Syllabus: Law and Literature

2019

This paper explores and recognizes common points of intersection of law and literature. Different literary texts have legal language, court scenes, cross examinations, lawyers, witnesses, judge, and audience. The main focus of this paper is to identify such events from literary texts and also to present instances that people take into the courts from literary texts. Law and literature originate and develop, after all, from the same culture and society. Humanities and social sciences are common grounds of origin and development of law and literature. They are related with each other. They do have correlation on the basis of culture, social norms and values, and humanities. In this paper, they discussed on the grounds of cognitive and behaviouristic aspects of human life.

Critical Analysis of Law

This special issue on the New Literary Analysis of Law features articles that dispense with the choice between “law in literature” and “law as literature,” to ask how legal and literary forms, methods, concepts, and attitudes can be productively explored in tandem. Conventionally, when scholars ask how legal actors and problems are portrayed in literature, or how hermeneutic theory may shed light on statutory or constitutional interpretation, these questions are meant to help solve a legal problem, at a doctrinal or conceptual level. But once we abandon the requirement that literature serve as an assistant in this fashion, many new possibilities for the literary study of law come into visibility. The essays in this special issue explore some of those directions.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2018

This is a pre-edit, pre-proof draft of a chapter that will appear in Markus Dubber & Christopher Tomlins, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Historical Legal Research Legal historians often turn to literary examples to show how doctrines, practices, or institutions were perceived at a certain a time. Imaginative works sometimes serve as representative illustrations of legal phenomena, sometimes as alternatives to dominant legal ideas or assumptions (voicing dissent or presenting figures and perspectives that escape the law's comprehension), sometimes as evidence for the dissemination of legal thought or folk wisdom about the law, and sometimes as a kind of parallel formation that uses, or reflects on, legal methods and modes of explanation, even if the work does not expressly address legal issues. 1 Recent scholarship continues to use all of these methods, but there has been a shift towards the last two approaches over the last ten or twenty years, and this chapter will suggest ways of pursuing each. 1 Although the discussion here focuses on imaginative writing, the same can be said of film. I use "imaginative writing" and "literature" interchangeably in this discussion, in part to avoid creating the impression that research on law and literature should be concerned only with literary classics. 2 For an excellent introduction to such questions, see John Mullan, How Novels Work (2008). 3 Dickerson v. United States, 530 US 428, 443 (2000).

Samdarshi ISSN: 2581-3986 Vol 16 Issue 2 (July 2023), 2023

The relationship between law and literature has long been a subject of interest to scholars from diverse fields. While law provides a framework for societal governance, literature serves as a reflection of cultural and social norms. This paper explores the intersection of law and literature and critically analyses the role of literature in shaping legal discourse and vice versa. The paper argues that literature serves as an important tool for understanding and critiquing the law, while the law influences the themes and content of literature. The paper also examines the historical evolution of law and literature and highlights key debates surrounding the relationship between the two disciplines. Using case studies from various literary works, the paper analysis the ways in which literature engages with legal themes and the extent to which literature can contribute to legal scholarship.

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science

I. INTRODUCTION Literature and law though being separate branches of social sciences share some proximity and amalgamate in objectives. Literature tends towards abstraction, creativity, variety in description and narration and is abundant in genres. Law on the other hand tends towards clarity, logical interpretation scope, definite pattern and style of drafting and is varied in branches. " The relationship between law and literature is rich and complex. In the past three and half decades, the topic has received much attention from literary critics and legal scholars studying modern literature. Ever since the publication of James Boyd White's The Legal Imagination in 1973, there have been numerous books and articles studying the role of law in the plays of Shakespeare or the novels of Dostoevsky, Melville, Kafka and Camus. Some writers have studied works of literature from jurisprudential perspective; others have applied the tools of literary analysis to legal texts such as ...

Liverpool Law Review, 2013

2013

I cannot claim to be one of the founding scholars in law and literature—for an explanation of how law and literature as a ‘movement’ arose, there are accounts of this to be found, particularly in relation to the American scene—with Benjamin Cardozo, for example, making explicit acknowledgement of writers as fundamental sources of understanding in law and implicitly of law itself. More recently, James Boyd White in the 1970’s in recognizing the link between the worlds of law and of literature both as a source of analogous narrative models and in the shared investment in critical, deconstructive processes. Later commentary has recognized law and literature as just one aspect of the larger ‘critical legal studies’ movement, claiming the political agenda of exposing the impossibility of neutrality and law as essentially political. However, I feel rather resistant to the categorizing tendency—of sourcing a ‘history’ or a ‘movement’ or even a ‘discipline’ of law and literature. For exampl...

Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 2013

Book Note This Book Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Osgoode Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Osgoode Hall Law Journal by an authorized editor of Osgoode Digital Commons.

One cannot effectively approach Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical works without recognizing the importance modern literature plays in his writings. From Baudelaire to Dostojevski, from Blanchot to Celan, and from Kafka to Grossman, the references to major modern and contemporary writers are manifest throughout Levinas's reflections. Whether as a source of inspiration or as metaphoric expression of his thoughts, these references mark a constitutive element of the articulation and development of his own philosophy. This is all the more astonishing given that Levinas has many reasons to distrust the ambivalences of literary works. Indeed, his entire philosophy intends to overcome the tragic model (with its origins in Aristotle) so as to understand being; moreover, he rejects the idea that mimetic representation constitutes a modality for adequate description of the human condition. Levinas states that the meaning of the ethical commandment exceeds all metaphoric and poetic expression, and, at crucial moments in his philosophy, he quotes Talmudic verses as if they are philosophical arguments. It would seem that Levinas is, in his own way, challenging the Western concept of literature. It may be that he agrees with Jacques Derrida's idea of the Biblical origin of this concept, yet questions remain as to how Levinas understands this idea and how his philosophy transforms the concept of literature. Answering these key questions will be the general aim of a three-day conference organized by the Institute of Jewish Studies in collaboration with the Center for European Philosophy. Special attention will be given to the poems, novel fragments, and reflections on metaphor and literature in the recently published volumes of the Oeuvres Complètes.