Law and Literature - Law in Literature

Law in Literature

The law in literature view is specifically concerned with the way in which legal situations are presented in literature. Generally, they place a high value on the "independent" view from which literary writers are able to see the law. They believe that such authors have a lesson to teach legal scholars and lawyers alike about the human condition, and the law's effect on it. Such scholars tend to cite authors like Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Charles Dickens. The fictional situations presented in literature, these scholars assert, can tell a great deal about political and social situations, and the individual that often find themselves before the court. For example, Robert Weisberg believes that the law in literature offers fertile possibilities. He suggests that even though some literature can not instruct its readers about legal situations, they can still educate law students about the human condition.

Richard H. Weisberg, professor at Cardozo School of Law is another leading scholar of law and literature. Following the lead of James Boyd White, he sees an intrinsic value in the use of literature as a means of discussing legal topics. Unlike White however, who places value on literature for its ability to stimulate critical thought and theory, Weisberg believes that literature should be valued for its ability to cause one to relate to others, and for the political and social contexts that novels, particularly those dealing with the law, grapple with. For Weisberg, this is reason enough for its justification in the legal arena because such novels cause their students to reach conclusions regarding human understanding. In his study Poethics, Weisberg states that:

"Poethics in its attention to legal communication and to the plight of those who are 'other', seeks to revitalize the ethical component of the law."

Richard Weisberg's interest in the law and literature movement might be seen as slightly different than that of White, who places emphasis on the rhetorical techniques and abilities that literature utilizes. Weisberg rather wishes to use literature as a way of critiquing social institutions and legal norms. For him it is the subject matter of novels and not their rhetorical tools that make them important in instructing law students, as well as furthering understanding of legal matters for the independent law scholar.

One example of his attempting to validate his stance of the effect of novels onto legal minds, is one where Weisberg cites a real life French lawyer living in France during the beginning of the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps. The lawyer was attempting to assign the duty of determining Jewry of an individual with only two Jewish grandparents to the state, then controlled by the Nazis and collaborators. In describing the words chosen by the lawyer, Weisberg believes that the "masking of a moral crime" is a direct descendant of Nietzschean ressentiment, which is widely believed to be a philosophical outlook that permeates through the writings of Albert Camus and Kafka-literary authors whose works law and literature proponents cite often, including Weisberg. His belief that ressentiment makes its way into the writings of lawyers, such as this Frenchman, is seen as enough of a reason for him to view legal novels as compelling arguments of the human condition and thus their validity towards legal debate.