In Law & Literature, we will study the law-in-literature, and the law-as-literature. Novelists, poets, and playwrights dramatize the law and legal events in ways that the bare fact patterns of caselaw cannot. We will read literature that examines “the law” as an object of fascination and revulsion. We will enrich our professional lives by studying great characters, as they struggle with the seamless web called LAW. We will also examine the law-as-literature. Legal writers employ most of the literary devices found in literature, such as narrative structure, metaphor, and ambiguity, to name only a few. We will examine legal texts using the tools of literary analysis and explore the literary aspects of the law. Before beginning our careers as lawyers, we’ll try to pause and absorb the wisdom of those who have gone before us. Mixing law and literature in the laboratories of our imaginations, we shall also try to unravel the many ways we conceal, or reveal, meaning in texts.
The University of Nebraska has also previously offered a course on Great Trials, which included the study of how works by Oscar Wilde have been used to help prove criminal charge in obscenity trials.
This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.
History
Subject Area
Law
Geographic Region
West North Central
University or College
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Funding Status
Public
Endowment (according to NACUBO's U.S. and Canadian Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year 2020 Endowment Market Value and Change* in Endowment Market Value from FY19 to FY20) ($1,000)
1735305
Annual Tuition and Mandatory Fees 2021-2022 ($) (Resident; Non-resident, where applicable)
16786; 39490
Course Title
Law & Literature
Terminal Degree of Instructor(s)
JD
Position of Instructor(s)
Adjunct
Academic Year(s) Active
Every 2 years
Course Enrolment
15
Primary Works on Reading List
William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice; Terence Rattigan, The Winslow Boy; The Cobweb; Robert Bolt, Man for All Seasons; Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol; Ephraim S. London (ed.), Law as Literature and Law in Literature (2 vol.), and selected Court opinions.