Law & Literature

by Richard A. Posner

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.” 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. But it also 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 .

The book remains the most clear, acute account of the intersection of law and literature.

Genres: Law, Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, Legal, Criticism, Philosophy

592 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1988

About the author

Richard Posner is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. From 1963 to 1965, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as Associate Professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where he presided until his retirement on September 2, 2017. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.

Judge Posner has written a number of books, including Economic Analysis of Law (7th ed., 2007), The Economics of Justice (1981), Law and Literature (3rd ed. 2009), The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990), Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990), The Essential Holmes (1992), Sex and Reason (1992), Overcoming Law (1995), The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (1996), Law and Legal Theory in England and America (1996), The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999), Antitrust Law (2d ed. 2001), Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003), Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005), How Judges Think (2008), and A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009), as well as books on the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore, and many articles in legal and economic journals and book reviews in the popular press. He has taught administrative law, antitrust, economic analysis of law, history of legal thought, conflict of laws, regulated industries, law and literature, the legislative process, family law, primitive law, torts, civil procedure, evidence, health law and economics, law and science, and jurisprudence. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Legal Studies and (with Orley Ashenfelter) the American Law and Economics Review. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and he was the President of the American Law and Economics Association from 1995 to 1996 and the honorary President of the Bentham Club of University College, London, for 1998. He has received a number of awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award in Law from the University of Virginia in 1994, the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from the College of William and Mary in 1998, the 2003 Research Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, also in 2003 the John Sherman Award from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Learned Hand Medal for Exellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal bar Council in 2005, and, also in 2005, the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Reviews

[Ke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judge Posner's writing is accessible and lucid. I would say this book provides great insight into imaginative writing's relationship to law and vice versa, but I may be one of those unqualified proles looked down on by PhD literary critics.

A reader should also consider picking up this book because of its copious references and footnotes. I wouldn't have heard of Gaddis' "A Frolic of His Own," for example.

[Savonarola · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3rd ed.)

A good introduction to broad topics in law for people of a literary bent.

There's a great deal of fluff, and the book appears longer than it is by virtue of large-ish font and wide margins, but there's a great many gems.

The judicial opinions chapter is very good, and I doubt that I could find a better treatment without comprehensively researching writings on the topic.

Some people might balk at his critiques of the literary left, but if you're prone to balking, all the better reason to read it: do the Pyrrhonism thing. Set argument against argument.

He certainly isn't the friendliest to the literary right either, or to the right in general, either here or in his general life ("I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.") but because the literary left is larger and louder they receive far more critique in this book.

I tend to agree that it's silly when people hope that hyperspecialized literary criticism might somehow alter political discourse. I also tend to agree that moralistic censorship of literature is bad, regardless of political rationale.

His economic rationalism talk is sometimes overdone—he makes huge stretches, occasionally—but there are only brief episodes of it.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Judge Posner knows a great deal about the law (duh), and he's a careful reader of the works he discusses. I'm a former literature grad student currently loving law school, and I found this book utterly uninteresting. Some of the works he cites, though, will prove useful - I have a professor who structured his Contracts class around _The Merchant of Venice_.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic survey of literature and law’s place in it. Don’t be fooled by the other comments here complaining about the blunt laid-bare, concise nature of the book. Posner makes very clear in the introduction that this is indeed a survey of the topic. Those who complain that a survey is not a textbook must think all that glitters must be gold. This book is dazzling but you should not come to it with preconceptions that it is legal and literary gold.

The main premise: law has played a bigger part in literature than literary theory should play in law. Posner’s argument for this stance is fun to read and peppered with references to great literature and poetry. You can tell that he was a W.B Yeats scholar at Yale where he wrote his thesis on Yeats’s poetry. You can tell he has a penchant for Kafka and Homer. Perhaps it will surprise you that he also has an affinity with the great Romantic, William Blake!

Posner marshals legal references from a staggering volume of works and authors to make his points here and it is absolutely fabulous to consume. Because of the sheer number of references, it would be impossible to go into much depth, so don’t come into this book expecting that. This is a book you read for leisure. It is an appetizer and it does not disappoint. I came into this book a law and literature philistine. I came out hungry to read more poetry and more literature , this time with an eye to law’s purpose in them. I am the better for it.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The law and literature movement suffers from having a number of literary academics who have an imperfect understanding of legal matters and a number of legal practitioners who lack literary expertise. Posner obviously enjoys a good read and knows the terms of reference of literary theory but is unable to apply them with any great understanding. He also has a fixed idea and this is not always the best starting point for a work that is exploratory in its nature. (In other words, he's a bit of a bigot.)

Worth reading but a book that shows the shortcomings of legal practice in understanding things beyond its brief.

[Maria Fernanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But it is also the earmark of ‘good’ writing (that is, not ‘just rhetoric’), whether or not the writing has any persuasive purpose other than to keep the reader reading to the end. One judicial opinion might be better than another not because the argument was more persuasive but because by candidly disclosing the facts and authorities tugging against its result, by being tentative and concessive in tone, even by openly confessing doubt about the soundness of its result, it was a more credible, a more impressive judicial document, though not a more convincing defense of the outcome.”

[Ajdesasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Posner early on posits that the idea that lawyers have any particularly interesting insight into literature as a whole is likely untrue. He certainly proves himself right with his uninteresting, unoriginal, and unilluminating views of classic literature.

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am new to the Law and Literature field, and I was looking for an "Intro to..." read. The book made for interesting reading, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I did get a sense of what the Law and Literature movement is about, and my reading list is much longer, but the book reads like a long law review article. I was hoping for a more neutral overview of the topic.

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very in-depth look at aspects of Law and Literature; however, exceedingly biased to a particular stance so readers should be aware of that when picking it up. Very accessibly written, but not particularly balanced towards more modern literary or political concepts, and contains very little in the way of explorations of contemporary literature. Also, beware high levels of pretension :l

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Posner's undoubtedly brilliant, but this book reads like a stream of consciousness positing thesis after thesis, much like a student sitting for exams tries to say as much as she can about any particular subject within the time limit.

As an overview of the field this is likely a great book. The book does too much 'telling it how posner thinks it is' to be much more than that.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most interesting for me was his use of literature as a means to discuss jurisprudence. But what about good legal writing?

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book about the intersections of law and literature, my two things. It makes me feel better about loving to read novels and being a lawyer at the same time.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating - much better than I had expected.

[Erin Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good general overview of the law and literature literary movement, including legal prototypes, genres, and various works.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tough read. The chapters on statutory interpretation and judicial opinions as literature were particularly interesting.

[Mohit Munjaal · Rating 5 out of 5]

goodreads is an awesome website which provide me lots and lots of good books