Narratives of Enlightenment 137
(Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press , 1998), 1-7 and Richard Weisberg , Poethics(New York : Columbia University Press , 1992), 188-213 and 224-250.
19. In the words of Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg , Literary Criticisms of Law (Princeton : Princeton University Press , 2000), 3: literary scholars of law employ “the techniques and principles of literary criticism, theory and interpretation to better understand the writing, thought, and social practice that constitute legal systems.”
20. Paul Gewirtz ,“Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law,” in P. Brooks and P. Gewirtz , eds., Laws Stories(New Haven : Yale University Press , 1996), 2. See the very similar statement by James Boyd White , Heracles’ Bow(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), x:“This is a way of looking at the law not as a set of rules or institutions or structures(as it is usually envisaged), nor as a part of our bureaucracy or government(to be thought of in terms of political science or sociology or economics), but as a kind of rhetorical and literary activity.”
21. Binder and Weisberg (note 19, above, 201-29 1) refer to this theme as“the Law as Narrative trope.”
22. Judge Benjamin Cardozo is a fascinating example of a judicial storyteller whose opinions are often studied for the literary art with which he presents(and shades) the facts of the case to support his decision. See Peter Brooks ,“Mishtur sipurim,” Mehkerei Mishpat 18(2002), 249-261; Richard Posner , Cardozo: A Study in Reputation(Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1990), 33ffand 48ff; Richard Weisberg (note 18, above), 16-34.
23. For a more expansive treatment of the subject I compress here see Jane B. Baron,“Resistance to Stories,” Southern California Law Review 67(1993), 255285. For a general overview, see Binder and Weisberg (note 19, above), 201-291) and the essays collected in Gewirtz and Brooks (note 20, above).
24. Steven L. Winter,“The Cognitive Dimension of the Agon Between Legal Power and Narrative Meaning,” Michigan Law Review 87(1989), 2228.
25.This claim lies at the foundation of modern theories of hermeneutics, of deconstruction, and the like. For a good description of“foundationalism” and“antifoundationalism,” see Stanley Fish , Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies(Durham , NC : Duke University Press , 1989), 342ff. The claim that“questions of fact, truth, correctness, validity, and clarity can neither be posed nor answered in reference to