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A Vision of American Law Judging Law, Literature, and the Stories We Tell
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Book Code: C5111
ISBN: 0-275-95111-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-95111-5
200 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 5/30/1997
List Price: $102.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Availability: Out of stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Paperback Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: 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 especially 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.
Description: Throughout history, works of literature have helped to shape public discussion of social, legal, and political issues. In this book, Barry R. Schaller draws on examples from American literature in presenting an analysis of the legal aspects of several major problems facing our society. After identifying the key legal relationships in society, the book focuses on problems of violence, loss of authority, diminished faith in the American dream of progress, and the challenges posed by immense social and technological change. The author offers a set of standards to serve as a guide to effective judicial decision making and to assist the public in evaluating the soundness of those decisions.
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
LC Card Number: 96-44683
LCC Class: PS374
Dewey Class: 810
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