Practice Extended: Beyond Law and Literature

by Robert Ferguson

Overview

Written by a renowned literary critic and legal historian, Practice Extended illuminates the intricacies of legal language and thought and the law's relationship to society, literature, and culture. Robert A. Ferguson details how judicial opinions are written, how legal thought and philosophy inform ideas, and how best to appreciate a courtroom novel. With chapters touching on a wide range of subjects, including immigration, eloquence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court case over James Joyce's Ulysses, Practice Extended provides an ambitious argument for the importance of language in law and a much-needed analysis of the often vexed relationship between law and literature.

Ferguson challenges the notion of law as a hermetic enterprise only accessible to experts. He reveals the discipline's relationships to history, religion, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and the visual arts, offering a rich account of how the law has shaped and has been shaped by communal thought. He also recognizes the critical role of literature and other outside views in showcasing the social problems that law takes up. Practice Extended reflects Ferguson's crucial role as a pioneer in developing the field of law and literature. His writing reminds us of the need for a critical approach to the law that draws on the insights of literature to better understand political and legal history and the documents, laws, and arguments that shape our present. At the same time, this volume also showcases the ways in which the law has been integrated into works of literature, from Billy Budd to contemporary courtroom thrillers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231175364
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert A. Ferguson is the George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature, and Criticism at Columbia University. He works in the nexus of law, literature, and history in American culture, and his most recent books are Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment; Alone in America: The Stories That Matter; and The Trial in American Life.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Letters in Law
Part I. Literary Components in the Legal Imagination
1. The U.S. Constitution as Literature
2. The Place of Mercy in Legal Discourse
3. Immigration Law: An Answer to Intractability
Part II. The Nature of Judgment
4. Holmes and the Judicial Figure
5. The Opinion as Literary Genre
6. Ulysses in Government Hands
Part III. The Public Uses of Eloquence
7. Lawyer Lincoln: The Making of Eloquence
8. Memorialization and the Spirit of Law
9. Precision in Persuasion
Part IV. When Law Fails
10. The Somers Mutiny and the American Ship of State
11. Invading Panama: Circumstance and the Rule of Law
Coda: How to Read a Courtroom Novel
Notes
Cases Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Matthew Anderson

Without fanfare, Ferguson's writings remind us why he is one of the lions of the field of law and literature, and why the field reaches—or should reach—beyond the precincts of the two disciplines. As ever, Ferguson leads by example and shows us what it can mean to be a public intellectual: He tells us where he stands and has stood, and why.

Paul Kahn

In an age in which the value of the humanities is under attack, Robert A. Ferguson's Practice Extended reminds us of how much literature and literary criticism can contribute to our understanding of law, judges, and judging. No one, whether lawyer or ordinary citizen, can read this book and not feel both challenged and enlightened.

Robin West

Practice Extended is a careful, judicious, and always generous investigation of the role of the literary imagination, eloquence, precision, sincerity, disingenuity, and genre in a number of legal texts, including the United States Constitution and appellate court opinions, as well as an exploration of the role of the legal arts in great political oratory, including Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural. Ferguson calls out for a literary rather than an exclusively legal response to our greatest contemporary moral dilemmas, including the immigration crisis and our broken system of criminal justice. He carefully analyzes the literary and architectural features of memorials that commemorate the Holocaust, and explores law's limits through an evocative retelling of Somers, the nineteenth-century mutiny case that inspired Melville's legal novella Billy Budd, Sailor. These essays—legally astute, eloquent, and precise—are a welcome addition to the growing oeuvre of law and humanities studies.