The Rhetoric of Law PDF
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The Rhetoric of Law TheAmherst SeriesinLaw,Jurisprudence, and SocialThought EachworkincludedhereinTheAmherstSeriesinLaw, Jurisprudence,andSocialThoughtexplores a themecrucialto anunderstandingoflaw asitconfronts the changingsocialand intellectualcurrentsofthelatetwentiethcentury. The FateofLaw/editedbyAustinSaratand ThomasR. Keams Law's Violence, editedbyAustinSaratandThomasR. Kearns Lawin Everyday Life,editedbyAustinSaratand Thomas R. Keams The RhetoricofLaw/ editedbyAustinSaratand ThomasR. Keams Identities, Politics,and Rights,editedbyAustinSaratand ThomasR. Keams Legal Rights: HistoricalandPhilosophical Perspectives,editedby AustinSaratand ThomasR. Keams The Rhetoric of Law Edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns Ann Arbor THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS ISBN13 978-0-472-08386-2 (paperback) ISBN13 978-0-472-02367-7 (electronic) Acknowledgments TheRhetoricofLawhighlightslaw'sdistinctivelanguage, arguments, and hermeneuticpractices. Thesefeatures oflaw arecentral to the conception of legal study that animates the work of Amherst College's Department of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, and they were the subject of a course called "The Rhetoric of Law," which was first taught jointly by Austin Sarat and Lawrence Douglas in the spring of 1992. Students in thatcourseprovidedinvigoratinginterestandintellectualcompanionship as many of the issues taken up in the volume were explored. In addition, theeditorsaregratefulfor theinsightsofthegroupofdistinguishedschol ars whose contributions are included in this volume. Finally, we would like to express special thanks to the Mellon, Keck, Arthur Vining Davis Foundationsfor their generousfinancial support, and to Amherst's Presi dent, Peter Pouncey, for his friendship and enthusiasticengagement with ourwork. Contents Editorial Introduction Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns 1 Imagining the Law James Boyd White Antirrhesis: Polemical Structures of Common Law Thought Peter Goodrich 57 Becoming American: High Treason and Low Invective in the Republic of Laws Robert A. Ferguson 1°3 Speaking of Death: Narratives of Violence in Capital Trials Austin Sarat 135 Ordering Voice: Rhetoric and Democracy in Project Head Start Lucie White Constitutional Discourse and Its Discontents: An Essay on the Rhetoric of Judicial Review Lawrence Douglas 225 The Alchemy of Style and Law Barbara Johnson Reading the Law Adam Thurschwell 275 Contributors 333 Index 335 Editorial Introduction Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns Dealinginwords isdangerousbusiness....Dealinginlong, vague, fuzzy-meaningwordsisevenmoredangerousbusinessand most of thewordsTheLawdeals inarelong, vague andfuzzy. - FredRodell Thelegal process isalways thesame, an open, though bounded, forum whereforensic battlesare contingentlyand temporarily won. -StanleyFish Oratoryserves to produce thekind ofconvictionneededin courts oflaw and thesubject of this kind ofconvictionis right andwrong. -Gorgias IILaw;' Gerald Wetlaufer claims, lIis the very profession of rhetoric:'l It is a profession of words:'2 Once uttered, these descriptions of law lI seem commonplace. They conjure up familiar images of obscure legal jargon and Dickensian evocations of law's sometimes absurd preoc cupation with form over substance. At the same time, however, they unsettle andarouse anxiety among somemainstream social scientists, traditional jurisprudes, and conventionallegal scholars.3Theyremind all of us that law can never escape the intricacies and imprecisions, We are grateful for the helpful comments of Adam Thurschwell. 1. See IIRhetoric and Its Denial in Legal Discourse," Virginia Law Review 76 (1990): 1545, 1555· 2. DavidMellinkoff, TheLanguageoftheLaw(Boston: Little, Brown, 1963),vi. 3. See Fred Rodell, Woe unto You, Lawyers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni versity of California Press, 1980), 39.
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