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Does fiction enhance reality, or threaten our sense of what is real? What, if anything, is special about experiencing fictional works and worlds? Today we speak casually of parallel universes and virtual reality; how much do we really know about what these phenomena involve? In Fictionality, Karen Petroski explains how philosophers and literary theorists have approached these questions in the Western literary tradition, from Greek antiquity to the present day. The book introduces readers to both long-running and contemporary debates about: The value and dangers of engagement with fiction The origins of fictional artworks, especially literary works, in Western literature The role played by im...
Contemporary legal reasoning has more in common with fictional discourse than we tend to realize. Through an examination of the U.S. Supreme Court’s written output during a recent landmark term, this book exposes many of the parallels between these two special kinds of language use. Focusing on linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the dozens of reasoned opinions issued by the Court between October 2014 and June 2015, the book takes nonlawyer readers on a lively tour of contemporary American legal reasoning and acquaints legal readers with some surprising features of their own thinking and writing habits. It analyzes cases addressing a huge variety of issues, ranging from the rights of dri...
The December 2015 issue, Number 2, features these contents: • Article, "Intra-Agency Coordination," by Jennifer Nou • Book Review, "Body Banking from the Bench to the Bedside," by Natalie Ram • Note, "'A Prison Is a Prison Is a Prison': Mandatory Immigration Detention and the Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel" • Note, "Bundled Systems and Better Law: Against the Leflar Method of Resolving Conflicts of Law" The issue also includes In Memoriam essays honoring the legacy of Professor Daniel J. Meltzer, with contributions by Judge David J. Barron, Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Vicki C. Jackson, Robert S. Taylor, Justice Elena Kagan, David F. Levi, Martha Minow, and Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. In ad...
A counterintuitive and optimistic reconsideration of the crisis in the American legal profession
"Language shapes and reflects how we think about the world. It engages and intrigues us. Our everyday use of language is quite effortless--we are all experts on our native tongues. Despite this, issues of language and meaning have long flummoxed the judges on whom we depend for the interpretation of our most fundamental legal texts. Should a judge feel confident in defining common words in the texts without the aid of a linguist? How is the meaning communicated by the text determined? Should the communicative meaning of texts be decisive, or at least influential? ... [Contributors] argue that the meaning of language is crucial to the interpretation of legal texts, such as statutes, constitutions, and contracts. Accordingly ... analysis of language from linguists, philosophers, and legal scholars should influence how courts interpret legal texts."--
This book considers how law is always enacted, or performed, in ways that can be analyzed in relation to fiction, theatre, and other dramatic forms. Of necessity, lawyers and judges need to devise techniques to make rules respond situationally. The performance of law supplements, or it extends the reach of, the law-as-written. And, in this respect, the act of lawyering is in many ways an instantiation of acts often associated with, for example, literature and the plastic and performing arts. Combining legal theory and legal practice, this book maintains that the modes of enquiry found in, and applied to, novels, paintings, and plays can help us understand how things like legal arguments and trials work—or don’t. As such, and through the examination of a wide range of both historical and fictional legal cases, the book pursues an interdisciplinary analysis of how law is performed; and, moreover, how legal performances can be accomplished ethically. This book will appeal to scholars and students in sociolegal studies, legal theory, and jurisprudence, as well as those teaching and training in legal practice.
Earl Warren and the Warren Court comprises essays written by leading experts from the fields of law, history, and social science on the most important areas of the Warren Court's contributions in American law. In addition, Scheiber includes appraisals of the Warren Court's influence abroad, written by authorities of legal development in Europe, Latin America, Canada, and East Asia. This book offers a unique set of analyses that portray how innovations in American law generated by the Warren Court led to a reconsideration of law and the judicial role--and in many areas of the world, to transformations in judicial procedure and the advancement of substantive human rights. Also explored within these pages are the personal role of Earl Warren in the shaping of "Warren era" law and the ways in which his character and background influenced his role as Chief Justice.
Spectres of the Self is a fascinating study of the rich cultures surrounding the experience of seeing ghosts in England from the Reformation to the twentieth century. Shane McCorristine examines a vast range of primary and secondary sources, showing how ghosts, apparitions, and hallucinations were imagined, experienced, and debated from the pages of fiction to the case reports of the Society for Psychical Research. By analysing a broad range of themes from telepathy and ghost-hunting to the notion of dreaming while awake and the question of why ghosts wore clothes, Dr McCorristine reveals the sheer variety of ideas of ghost seeing in English society and culture. He shows how the issue of ghosts remained dynamic despite the advance of science and secularism and argues that the ghost ultimately represented a spectre of the self, a symbol of the psychological hauntedness of modern experience.
Tragedy is one of the oldest and most resilient forms of narrative. Considering texts from ancient Greece to the present day, this comprehensive introduction shows how tragedy has been re-imagined and redefined throughout Western cultural history. Tragedy offers a concise history of tragedy tracing its evolution through key plays, prose, poetry and philosophical dimensions. John Drakakis examines a wealth of popular plays, including works from the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Sarah Kane and Tom Stoppard. He also considers the rewriting and appropriating of ancient drama though a wide range of authors, such as Chaucer, George Eliot, Ted Hughes and Colm Tóibín. Drakakis also demystifies complex philosophical interpretations of tragedy, including those of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Benjamin. This accessible resource is an invaluable guide for anyone studying tragedy in literature or theatre studies.
Drawing on insights from literary theory and analytical philosophy, this book analyzes the intersection of law and literature from the distinct and unique perspective of fictional discourse. Pursuing an empirical approach, and using examples that range from Victorian literature to the current judicial treatment of rap music, the volume challenges the prevailing fact–fiction dichotomy in legal theory and practice by providing a better understanding of the peculiarities of legal fictionality, while also contributing further material to fictional theory’s endeavor to find a transdisciplinary valid criterion for a definition of fictional discourse. Following the basic presumptions of the early law-as-literature movement, past approaches have mainly focused on textuality and narrativity as the common denominators of law and literature, and have largely ignored the topic of fictionality. This volume provides a much needed analysis of this gap. The book will be of interest to scholars of legal theory, jurisprudence and legal writing, along with literature scholars and students of literature and the humanities.