LAU22701 Law and Literature

Module Learning Outcomes with embedded Graduate Attributes  

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:

• Understand and explain the plural and complex relationships between the practice and study of law and the practice and study of literature;
• Understand and explain how literature can expound theoretical and practice insights about the law in practice;
• Critically analyse the role of story and narrative in the practice of law and judging;
• Critically analyse the representation of law in fiction and non-fiction writing, and other media;
• Communicate effectively, in literary and legal language, legal insights about literary texts and literary insights about legal texts.

Module Content

aw and literature are, in some ways, the same enterprise: they are both, as scholars Weisburg and Barricelli put it, ‘a formalized attempt to structure reality through language’. In this bespoke open module, students from law and other disciplines will have the opportunity to explore the intersection of law and literature, using the tools and methods of an exciting frontier field that looks at the relationship of law and the broader humanities. Literature here is broadly defined to include an array of narrative media, including novels, non-fiction writing, film, and more. Using literary theories, tools, and texts will offer law students a new way of conceiving of the law, and students of other disciplines access to legal ideas and discussions that are often not accessible without more dedicated legal training. This interdisciplinary approach will be both accessible and engaging for students across the university, and well as significantly broadening the intellectual range of students of law.

Through a mixture of lecture format and flipped classroom discussion, we will explore the relatively new field of legal and literary study usually known as law and literature, or law and humanities. We will first consider five major approaches to law and literature as a topic, including the portrayal or role of law in a work of fiction; how literature influences or has been used by courts or lawmakers; how literature and law approach interpretation of text; how stories can serve a similar role to rules of conduct, etc. We will then look at a variety of substantive topics—portrayal of crime and the courtroom, law’s relationship to magic, science fiction and utopia, literature as a form of legal theory—to both instantiate these approaches and engage with a variety of texts and media that explore interlinked legal and literary themes.