The Crying of Rule 49

Abstract

This article crosses back and forth across the border between law and literature. Its goal is to mirror the dizzying array of procedural doctrines under discussion with an equally dizzying set of comparisons. Contemporary international litigation is compared to a 1960s work of fiction – Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 – Canadian civil procedure is compared to American social movements, civil liability for polluting the environment on one side of the border is juxtaposed with the pollution of the civil liability environment on the other side, and so on. The hope is to demonstrate both the exhaustion of meaning and the replenishment of forms taken by international law and the legal procedures used to create it.