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- Title
Is Narrative Essential to the Law?: Precedent, Case Law and Judicial Emplotment.
- Authors
Bricker, Andrew Benjamin
- Abstract
Storytelling pervades almost every aspect of the law. Many narrativistic legal elements, however, have in fact been little more than historically transitory. Given the precarious status of narrative at law, I argue we should focus instead on one of the most historically consistent acts of legal storytelling: the judicial opinion. Here I examine in particular the invocation of precedent in legal opinions, what I call "judicial emplotment," as an almost archetypal act of formalized storytelling. As I go on to argue, the courts justify legal outcomes by invoking precedent, thereby placing decisions within a specific and heavily formalized legal-narrative structure.
- Subjects
NARRATIVES; LEGAL precedent; ACTIONS on the case; LEGAL storytelling; JUDICIAL opinions; STARE decisis; LEGAL judgments
- Publication
Law, Culture & the Humanities, 2019, Vol 15, Issue 2, p319
- ISSN
1743-8721
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/1743872115627413