Synopses & Reviews
From the Preface:
"Contemporary theory has usefully analyzed how alternative modes of interpretation produce different meanings, how reading itself is constituted by the variable perspectives of readers, and how these perspectives are in turn defined by prejudices, ideologies, interests, and so forth. Some theorists gave argued persuasively that textual meaning, in literature and in literary interpretation, is structured by repression and forgetting, by what the literary or critical text does not say as much as by what it does. All these claims are directly relevant to legal hermeneutics, and thus it is no surprise that legal theorists have recently been turning to literary theory for potential insight into the interpretation of law. This collection of essays is designed to represent the especially rich interactive that has taken place between legal and literary hermeneutics during the past ten years."
Synopsis
This collection of essays is designed to represent the especially rich interactive that has taken place between legal and literary hermeneutics during the past ten years.
About the Author
Sanford Levinson, Professor of Law at the University of Texas, is the co-author of
Processes of Constitutional Decision Making. Steven Mailloux, Professor of English at Syracuse University, is the author of Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction and Rhetorical Power.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
SECTION I. Politics and Interpretive Theory
Introduction
William J. Brennan, Jr.
The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary Ratification
Edwin Meese III
Address Before the D. C. Chapter of the Federalist Society Lawyers Division
SECTION II. The Question of Method
Introduction
(A) Intentionalism
Charles Fried
Sonnet LXV and the "Black Ink" of the Framers' Intention
Philip Martin
["On Sonnet LXV"]
E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
Counterfactuals in Interpretation
Paul Brest
The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding
H. Jefferson Powell
James Madison's Theory of Constitutional Interpretation
Michael Hancher
Dead Letters: Wills and Poems
Kenneth S. Abraham
Statutory Interpretation and Literary Theory: Some Common Concerns of an Unlikely Pair
(B) Formalism
Frederick Schauer
An Essay on Constitutional Language
Sanford Levinson
Law as Literature
Gerald Graff
Keep off the Grass, Drop Dead, and Other Indeterminacies: A Response to Sanford Levinson
Richard Weisberg
On the Use and Abuse of Nietzsche for Modern Constitutional Theory
Mark V. Tushnet
Following the Rules Laid Down: A Critique of Interpretivism and Neutral Principles
Walter Benn Michaels
Against Formalism: Chickens and Rocks
(C) Objectivity
Owen M. Fiss
Objectivity and Interpretation
Stanley Fish
Fish v. Fiss
Jessica Lane
The Poetics of Legal Interpretation
Clare Dalton
An Essay in the Deconstruction of Contract Doctrine
David Couzens Hoy
Interpreting the Law: Hermeneutical and Poststructuralist Perspectives
SECTION III. Rhetorical Politics
Introduction
Steven Mailloux
Rhetorical Hermeneutics
Philip Bobbitt
From Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution
Walter Benn Michaels
The Fate of the Constitution
James Boyd White
Judicial Criticism
Contributors
Notes
Index