Narrative, free will, and legal responsibility: reading Cathy Gere reading Michael Gazzaniga
Michael Gazzaniga suggests that his finding that we construct post-hoc narratives potentially undermines the criminal requirement of mens rea (the “guilty mind” element of most crimes): if our actions are in many situations automatic, and our explanations of them – our decision-making moral sense, as it were – only post-hoc, then “‘My brain made me do it’ threatens to become a get-out-of-jail-free card available to everyone, not just to sufferers of fetal alcohol syndrome or schizophrenia.”
Review of "Changing Fashions in Advocacy: 100 Years of Brief-Writing Advice"
Helen A. Anderson of the University of Washington School of Law brings us “Changing Fashions in Advocacy: 100 Years of Brief-Writing Advice.”
Considering comparative approaches in legal histories
I have proposed comparative/transnational approaches between legal and societal understandings of privacy in the face of new technologies. Micol Siegel’s work suggests that I should, at the very least, consider my approach more critically.
Going beyond national legal histories
“Lived history,” writes Bender, “is embedded in a plenitude of narratives. … [O]ver time, different themes or concepts, different narratives, will be deemed significant and emphasized” (page 1). The “plenitude of narratives” is formed by the stories historians tell about the past, by people at the time speaking and living their own experiences, by groups (ethnicities, races, classes, nations, cities) sharing common understandings, and is thus never simple nor unitary.
Narratives and evidence in the litigation of high-tech patents
Colleen Chien has a paper in SSRN, dated April of 2009, that explores the narrative of patents, from the epithet of “troll” applied to patent owners who seek only to leverage their patent through licensing, and not application, and including our rather romantic perception of an inventor.
So Why Hasn't Critical Theory Worked in Law?
I wondered previously why critical theory approaches (like the much-criticized Critical Legal Studies) haven’t had much of an impact on U.S. law or legal analysis. Maybe “litcrit” has relied too much on the fabled “Death of the Author” (even without realizing it) when trying to analyze case law. If your “author” keeps popping back up […]
Useful Introductions to Theory
The “Introductory Guide to Critical Theory” (which I extract from and link to below, along with other useful reference sites) provides an excellent basic introduction to some of the main points of contemporary critical theory (which I encountered as part of historical, literary and “textual” studies). It has amazed me so far in law school that these […]
"Webs of Significance," Clifford Geertz
Cover of The Interpretation of Cultures An individual is bound up in a series of symbolic or mythic representations – “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun” (Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures) – which serve to generate and maintain meaning. Together, these symbols and myths provide the structure for our world-views. They constitute a cohesive […]
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