Approaches to Law and Literature

1. Law in Literature
• Representation of laws, lawyers, and the legal system in fiction.
• Why are they represented as such?
• What impact do these representations have?
2. Law and Literature
• Can assist judges in ethical issues
• Literature highlights personal impacts of constitutional principles and laws
• Translation key to both
• Teaches us to understand others
• Teaches us ambiguity, contradiction and doubt
3. Law as Literature
• Do texts gave singular, objective meanings?
• Does meaning of text coincide with author's intent? Should it? Can it?
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4. Law through Literature
• law does tell stories, characterizes people in certain ways
• law should tell stories, b/c it personalizes
• stories bring unheard voices into legal sphere (welfare hearing)