Law and Literature

Law and literature courses are becoming common in law faculties and literature departments.

There are at least 2 kinds of law and literature studies:

1. Law in literature – study of representations of the legal order in novels, plays, and poetry.
   
   
2. Law as literature – the study of law as a form of literature. Treats court judgments, legal texts, and even statutes as if they were literary works.

I like law in literature studies because

• literature is a storehouse of alternative visions of law and society,
• law is part of our culture, not a mere technical study,
• literature stresses intuition and feeling,
• literature undermines lawyers’ excessive faith in reason,
• literature is almost always more interesting, disturbing, and entertaining than law.

"Justice? – You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law."
- First line of William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own

The American writer Arthur Miller was interested in law, as any readers of The Crucible know. His autobiography, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove, 1987), suggests a different view from the Gaddis quote.

"In some primal layer Law is God's thought." - Miller, Timebends: A Life at 584.

"In the course of the Reilly case I grew to treasure the law as our last defense against ourselves."
- Miller, Timebends: A Life at 556. [Arthur Miller became involved in the defence of Peter Reilly, a young man accused but eventually acquitted of the murder of his mother.]

For a list of 20 terrific law and literature books, click here.

Law and literature links? Click here.

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