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IrisAikateriniFrangouSecondEssay 6 - 30 Apr 2021 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Literature and the Law: Literature as Conducive to a More Accurate Understanding of the Law | | | A Literary Theory of the Law: the Descriptive Power of Literature in the Law
If a complete understanding of the law requires divergence in perspective then literature is better equipped towards the task given its ability to display different perspectives without contradiction. There is also an intimacy in narration that deepens time and space as Gertrude Stein notes (by also deepening the spatial and temporal dimensions of language itself) [Gertrude Stein, "Wars I Have Seen" (1945)] which allows for a fuller exploration of the truthfulness of each account. Thus, at the very least, literature can help us gain an accurate understanding of what the law currently is (within and without courts). Beyond that, it may even help law students avoid Robinson’s fate by preparing them for the realities of legal practice – the most fundamental of which is the recognition that the law itself entails contradictory representations of reality and therefore, that a lawyer (in strategically managing social relationships) needs to keep multiple contradictory perspectives in mind, at the same time. Hence, a lawyer exists in an inherently qualified world where the line between representations and lying is delicate, yet imperative. Robinson is fully reconciled with this truth, but it seems to me as though this reconciliation (via disillusionment) has obliterated his faith in the ability to change his life. It is not so much Robinson's actions that are morally suspect; it is his disposition towards the law (his despondence) that is the problem. Perhaps, if law school teaching was not confined to the traditional conception of the law as entirely lucid in its objectivity, more law students would have the courage to reconcile the relational, contradictory aspect of the law with their own individual needs for personal fulfillment (perhaps by crafting a legal practice that more accurately reflects their values). The potentiality of literature to improve legal education may be prone to skepticism - more so than its use as a mere vehicle for the more accurate depiction of the law which forms the principal argument of this essay. What is equally doubtful however, is the sufficiency of a traditional legal education that relies entirely on the teaching of legal rules, to the exclusion of the nuances of legal practice. | |
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> | The best route to improvement here is through simplification. Your writing is at its best when the sentences are shorter and more definite. When lucidity is the property of your writing, it becomes easier to check the generalizations (Is Tharaud despondent? Is Judge Day? Is Robinson's depression really "morally suspect"?) | | | | |
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> | These are not actually the questions the essay is about, so far as the present draft represents the intention. The requirement to "keep multiple contradictory perspectives in mind, at the same time," is neither the sole property of the legal or of the literary imagination: Picasso and Stravinsky are responsive to this requirement too, as is the collective structure among people of music that we call "jazz." Perhaps ironically, this confluence of styles of creation from awareness of multiplicity is actually one of the central concepts (minus the assumption of contradiction rather than mutual reinforcement), about consilient reasoning from multiple perspectives, on which I built this course we have been in together. So I think there is plenty to discuss along the lines which do seem to me to be the central thematic material of the draft. Focusing there is, I believe, the most promising route to substantive improvement.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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