Law Commons^™

Telling Stories Out Of School: An Essay On Legal Narratives, Daniel A. Farber, Suzanna Sherry

Suzanna Sherry

No abstract provided.

Marlowe's Faustus: Contract As Metaphor?, Daniel B. Yeager

Daniel B. Yeager

No abstract provided.

Law As Interpretation, Charles W. Collier

Charles W. Collier

In this Article, I shall trace out separate professional narratives in common law, constitutional law, and in legal cases turning on the distinction between community and society (Part III). But first I should like to situate these legal-professional narratives within a broader interdisciplinary framework (Part II).

New Adventures Of Old Pauline Law, Tawia Baidoe Ansah

Tawia B. Ansah

This article examines the idea of law within two recent philosophical approaches to a theological text. Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou, two postmodern philosophers on the political left, look to the letters of St. Paul for the definition and extraction of the political subject. They look to Paul’s messianism and his conversion to discover, within their own philosophical projects, what is truly political within the Western philosophical tradition, for which Paul’s theology is unconditional. The article focuses on the conception of law that, in turn, derives from these projects. The article suggests that within both, despite the objective ...

Mor[T]Ality And Identity: Wills, Narratives, And Cherished Possessions, Deborah S. Gordon

Deborah S Gordon

Literature’S Idea-Expression Distinction: Drawing A Line With Distinctive Elements Of Alternate Worlds, Joshua Jeng

Joshua Jeng

The line between ideas and expressions in copyright law has never been particularly clear. We want to protect what authors create so that they are motivated to create more, but we want broad concepts to remain free so that others may produce even more works. The distinction concept and an author's take on a concept has always been very difficult to define, even among legal scholars, and has largely remained misunderstood by the average author. However, as derivative works increase in prevalence and economic importance, the need for workable framework for understanding copyright that the lay author can understand ...

The Culture Wars Of Climate Change, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

Of late, there has been a growth in cultural expression about climate change – with the rise of climate fiction (‘cli-fi’); art and photography responding to changes in nature; musical anthems about climate change; plays and dramas about climate change; and environmental documentaries, and climate cinema. Drawing comparisons to past controversies over cultural funding, this paper considers the cultural wars over climate change. This article considers a number of cultural fields. Margaret Atwood made an important creative and critical contribution to the debate over climate change. The work examines Ian McEwan's novel, Solar, a tragi-comedy about authorship, invention, intellectual property ...

Topographical Emphases In Hugh Glass Narratives, 1825-2015, Thomas E. Simmons

Thomas E. Simmons

Breaking Bad Facts: What Intriguing Contradictions In Fiction Narratives Can Teach Lawyers About Coping With Harmful Evidence, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Breaking Bad Facts: What Intriguing Contradictions in Fiction Narratives Can Teach Lawyers About Coping with Harmful Evidence by Cathren Koehlert-Page Walter White is the “nerdiest old dude” that Jesse Pinkman knows. His students ignore him and whisper and laugh during class. They make fun of him at his after school job at the car wash where he is forced to stay late. His home décor and personal fashion could best be described as New American Pathetic. And yet by the end of the hit television series, Breaking Bad, White is a feared multi-million dollar drug lord known as Heisenberg ...

The Right To Read, Lea Shaver

Lea Shaver

Reading – for education and for pleasure – may be framed as a personal indulgence, a moral virtue, or even a civic duty. What are the implications of framing reading as a human right?

Although novel, the rights-based frame finds strong support in international human rights law. The right to read need not be defended as a “new” human right. Rather, it can be located at the intersection of more familiar guarantees. Well-established rights to education, science, culture, and freedom of expression, among others, provide the necessary normative support for recognizing a universal right to read as already implicit in international law ...

Literary Justice, Scott Dodson, Ami Dodson

Scott Dodson

This microsymposium essay empirically (and somewhat humorously) measures which current U.S. Supreme Court justice is the most literate, as determined by citations to great works of literary fiction. It further identifies the justices' favorite literary authors. Consistent with the mission of the Green Bag, the essay is meant to be lighthearted and entertaining, but it also recognizes the underlying importance of the intersection of legal opinion-writing and literary fiction.

What Zombies Can Teach Law Students: Popular Text Inclusion In Law And Literature, Thomas E. Simmons

Thomas E. Simmons

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Karen J. Renner, The 'Evil Child' In Literature, Film And Popular Culture, Thomas E. Simmons

Thomas E. Simmons

No abstract provided.

Telling Stories Out Of School: An Essay On Legal Narratives, Daniel A. Farber, Suzanna Sherry

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

Globalised Cartographies Of Being: Literature, Refugees And The Australian Nation, Antonio Simoes Da Silva

Tony Simoes da Silva

This chapter considers the figure of the refugee as the displaced individual through the reading of a number of Australian literary works, which explore displacement 'as an extreme case of a more general modern condition - the powerlessness of the individual caught in the grip of vast collective purposes', to borrow Ian Watt's (1959: 218) comments on World War II prisoners of war. Through a critical reading of selected works aimed both at children and adult readers, I consider the role textual representation can play in creating a different understanding of the subject positions of the mass of individuals arriving ...

Islands Of Multilingual Literature: Community Magazines And Australia’S Many Languages, Michael R. Jacklin

Michael Jacklin

Australian literary studies has for some decades recognised the significance and contribution of multicultural writers to the national literary landscape; however, it has shown less interest in the multilingual nature of much of this writing. This article brings into focus a number of Australian magazines in which multilingual literature has been promoted, from the 1920s Brisbane publication The Muses Magazine, to the 1990s multicultural, multilingual women’s magazine Ambitious Friends, which featured creative work in Arabic, Lao, Spanish and Vietnamese. Further illustrations, specific to Vietnamese Australian writing, will be provided from Integration: The Magazine for Vietnamese and Multicultural Issues, published ...

Rediscovering Cumulative Creativity From The Oral Formulaic Tradition To Digital Remix: Can I Get A Witness?, Giancarlo Francesco Frosio

Giancarlo Francesco Frosio

For most of human history the essential nature of creativity was understood to be cumulative and collective. This notion has been largely forgotten by modern policies regulating creativity and speech. As hard as it may be to believe, the most valuable components of our immortal culture were created under a fully open regime with regard to access to pre-existing expressions and reuse. From the Platonic mimēsis to the Roman imitatio, from Macrobius’ Saturnalia to the imitatio Vergili, from medieval auctoritas and Chaucer the compilator to Anon the singer and social textuality, from Chrétien’s art of rewriting to Shakespeare’s ...

Surveying Recent Scholarship On Fair Use: A Conversation, Jessica M. Silbey

Jessica Silbey

A conversation about recent books discussing copyright fair use with Rebecca Tushnet, Peter Decherney and Bill Herman.

Many Voices, David D. Butler

David D. Butler

This brief article is 1,500 words, including its two intriguing footnotes. Read it in its entirety. Read it before the 2012 presidential election.

Scorn, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic

Richard Delgado

No abstract provided.

Imposition, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic

Richard Delgado

No abstract provided.

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

Deborah W. Post

No abstract provided.

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

Randy D. Gordon

Derecho Y Literatura, Jose R. Nina

Jose R. Nina Cuentas

Anotaciones sobre el significado de la creatividad literaria en el estudio y la aplicación del Derecho

Averting The Captain Vere “Veer”: Billy Budd As Melville’S Republican Response To Plato, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their ...

Editorial, Why 'To Kill A Mockingbird' Matters 50 Years Later, Randy Lee

Randy Lee

No abstract provided.

Three Ways Of Looking At A Health Law And Literature Class, Jennifer Bard

Jennifer Bard

The authors of this Article participated in a panel at the American Society of Law, Ethics & Medicine Conference in 2008 that discussed the use of literary materials in law school to teach medical ethics (and related matters) in a law school setting. Each author comes at the topic from a different perspective based on his or her own experience and background. This Article and the panel on which it was based reflect views on how literature can play a valuable role in helping law students, as well as medical students, understand important legal and ethical issues and concepts in health ...

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

Laura K. Ray

No abstract provided.

Chapter 01: Anthropology Of Law As A Science - Prefatory Materials, Wolfgang Fikentscher

Wolfgang Fikentscher

Inclusive online updates jan10. Chapter 1 redefines the position of legal anthropology within the social sciences. A new definition of law for anthropological purposes is sought, and in this context authority as an indispensable conceptional element of law is discussed in a new light. The relationship of law and justice will appear in a new light. Legal pluralism willo show two separable dimensions. Among the social science aspects of anthropology, empirical thinking and guidance by models are being contrasted and related to Pre-socratic, Platonic and Kantian epistemology.

Calling For Stories, Nancy Levit, Allen Rostron

Nancy Levit

Storytelling is a fundamental part of legal practice, teaching, and thought. Telling stories as a method of practicing law reaches back to the days of the classical Greek orators. Before legal education became an academic matter, the apprenticeship system for training lawyers consisted of mentoring and telling war stories. As the law and literature movement evolved, it sorted itself into three strands: law in literature, law as literature, and storytelling. The storytelling branch blossomed.

Over the last few decades, storytelling became a subject of enormous interest and controversy within the world of legal scholarship. Law review articles appeared in the ...