Law and Literature

Revised and Enlarged Edition

Richard A. Posner

    As Richard Posner reports, the first edition of [this] book is the most frequently assigned or recommended non-fiction work in 'law and literature' classes. Yet he thinks we tend to overrate the connections between the two, and certainly overrate the benefit to lawyers of exposure to literary texts and literary-critical ways of proceeding...His fair-minded presentation of the arguments is a good introduction to many...of the controversies that comprise the field of inquiry.
       --Anthony Julius,, Times Literary Supplement

    An outstanding work, as stimulating as it is intellectually distinguished...Not only are [Posner's] arguments readily grasped, and driven home with an exhilarating forensic skill; in pursuing them, he is also compelled to define his own positions more sharply.
       --John Gross, New York Times

    A book filled with keen judgment, shrewd common sense, and great erudition worn gracefully. Posner's command of his materials--literature, law, and the bodies of commentary and scholarship attached to each--is truly impressive. Still more so is his ability to make the issues vividly clear to the average reader.
       --Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor

    A wonderfully original and instructive study of what literature has to teach about the law, the methods of legal argument, and the interpretation of statutes and the Constitution...Posner's adversaries are hopelessly outmatched in these arguments, but they are only supporting characters in a larger and more interesting drama--Mr. Posner's own exegesis of the relation of literature to law propounded in a series of arresting, brilliantly interwoven interpretations of dozens of literary works.
       --Christopher DeMuth, Wall Street Journal

    The law and literature movement, which is currently gaining momentum on US campuses, argues that lawyers can benefit from studying the literary merits of legal documents and from reading works of literature which deal with law...[The] movement is now courting controversy with suggestions that the Anglo-American legal system is intrinsically biased both sexually and racially. Some proponents claim trials should be radically restructured along narrative, rather than adversarial principles, and that this would allow marginalised voices to be heard. Richard A. Posner, chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the seventh circuit, is sceptical about these arguments. His book is a sensible and forthright introduction to the law and literature movement, which enlightens without blinding.
       --Jessica Smerin, Weekly Journal of the Law Society(UK)

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Richard A. Posner is Circuit Judge, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.