Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law

Marc Notes: Originally published: 1996.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; This notable book brings together an exceptional group of well- known figures in law and literary studies to take a probing look at how and why stories are told in the law and how they are constructed and made effective. Publisher Marketing: This important volume brings together an exceptional group of well-known figures in law and literary studies to take a probing look at how and why stories are told in the law and how they are constructed and made effective. How do legal stories gain or lose their impact? What are the uses and risks of storytelling as opposed to arguments and theories? Why is it that some stories - confessions, victim impact statements - can be excluded from decisionmakers' hearing? What rhetorical strategies do judges use to gain persuasiveness or to claim authority to impose certain stories on reality? Law's Stories opens new perspectives on the law - looking at it not as rules and policies but as stories, narrative exchange, performances, interpretation. It provides a compelling encounter of law and literature, seen as two wary but mutually animating fields. Publisher Marketing: This notable book brings together an exceptional group of well- known figures in law and literary studies to take a probing look at how and why stories are told in the law and how they are constructed and made effective.

Contributor Bio:  Brooks, Peter Peter Brooks is Chester T. Tripp Professor of Humanities at Yale University. The author of numerous articles on French and English literature as well as on narrative theory and psychoanalysis, his works include "The Novel of Worldlines" (1969), "The Melodramatic Imagination" (1976), and the widely-praised "Reading for the Plot" (1984), recently reissued. His latest book "Body Work" (1993) deals with the female body in literature, painting, and film as the object of desire. Contributor Bio:  Gewirtz, Paul Gewirtz is Potter Stewart Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School.