The Legal Historian as Detective

Critical Analysis of Law, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2015

22 Pages Posted: 27 Jun 2019

See all articles by Steven Wilf

Steven Wilf

University of Connecticut School of Law

Date Written: June 25, 2015

Abstract

Legal history is often depicted through evoking the metaphor of the magic mirror. This essay examines two series of detective novels by British author Sarah Caudwell and Israeli author Batya Gur which focus upon protagonists who themselves are legal historians and who deploy legal historical method. Caudwell’s sleuth, an Oxford scholar, seeks to uncover the details of crimes by using textual analysis. Gur’s detective, on the other hand, places homicides in their context and solves these murders by detecting those social norms which are so critical to a closed society that their violation might lead to violence. By using these novels themselves as a mirror it is possible to probe the promise and limitations of legal historical method. If, as the metaphor of the magic mirror suggests, law mirrors society, legal history serves as a looking glass for legal norms, and the fictional cosmos constructed by Caudwell and Gur reflects in its glass legal historical method, what can we learn about legal history as a narrative technology? And what happens when — as is the case in the last novels of both mystery series — the methods collapse, and neither the technic of text nor context adequately captures the complexity of the past?

Keywords: Legal History, Detective Novels, Narrative Technology

Suggested Citation

Wilf, Steven, The Legal Historian as Detective (June 25, 2015). Critical Analysis of Law, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3410063

Steven Wilf (Contact Author)

University of Connecticut School of Law ( email )

65 Elizabeth Street
Hartford, CT 06105
United States

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