A Vision of American Law Judging Law, Literature, and the Stories We Tell

Subjects:

• Law » Legal History
• Literature » American Literature
• Literature » Critical Theory

Awards:

• Quinnipac University School of Law, Ralph Gregory Elliot Book Award

Reviews:

• The book is superb....Who should read this book? Anyone who loves the law or loves literature and expecially those who love both.
  —The Law and Politics Book Review

• Endorsement From John C. Danforth
  former U.S. Senator from Missouri
  Partner, Bryan Cave LLP: Barry Schaller provides fresh perspectives on fundamental issues of America from the dual vantage points of law and literature. This book is about enduring subjects (the conflicts between individuals and society, the condition of the American Dream, the powers and limitations of the Courts) described in a highly creative manner by an author who is, at once, a judge and a person of letters.
• Endorsement From Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr.
  Trustee Professor of Law
  The Law School, University of Pennsylvania: A thoughtful meditation by a judge in his vocation and a teacher in his avocation, upon the idea and ideal of justice as expressed by two voices that are salient in our culture: American courts and classical American literature.
• Endorsement From Peter Brooks
  Tripp Professor of Humanities, Yale University
  author of Reading for the Plot and coeditor of Law's Stories: Barry Schaller is a true humanist as well as a keen legal analyst. In [this work], he skillfully interweaves the legal and the literary responses to crucial issues in American society. He is always well informed, graceful, and humane. He offers a vision of American law that is bound to elicit a very positive response.
• Endorsement From Aviam Soifer
  author of Law and the Company We Keep
  Dean and Professor of Law
  Boston College Law School: We are only beginning to comprehend the crucial insights to be discovered where the best of our literature meets leading judicial opinions that wrestle with many of the same societal conflicts. Judge Schaller illuminates these connections with innovative insights in this clear and convincing book. He has a great deal to say to the general public, as well as to lawyers and to all those who study our literature and are concerned about the enduring social issues we face.
• Endorsement From Richard Neeley
  former Chief Justice of West Virginia
  author of How Courts Govern America: Judge Barry Schaller's [book] does a wonderful job of placing the inadequacy of our courts and of our law into the larger context of our ambivalence concerning what we expect out of society as expressed through literature that tells our law stories. Law, Judge Schaller shows, depends on the stories we tell one another about such things as individual rights vs. regulation, private codes of conduct, violence, and even the legitimacy of law per se.... Judge Schaller's book captures both [the glory and the agony of what judges and lawyers really do] in a style that is accessible to a general reader.
• Endorsement From Bill Keough
  Professor of English
  Fitchburg State College
  and author of Punchlines: Violence and American Humor: [This book] is a fascinating amalgam of sharp observations on classic American texts and the American judiciary system they reflect. It is surprising that such a work has not appeared before, but it is fortunate that, in Judge Schaller, we have a practitioner of the law as well as a wide-ranging humanist who feels free to range over the work of William Faulkner, Mark Twain, Nathanael West, as well as contemporaries such as Don Delillo.... As a writer who has wrestled with the problem of violence in America, I applaud Barry Schaller's success in spelling out how the law and literature often go hand in hand (or hand in glove). Judging Our Stories is a shrewd co-working of law and literature on the side of the angels.

Table of Contents:

• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• The Law in Society: Elemental Forces
• The Individual in Society: Individual Autonomy and State Power
• Private Codes: Rules of the Community
• Systemic Problems: Violence, Authority, and the American Dream
• The Roots of Violence: The Breakdown of Social Structure
• Shaking the Foundations: Problems of Legal Authority
• The State of the American Dream: Optimism, Progress, and the Word of Law
• The Judicial Role in Cultural Revitalization
• Taking Responsibility: Societal Change and Judicial Decision Making
• Synthesis: Justice in Our Time
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index