Law and Literature, Hofstra University (Deane)

Traditionally, law and literature courses might be better described as law in literature courses, through which students use fictional accounts of legal events to discuss those events. But lawyers can gain much more from literature than the insights provided by discussion of such depictions. Several reasons come to mind. First, advocacy is storytelling. The better the story teller, the better the lawyer. Second, as lawyers, before we present our case, we must understand it. Our understanding of what we observe or hear is influenced by our experience. While what we learn from literature is not a substitute for what we learn through our own life’s experiences, reading literature can be part of that learning process and help introduce us to different understandings of behavior. Finally, lawyers exercise power in our society. Whether it is through traditional lawyering or as a judge or legislator, or administrator or lobbyist, or community activist, lawyers are constantly being asked to explain, mediate, defend, or change our laws and legal system. Literature can help us in these efforts by, again, broadening our understanding of our own society and of human nature. Samuel Johnson once defined law as “human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.” Literature can play an important, not exclusive, role in the development of such wisdom. Through the reading of a number of novels and short stories, this course in law and literature will reach for that goal. 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.