the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom. In particular, it examines the question of whether the sixteenth-century fictional lawyer Shardlake can serve as a role model for twenty-first-century lawyers, both in terms of his ethics and his professionalism. An examination of the Shardlake series as a whole yields some uncertain answers, both as to Shardlake and as to what it means to be an ethical and professional lawyer. This is ultimately part of what makes the series so enjoyable for lawyers.

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. …

Outsider Jurisprudence And The “Unthinkable” Tale: Spousal Abuse And The Doctrine Of Duress, Deborah Waire Post

Deborah W. Post

No abstract provided.

Teaching Interdisciplinarily: Law And Literature As Cultural Critique, Deborah Waire Post

Deborah W. Post

No abstract provided.

Inside The Marble Palace: The Domestication Of The Supreme Court (Reviewing Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship), Laura K. Ray

Laura K. Ray

No abstract provided.

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …

When Is Fiction Just Fiction? Applying Heightened Threshold Tests To Defamation In Fiction, Mark Arnot

Fordham Law Review

Whenever a work of fiction can be reasonably read as stating actual facts about a real person, courts allow juries to decide whether the work actually conveys a defamatory meaning. As a result, current defamation law essentially forces fiction authors to write about unidentifiable people or unbelievable events. This Note examines the jurisprudence surrounding defamation in fiction and, for comparison, defamation by implication. After surveying policy arguments, the Note concludes that current defamation law is inconsistent, inefficient, and burdensome as applied to fiction. Finally, the Note suggests that courts apply a heightened threshold test to defamation in fiction claims, similar …

Keeping Time Machines And Teleporters In The Public Domain: Fiction As Prior Art For Patent Examination, Daniel Harris Brean

Daniel Harris Brean

Death By Bluebook, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This review considers a novel about life (and death) on the University of Chicago Law Review, where editors and associates seem to do little but have sex, connive to get ahead, have sex, kill (with Gunther's con law casebook, no less), and have sex. The reviewer, who didn't attend the U of C law school, believes it all.

Harry Potter, Ruby Slippers And Merlin: Telling The Client's Story Using The Characters And Paradigm Of The Archetypal Hero's Journey, Ruth Anne Robbins

Seattle University Law Review

This Article focuses on the relationship of mythology and folklore heroes to everyday lawyering decisions regarding case theory when the audience is a judge or panel of judges rather than a jury. This Article adds to the discourse by beginning a conversation about what might be termed “applied legal storytelling.” The term pertains to ideas of how everyday lawyers can utilize elements of mythology as a persuasive technique in stories told directly to judges--either via bench trials or via legal writing documents such as briefs--on behalf of an individual client in everyday litigation. Parts II and III of this Article …

Ignacio Gomez Palacio, With A Note In My Hand (El Pagaro En La Mano), Garrett Epps

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Outsider Jurisprudence And The “Unthinkable” Tale: Spousal Abuse And The Doctrine Of Duress, Deborah Waire Post

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Looking For Law In All The Wrong Places: Outlaw Texts And Early Women's Advocacy, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Recent Supreme Court decisions such as Atkins v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas specifically address the linkages between shifting cultural attitudes and the evolution of law. In this Article, I examine the mutually constitutive relationship between legal and cultural developments from a historical perspective and illustrate the necessity of looking to sources that I define as outlaw texts in order to access invaluable information about the process of legal change.

To demonstrate how a study of outlaw texts can enrich our understanding and critical consideration of law and legal history, this Article presents detailed analyses of specific examples of nineteenth-century …

The Legacy, Louise Harmon

Louise Harmon

No abstract provided.

Gallery Of The Doomed: An Exploration Of Creative Endeavors By The Condemned, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article examines creative expressions produced by the death row faction of the incarcerated population. Looking at these works provide insights about what it means to live as a condemned person in our society, and about the people who occupy the death rows across our nation. After reviewing and analyzing a substantial amount of the enormous body of work of this genre, it became apparent that the condemned's creative endeavors reflect how they address and handle serious issues such as their executions and the ways spirituality influences their life. When the individual issues are examined, two general themes are evident: …

Alice In Legal Wonderland: A Cross-Examination Of Gender, Race And Empire In Victorian Law And Literature, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Lewis Carroll's 1865 scene of a recalcitrant Alice in the courtroom, defying the court's authority as she grows (literally) into a large and threatening presence, dramatizes what was becoming an increasingly common Victorian spectacle: a woman questioning and critiquing the law and claiming a place for herself within its institutions. Women have played a significant (but much overlooked) role in legal history and, in this paper, I argue for the importance of examining various narratives of the past (including literary accounts) that explored women's relationship to the law.

Against the backdrop of several legal cases in which women sought entry …

Jurisprudence Noire, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Lawyerland Essays: Introduction, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Novelist's Perspective, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Sati, Louise Harmon

Louise Harmon

No abstract provided.

Teaching Interdisciplinarily: Law And Literature As Cultural Critique, Deborah Waire Post

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Patron, Louise Harmon

Louise Harmon

No abstract provided.

The First Footnote, Louise Harmon

Louise Harmon

No abstract provided.

The Harvest, Louise Harmon

Louise Harmon

No abstract provided.

Three's A Crowd: Law, Literature, And Truth, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Fiction Of Public Life, Philip Marshall

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

One of Woody Allen's first jobs was as a gag/joke writer indirectly for New York gossip columnists. To coordinate with the appearance of famous people at grand openings, Allen would write appropriately witty lines that a star's press agent would work hard to get placed in a newspaper column like Walter Winchell's. The lines would be treated as authentic quotes as the star entered the premiere, club or ceremony (Lax 71). His reputation grew from this ability to see what would be humorous to say in a very public setting, or just generally what would make a particular star look …