"Law and Literature" by Richard A. Posner

The book remains the most clear, acute account of the intersection of law and literature. This third edition, extensively revised and enlarged, is the only comprehensive book-length treatment of the field. It continues to emphasize the essential differences between law and literature, which are rooted in the different social functions of legal and literary texts.





Hailed in its first edition as an “outstanding work, as stimulating as it is intellectually distinguished” (New York Times), Law and Literature has handily lived up to the Washington Post’s prediction that the book would “remain essential reading for many years to come.”

The book explores areas of mutual illumination and expands its range to include new topics such as the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Constitution, illegal immigration, surveillance, global warming and bioterrorism, and plagiarism. In this edition, literary works from classics by Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dostoevsky, Melville, Kafka, and Camus to contemporary fiction by Tom Wolfe, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, and Joyce Carol Oates come under Richard Posner’s scrutiny, as does the film The Matrix.

Contents
Preface
Critical Introduction
Part I. Literary Texts as Legal Texts
1. Reflections of Law in Literature
Theoretical Considerations
The American Legal Novel
The Law in Popular Culture
Camus and Stendhal
Farcical Trials
2. Law’s Beginnings: Revenge as Legal Prototype and Literary Genre
The Logic of Revenge
Revenge Literature
The Iliad and Hamlet
3. Antinomies of Legal Theory
Jurisprudential Drama from Sophocles to Shelley
Has Law Gender?
4. The Limits of Literary Jurisprudence
Kafka
Dickens
Wallace Stevens
5. Literary Indictments of Legal Injustice
Law and Ressentiment
Romantic Values in Literature and Law
Billy Budd, The Brothers Karamazov, and Law’s Limits
6. Two Legal Perspectives on Kafka
On Reading Kafka Politically
In Defense of Classical Liberalism
The Grand Inquisitor and Other Social Theorists
7. Penal Theory in Paradise Lost
The Punishment of Satan and His Followers
The Punishment of Man
The Punishment of the Animals
Part II. Legal Texts as Literary Texts
8. Interpreting Contracts, Statutes, and Constitutions
Interpretation Theorized
What Can Law Learn from Literary Criticism?
Chain Novels and Black Ink
Interpretation as Translation
9. Judicial Opinions as Literature
Meaning, Style, and Rhetoric
Aesthetic Integrity and the “Pure” versus the “Impure” Style
Two Cultures
Part III. How Else Might Literature Help Law?
10. Literature as a Source of Background Knowledge for Law
Arch of Triumph
From Huxley to The Matrix
11. Improving Trial and Appellate Advocacy
Sherlock Holmes to the Rescue?
Legal Narratology
Fictional Depictions of Lawyers
The Funeral Orations in Julius Caesar
12. But Can Literature Humanize Law?
Aesthetic versus Moralistic Literary Criticism
Then Why Read Literature?
Part IV. The Regulation of Literature by Law
13. Protecting Nonwriters
Pornographic Fiction
Defamation by Fiction
14. Protecting (Other) Writers
What Is an “Author”?
Copyright, Plagiarism, and Creativity
Parody
Conclusion. Law and Literature: A Manifesto
Index