- 256 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
In Law's Interior, Kevin M. Crotty draws on several important literary works to offer a new model of the relationship between citizens and their laws, one that emphasizes the power of law to shape citizens and to fosterâor discourageâtheir autonomy. Crotty maintains that citizens are "inside" the lawâthey are the law's interior. Literature, he finds, can be relevant to law by emphasizing the connections between law and the world around itâa stance that corrects the tendency of legal theory to treat law as a separate, autonomous entity.The texts Crotty examinesâAeschylus' Oresteia, St. Augustine's Confessions, and the poetry of Wallace Stevensâquestion the rationalist optimism that Crotty regards as distorting much recent theorizing about law. Further, he asserts that the inability of courts to state clearly the principles animating their decisions demonstrates the stranglehold the positivist model has on us and our legal imaginations.Crotty sketches a model of the relation between citizens and laws that supplements the more familiar idea of law as something deliberated and enacted by rational, inherently autonomous citizens. The most important legal decisions of the past fifty years, Crotty says, rest on the perception that the state, far from merely respecting the "innate" autonomy of its citizens, actively shapes that autonomy. Law's Interior should contribute to a better understanding of the real principles underlying some landmark decisions by the Supreme Court.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Law's Interior
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The Quest for Autonomy: Modern Jurisprudence and the Oresteia
- 2 Dilemmas of the Self: Law and Confession
- 3 Rationality and Imagination in the Law: JĂźrgen Habermas and Wallace Stevens
- Conclusion: Law's Interior
- Index