Literature of law: between legal science and literary criticism

Abstract

This work questions the relationship between law – rules, power, strength and legal security –  and literature – open, ductile, revulsive of “having to” and dreamy with what “should be”. For this postmodern instrument of recognition of the other and their differences, Law forced the stories of real people and their longings for justice into impartial concepts, silencing especially those of the most vulnerable. I begin by analyzing what it is, when, how and why the Law and Literature Movement came about, and will recall its three dimensions, the Law of / as / in literature, to focus on these last two strategies of analysis. From this, I then focus on the interpretation, position and function of the law interpreter, on rhetoric, narrative and New Criticism as forms of literary analysis of Law. I thus arrive at conclusions based on seven objections to the literary approach (its justice, its anti-formalism, its alleged judicial virtues, the irrationality of empathy, its critical literary theory, and the proposal of the chain novel in prospecting dynamics of the law, its contextualization and the risks of emotion and empathy for rights and legal security) and the possible responses to such objections. Conclusions that open us to an exciting project, but which, because of this, demand to be especially demanding in the integrated handling of a transgressive literature within the limits of the complex, dynamic and flexible reality of Law.