Law Commons^™

Visual Jurisprudence, Richard Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

Lawyers, judges, and jurors face a vast array of visual evidence and visual argument inside the contemporary courtroom. From videos documenting crimes and accidents to computer displays of their digital simulation, increasingly, the search for fact-based justice is becoming an offshoot of visual meaning making. But when law migrates to the screen it lives there as other images do, motivating belief and judgment on the basis of visual delight and unconscious fantasies and desires as well as actualities. Law as image also shares broader cultural anxieties concerning not only the truth of the image, but also the mimetic capacity itself, …

Pathetic Argument In Constitutional Law, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Pathetic argument, or argument based on pathos, persuades by appealing to the emotions of the reader or listener. In Aristotle's classic treatment, it exists in parallel to logical argument, which appeals to deductive or inductive reasoning, and ethical argument, which appeals to the character of the speaker. Pathetic argument is common in constitutional law, as in other practical discourse-think of "Poor Joshua!"- but existing accounts of constitutional practice do not provide resources for understanding the place of and limitations upon such appeals when they appear in judicial opinions. This Article begins to fill that gap. Pathetic argument is one of …

Metaphor In Law As Poetic And Propositional Language, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

My argument in this essay is that although lawyers routinely use and abuse metaphor as propositional language, they mostly neglect the use of metaphor as poetic language. Poetic metaphor openly invites you to view a topic or a target from a new angle by setting it against or alongside a light source; in this way, it prompts second looks and encourages insights. Propositional metaphor, by comparison, appears designed to persuade you to view the target or the topic under discussion as something you already know about because of your experience with the source. As a result, you are better able …

Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1905 the Supreme Court of Georgia became the first state high court to recognize a freestanding “right to privacy” tort in the common law. The landmark case was Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Co. Must it be a cause for deep jurisprudential concern that the common law right to privacy in wide currency today originated in Pavesich’s explicit judicial interpretation of the requirements of natural law? Must it be an additional worry that the court which originated the common law privacy right asserted that a free white man whose photograph is published without his consent in …

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Nature Protection: Toward A New Discourse, Holly Doremus

Holly Doremus

No abstract provided.

Sciene Plays Defense: Natural Resource Management In The Bush Administration, Holly Doremus

Holly Doremus

The George W. Bush Administration has been criticized by scientists for its use of science in the policy arena generally, and for politicizing science. However, the problem is more one of the scientizing of politics, as the administration has shown that the rhetoric of science can be used defensively, as a barrier to regulation. Key methods used by the administration to pursue its strategy of defensive science in natural resource management are detailed. A more normatively defensible, and a more politically effective, strategy for conservationists would emphasize the need to bring transparency and a commitment to updating into the regulatory …

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Nature Protection: Toward A New Discourse, Holly Doremus

Holly Doremus

No abstract provided.

How (Not) To Talk About Abortion, Meredith Johnson Harbach

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Slides: Drawing The Blueprint For A Sustainable Natural Gas Future, Mark K. Boling

Drawing the Blueprint for a Sustainable Natural Gas Future (January 18)

Presenter: Mark. K. Boling, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel, Southwestern Energy

23 slides

The Count's Dilemma, Or, Harmony And Dissonance In Legal Language, Ian Gallacher

Ian Gallacher

Lawyers have had a long, but ambivalent, relationship with metaphor. Viewed by some as a mere literary device, a trick of language that "adds little of substance to an argument," metaphor is seen by others as an essential component of legal language, a rhetorical device inseparable from thought. On one thing, though, all can agree: lawyers only have words to express their thoughts, so they have an obligation to use words, whether used metaphorically or not, as exactly as possible. This article offers a critique of the way lawyers meet this obligation when they use metaphors based in musical language. …

The Count's Dilemma, Or, Harmony And Dissonance In Legal Language, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers have had a long, but ambivalent, relationship with metaphor. Viewed by some as a mere literary device, a trick of language that "adds little of substance to an argument," metaphor is seen by others as an essential component of legal language, a rhetorical device inseparable from thought. On one thing, though, all can agree: lawyers only have words to express their thoughts, so they have an obligation to use words, whether used metaphorically or not, as exactly as possible.

This article offers a critique of the way lawyers meet this obligation when they use metaphors based in musical language. …

Narrative And Drama In The American Trial, Robert P. Burns

Faculty Working Papers

This short essay summarizes an understanding of the trial as a medium in which law is realized or actualized, rather than imposed or enforced. It suggests that we should pay close attention to the actual practices that prevail at trial, its "consciously structured hybrid" of languages and practices, if we want to understand the nature of law.

‘Class Warfare’ Or Not, Australia Has Moved On From Labor’S Old-Fashioned Rhetoric, Gregory Melleuish

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

“Class warfare” is an emotive term that would seem to belong to a bygone age when there also existed, as in the minds of many people, something called the “class struggle”.

It would seem strange that in age when blue-collar jobs seem to be always in decline that anyone should be referring to “class warfare”. The classes of an earlier age are no more. Australia is a different country to what it was in the 1930s and 1940s.

A Shift To Narrativity, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

Publications

Slipshod, inconsistent use of core Applied Legal Storytelling terminology muddles its discourse and hampers its growth. Refining the field’s vocabulary is essential, but insufficient, as exclusive focus on the field’s objects of inquiry, such as story and narrative, and the means of creating or conveying them, such as storytelling and narrating, risks losing the “A” in ALS. We need a new focus, one unburdened by the ambiguities and negative associations of existing options that more accurately reflects Applied Legal Storytelling scholars’ unique contributions. A shift to narrativity. Narrativity, as imagined here, is a top-level quality of a legal text or …

Doctrinal Conversation: Justice Kagan's Supreme Court Opinions, Laura Ray

Laura K. Ray

In her first two terms on the Supreme Court, Justice Elena Kagan has crafted a distinctive judicial voice that speaks to her readers in a remarkably conversational tone. She employs a variety of rhetorical devices: invocations to “remember” or “pretend”; informal and even colloquial diction; a diverse assortment of similes and metaphors; and parenthetical interjections that guide the reader’s response. These strategies engage the reader in much the same way that Kagan as law professor may well have worked to engage her students, and in the context of judicial opinions they serve several purposes. They make Kagan’s opinions accessible to …

The Birthright Citizenship Controversy: A Study Of Conservative Substance And Rhetoric, Allen R. Kamp

Allen R. Kamp

This essay is a critique of the conservative rhetoric used in their attack on birthright citizenship—as granted by Clause 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” The rhetoric of that attack violates the traditional canons of conservative argumentation and interpretation, such as original intent and plain meaning. As such, their arguments call into question the seriousness of their allegiance to these canons.

Results-Oriented Jurisprudence: A Second Circuit Panel Meets J. D. Salinger Coming Through The Rye, Kathleen (Kate) M. O'Neill

Kathleen M. O'Neill

ABSTRACT The Second Circuit’s 2010 decision in Salinger v. Colting has been widely noticed for vacating a preliminary injunction J. D. Salinger obtained against distribution in the U.S. of Fredrik Colting’s novel, 60 YEARS LATER – COMING THROUGH THE RYE. In an opinion by Judge Guido Calabresi, the panel adopted the standard for equitable relief from eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange (U.S. 2006), overruled circuit precedent, and held that henceforth district courts must find, not presume, that irreparable harm is in fact likely before enjoining a copyright defendant’s activities. This is the first article to observe that what the Second Circuit …

Rhetoric, Reality & The Wrongful Abrogation Of The Collateral Source Rule In Personal Injury Cases., Lori A. Roberts

Lori A Roberts

RHETORIC, REALITY & THE WRONGFUL ABROGATION OF THE COLLATERAL SOURCE RULE IN PERSONAL INJURY CASES. LORI A. ROBERTS Abstract: There are few certainties in litigation, but one that any injured plaintiff with health care insurance can rely on is that a defendant-tortfeasor will argue that the plaintiff’s health care bills are “illusory” and that the plaintiff will recover a “windfall” if he is allowed to recover the full amount of those bills as economic damages. The issue addressed in this Article, whether the difference between the billed rate for medical care and the actual amount paid by a plaintiff’s insurer …

Law And Economics As A Rhetorical Perspective In Law, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Publications

Law and Economics as a Rhetorical Perspective in Law

Michael D. Murray

Abstract

This article introduces twenty-first century law and economics as a school of contemporary legal rhetoric to test and improve general legal discourse in areas beyond the economic analysis of law. My article is the first to examine the prescriptive implications of the rhetoric of law and economics for general legal discourse as opposed to examining the benefits and limitations of the economic analysis of law itself. This article advances the conversation in two areas: the study and understanding of the persuasiveness of law and economics and the …

What We Make Matter, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

The Michigan Law Review's Survey of Books Related to the Law provides an annual opportunity not only to consider a range of legal issues and views, but also to think about the range of ways we argue about and study the law. In this Foreword, I would like to suggest that we think not only about how we choose to argue, but also the potential consequences of those choices. When we study or argue about law and politics, we routinely and sensibly consider the possible unintended impact of particular substantive rules and policies. Here I suggest that we should attend …

Sticky Metaphors And The Persistence Of The Traditional Voluntary Manslaughter Doctrine, Elise J. Percy, Joseph L. Hoffman, Steven J. Sherman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article begins with a curious puzzle: Why has the traditional voluntary manslaughter doctrine in criminal law-the so-called "heat of passion" defense to a charge of murder-proven so resistant to change, even in the face of more than a half-century of seemingly compelling empirical and normative arguments in favor of doctrinal reform? What could possibly account for the traditional doctrine's surprising resilience? In this Article, we propose a solution to this puzzle. The Article introduces a new conceptual theory about metaphor-the "sticky metaphor" theory-that highlights an important aspect of metaphorical language and metaphorical thought that has been almost completely overlooked …

The Hermeneutical And Rhetorical Nature Of Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

In its most venal manifestation, scholarly writing betrays the anxiety of influence by claiming to offer a radically new solution to age-old conundrums. The goal is to make a clean break from a traditional path of thought that has become trapped in a cul-de-sac, to make progress by finding a new way forward. Not so with Jean Porter’s work, and particularly her most recent book. Professor Porter demonstrates that thinking through an established tradition – one that has responded to numerous challenges within very different contexts over several millennia – can sometimes offer the most productive response to contemporary dilemmas. …

Historical Roots Of Citizens United Vs. Fec: How Anarchists And Academics Accidentally Created Corporate Speech Rights, The General Essay, Zephyr Teachout

Faculty Scholarship

This paper looks at how the early rhetoric around the First Amendment enabled later development of corporate political speech rights.

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 …

Rhetoric Versus Reality In Arbitration Jurisprudence: How The Supreme Court Flaunts And Flunks Contracts (And Why Contracts Teachers Need Not Teach The Cases), Lawrence A. Cunningham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Supreme Court rhetoric about the role of contracts and contract law in arbitration jurisprudence differs sharply from the reality of its applications. In the name of contracts, the Court administers a self-declared national policy favoring arbitration, a policy directly benefiting the judicial branch of government. This often puts the Court’s preferences ahead of those of contracting parties while declaring its mission as solely to enforce contracts in accordance with contract law. The Court thus cloaks in the rhetoric of volition a policy in tension with constitutionally-pedigreed access to justice and venerable principles of federalism.

This Article documents the rhetoric-reality gap …

The Cultural Background Of The Legal Imagination, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

I want to speak in this essay about one aspect of the origins of what is often called the law and literature movement in the United States, namely, how it got going. I shall do this by explaining the aims and assumptions of my own early contribution to it in the form of The Legal Imagination (first published in 1973). What I say will thus have some of the features of autobiography, but I hope it will be plain that this story is not really about me but about the state of the culture in which modern law and literature …

Zizek/Questions/Failing, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this article I am primarily concerned with presenting Slavoj Žižek3 as a legal theorist. Žižek has been a valuable contributor to critical theory and deserves a place in the pantheon of legal thinkers.

While his diverse writings are often relegated to other disciplines, they also position him as an important contributor to law and public discourse. I seek to illuminate how he mediates and interrogates the law by demonstrating how his scholarship is important to the lives of legal thinkers, questions of success and the law, capitalism, political practice, and terrorism. Because Žižek’s work is interdisciplinary and expansive, this …

The Associated Dangers Of "Brilliant Disguises," Color-Blind Constitutionalism, And Postracial Rhetoric, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Tax Lawyers, Tax Defiance, And The Ethics Of Casual Conversation, Michael Hatfield

Michael Hatfield

Tax Lawyers, Tax Defiance, and the Ethics of Casual Conversation ABSTRACT Tax lawyers routinely navigate politically-charged waters when a tax topic is dropped into conversation. Increasingly, however, tax lawyers are confronted with comments that undermine the authority of the federal tax system itself. These comments may take several forms, including arguments that the income tax is unconstitutional. Regardless of form, this rhetoric differs from legitimate criticisms of the tax system because it encourages non-compliance as either a moral right or a political good. In the current environment, the tax bar should take up the call to be public educators with …

Language And Culture In Intellectual Property Law: A Book Review (Reviewing Jessica Reymann's "The Rhetoric Of Intellectual Property: Copyright And The Regulation Of Digital Culture), Jessica M. Silbey

Jessica Silbey

Jessica Reyman’s THE RHETORIC OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: COPYRIGHT LAW AND THE REGULATION OF DIGITAL CULTURE is a book whose time has come. As a book about the rhetorical divide between the content industry and copyright activists, it analyzes the deep rifts between the language of incentives and exclusivity and the counterdiscourse of cooperation and the commons. And as a piece about the upheaval in the socio-legal landscape of intellectual property rights, it is in good company. There are multitudes of recent books and articles that seek a solution to the divide that animates disputes about owners and users (many of …