The Rhetoric of Law

300 Pages·1996·14.93 MB·English

by  Prof. Austin Sarat

The Rhetoric of Law
TheAmherst SeriesinLaw,Jurisprudence, and SocialThought
EachworkincludedhereinTheAmherstSeriesinLaw,
Jurisprudence,andSocialThoughtexplores a themecrucialto
anunderstandingoflaw asitconfronts the changingsocialand
intellectualcurrentsofthelatetwentiethcentury.
The FateofLaw/editedbyAustinSaratand ThomasR.
Keams
Law's Violence, editedbyAustinSaratandThomasR. Kearns
Lawin Everyday Life,editedbyAustinSaratand Thomas R.
Keams
The RhetoricofLaw/ editedbyAustinSaratand ThomasR.
Keams
Identities, Politics,and Rights,editedbyAustinSaratand
ThomasR. Keams
Legal Rights: HistoricalandPhilosophical Perspectives,editedby
AustinSaratand ThomasR. Keams
The Rhetoric of Law
Edited by
Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns
Ann Arbor
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
ISBN13 978-0-472-08386-2 (paperback)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02367-7 (electronic)
Acknowledgments
TheRhetoricofLawhighlightslaw'sdistinctivelanguage, arguments, and
hermeneuticpractices. Thesefeatures oflaw arecentral to the conception
of legal study that animates the work of Amherst College's Department
of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, and they were the subject of
a course called "The Rhetoric of Law," which was first taught jointly by
Austin Sarat and Lawrence Douglas in the spring of 1992. Students in
thatcourseprovidedinvigoratinginterestandintellectualcompanionship
as many of the issues taken up in the volume were explored. In addition,
theeditorsaregratefulfor theinsightsofthegroupofdistinguishedschol
ars whose contributions are included in this volume. Finally, we would
like to express special thanks to the Mellon, Keck, Arthur Vining Davis
Foundationsfor their generousfinancial support, and to Amherst's Presi
dent, Peter Pouncey, for his friendship and enthusiasticengagement with
ourwork.

Contents
Editorial Introduction
Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns
1
Imagining the Law
James Boyd White
Antirrhesis: Polemical Structures of Common
Law Thought
Peter Goodrich 57
Becoming American: High Treason and Low
Invective in the Republic of Laws
Robert A. Ferguson 1°3
Speaking of Death: Narratives of Violence in
Capital Trials
Austin Sarat 135
Ordering Voice: Rhetoric and Democracy in
Project Head Start
Lucie White
Constitutional Discourse and Its Discontents:
An Essay on the Rhetoric of Judicial Review
Lawrence Douglas 225
The Alchemy of Style and Law
Barbara Johnson
Reading the Law
Adam Thurschwell 275
Contributors 333
Index 335

Editorial Introduction
Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns
Dealinginwords isdangerousbusiness....Dealinginlong,
vague, fuzzy-meaningwordsisevenmoredangerousbusinessand
most of thewordsTheLawdeals inarelong, vague andfuzzy.
- FredRodell
Thelegal process isalways thesame, an open, though bounded,
forum whereforensic battlesare contingentlyand temporarily
won.
-StanleyFish
Oratoryserves to produce thekind ofconvictionneededin
courts oflaw and thesubject of this kind ofconvictionis right
andwrong.
-Gorgias
IILaw;' Gerald Wetlaufer claims, lIis the very profession of rhetoric:'l
It is a profession of words:'2 Once uttered, these descriptions of law
lI
seem commonplace. They conjure up familiar images of obscure legal
jargon and Dickensian evocations of law's sometimes absurd preoc
cupation with form over substance. At the same time, however, they
unsettle andarouse anxiety among somemainstream social scientists,
traditional jurisprudes, and conventionallegal scholars.3Theyremind
all of us that law can never escape the intricacies and imprecisions,
We are grateful for the helpful comments of Adam Thurschwell.
1. See IIRhetoric and Its Denial in Legal Discourse," Virginia Law Review 76
(1990): 1545, 1555·
2. DavidMellinkoff, TheLanguageoftheLaw(Boston: Little, Brown, 1963),vi.
3. See Fred Rodell, Woe unto You, Lawyers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni
versity of California Press, 1980), 39.