Location
Brock University
Document Type
Paper
Start Date
15-5-1997 9:00 AM
End Date
17-5-1997 5:00 PM
Abstract
This paper examines the functions of narrative within written legal argumentation. My purposes are these: 1) to repudiate common assumptions that differentiate "argumentation" and "storytelling" in the law; 2) to begin to theorize anew how legal argumentation functions; 3) to explore the difficulties of evaluating the law's argumentative narratives, and 4) to trace some of the anxiety that judges themselves reveal about their roles as storytellers. I conclude that narrative is necessary to law's claims to authority, even as it complicates our understandings about how legislative policy decisions produce effects, and even as judges themselves seek to mask its importance.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Response to Submission
Jacqueline Macgregor Davies, Commentary on Matthewson
Reader's Reactions
Jacqueline Macgregor Davies, Commentary on Matthewson (May 1997)
Included in
Outdoing Lewis Carrol: Judicial Rhetoric and Acceptable Fictions
Brock University
This paper examines the functions of narrative within written legal argumentation. My purposes are these: 1) to repudiate common assumptions that differentiate "argumentation" and "storytelling" in the law; 2) to begin to theorize anew how legal argumentation functions; 3) to explore the difficulties of evaluating the law's argumentative narratives, and 4) to trace some of the anxiety that judges themselves reveal about their roles as storytellers. I conclude that narrative is necessary to law's claims to authority, even as it complicates our understandings about how legislative policy decisions produce effects, and even as judges themselves seek to mask its importance.
