Comparative Constitutional Epics
Law and Literature, Vol. 21, No. 1, p. 106, 2009
24 Pages Posted: 12 Mar 2009 Last revised: 6 Apr 2009
Date Written: March 12, 2009
Abstract
This essay takes up Robert Cover's account, in Nomos and Narrative of Constitutional Epics. Ranging across legal and literary texts including Toni Morrison's Beloved, David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, the Canadian Arar Commission Report, and Bringing Them Home, the Report of the Australian Human Rights and Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, it concludes that what comparative study of Constitutions and their Epics might yield are brutal truths and the judgements of history, but also insights into how we might make of that unpromising material a nomos and a narrative of redemptive Constitutionalism.
Keywords: Robert Cover, Nomos and Narrative, discursive construction of national identity, Constitutional narratives, Constitutional Epics, redemptive constitutionalism
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