What is it Like to Be Like that?: The Progress of Law and Literature's 'Other' Project

Abstract

A central interest of the modern law and literature movement has been how literature can show lawyers what it is like to be different from what they are - in a word, other. This essay examines the course of that other project through three critical phases: the taxonomic, which purported to give lawyers an external account of others, the better to serve their own clients; the empathetic, which has tried to give lawyers an internal account of others, the better to enable lawyers to improve the lot of those others; and the exemplary, which holds up models of how lawyers themselves might be more firmly and effectively committed to the commonweal, particularly the good of others less well off. It argues that the law and literature movement should embrace this last phase of the other project, placing it at the center of the movement's mission and Plato's Republic at the core of its canon.

Keywords: law and literature

JEL Classification: K40