Works About Specific Writers

Adapted from
Professor Daniel J. Solove’s law and literature syllabus

Aeschylus

The Oresteia

 

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale

  • Shira Pavis Minton, Hawthorne and the Handmaid: An Examination of the Law’s Use as a Tool of Oppression, 13 Wis. Women’s L.J. 45 (1998)

 

Jane Austen

General

  • Margaret Valentine Turano, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and the Marital Property Law, 21 Harv. Women’s L.J. 179 (1998)

 

John Barth

The Floating Opera

  • Rob Atkinson, Nihilism Need Not Apply: Law and Literature in Barth’s The Floating Opera, 32 Arizona State L.J. 747 (2000)

 

Robert Bolt

A Man for All Seasons

  • Randy Lee, Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons and the Art of Discerning Integrity, 9 Widener J. Pub. L. 305  (2000)

 

Charlotte Bronte

General

  • Linda R. Hirshman, Bronte, Bloom and Bork: An Essay on the Moral Education of Judges, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 177 (1988)
  • Margaret Valentine Turano, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and the Marital Property Law, 21 Harv. Women’s L.J. 179 (1998)

 

Albert Camus

General

The Fall

The Stranger

  • David Carroll, Guilt By “Race”: Injustice in Camus’s The Stranger, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2331 (2005)
  • Richard Weisberg, The Failure of the Word (1984)

Truman Capote

In Cold Blood

 

 

Charles Dickens

General

  • Larry M. Wertheim, Dickens’ Lesser Lawyers, 46 S.D. L. Rev. 695 (2000)
  • Larry M. Wertheim, Law, Literature and Morality in the Novels of Charles Dickens, 20 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 111 (1994)
  • William S. Holdsworth, Charles Dickens as a Legal Historian (1928)
  • Ronald Baughman, Dickens and His Lawyers, 6 ALSA Forum 168 (1982)
  • Thomas Alexander Fyfe, Charles Dickens and the Law (1910)
  • Kent Greenfield & John E. Nillson, Gradgrind’s Education: Using Dickens and Aristotle to Understand (and Replace?) the Business Judgment Rule, 63 Brook. L. Rev. 799 (1997)
  • Robert Donald Neely, The Lawyers of Dickens and Their Clerks (1938)

Bleak House

  • Maureen E. Markey, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House: Mr. Tulkinghorn as a Successful Literary Lawyer , 14 St. Thomas L. Rev. 689 (2002)

A Tale of Two Cities

  • Simon Petch, The Business of the Barrister in A Tale of Two Cities, 44 Criticism 27 (2002)

 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

General

The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment

  • Robert Batey, In Defense of Porfiry Petrovich, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2283 (2005)
  • Vera Bergelson, Crimes and Defenses of Rodion Raskolnikov, 85 Ky. L.J. 919 (1996)
  • William Burnham, The Legal Context and Contributions of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (2002)
  • Dan E. Stigall, Prosecuting Raskolnikov: A Literary and Legal Look at “Consciousness of Guilt” Evidence,
  •    2005 DEC Army Law. 54   (2005)
  • Richard Weisberg, The Failure of the Word (1984)

 

 

George Eliot

Adam Bede

  • Roberta M. Harding, Capital Punishment as Human Sacrifice: A Societal Ritual as Depicted in George Eliot’s Adam Bede, 48 Buff. L. Rev. 175 (2000)

Felix Holt

  • Leonard J. Long, Law’s Character in Eliot’s Felix Holt, the Radical, 16 Law & Literature 237 (2004)

 

 

Ralph Ellison

General

  • Symposium, Ralph Ellison and the Law,  26 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 823-1081 (2001)

 

William Faulkner

General

  • Robert A. Ferguson, Law and Lawyers in Faulkner’s Life and Art: A Comment,    4 Miss. College L. Rev. 213 (1984)
  • Jay Watson, Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner (1993)
  • Richard Weisberg, In Search of Faulkner’s Law, 92 Mich. L. Rev. 1776 (1994) (reviewing Jay Watson, Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner (1993))

Intruder in the Dust

  • Rob Atkinson, Liberating Lawyers: Divergent Parallels in Intruder in the Dust and To Kill a Mockingbird, 49 Duke L.J. 601 (1999)

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

  • Brian Fintan Moore, Assigning Moral Culpability in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, 50 Rutgers L. Rev. 645 (1998)

 

William Gaddis

A Frolic of His Own

  • Larry M. Wertheim, Law as Frolic: Law and Literature in A Frolic of His Own, 21 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 421 (1995)

 

Susan Glaspell

A Jury of Her Peers

  • Marina A. Angel, Classical Greek Influences on an American Feminist:  Susan Glaspell’s Debt to Aristophanes , 52 Syracuse L. Rev. 81 (2002)
  • Marina Angel, Criminal Law and Women: Giving the Abused Woman Who Kills a Jury of Her Peers Who Appreciate Trifles, 33 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 229 (1996)
  • Marina Angel, Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers: Woman Abuse in a Literary and Legal Context, 45 Buff. L. Rev. 779 (1997)
  • Patricia L. Bryan, Stories in Fiction and in Fact: Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers and the 1901 Murder Trial of Margaret Hossack, 49 Stan. L. Rev. 1293 (1997)
  • Toni M. Massaro, Peremptories or Peers?—Rethinking Sixth Amendment Doctrine, Images and Procedures, 64 N.C. L. Rev. 501 (1986)
  • Martha Minow, Words and the Door to the Land of Change: Law, Language, and Family Violence, 43 Vand. L. Rev. 1665 (1990)
  • Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature 121-26 (2d ed. 1998)
  • Robin West, Invisible Victims: A Comparison of Susan Glaspell’s Jury of Her Peers, and Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, 8 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 203 (1996)

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne

General

 

Henry James

General

 

Franz Kafka

General

  • Robert Batey, Da Vinci Versus Kafka: Looking for Answers, 8 N.Y. City L. Rev. 319 (2005)
  • Martha J. Dragich, Justice Blackmun, Franz Kafka, and Capital Punishment, 63 Mo. L. Rev. 853  (1998)
  • Igor Grazin, Kafka’s Myth of Law in the Context of the Legal Irrationality Inspired by the Russian Post-Communist Marketplace, 8 MSU DCL J. Int’l L. 335 (1999)
  • Anthony W. Krause, Asssessing Mr. Samsa’s Employee Rights: Kafka and the Art of the Human Resource Nightmare, 15 Lab. Law 309 (1999)
  • Douglas E. Litowitz, Franz Kafka’s Outsider Jurisprudence, 27 Law & Soc. Inquiry 103 (2002)
  • Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature (2d ed. 1998)
  • Richard A. Posner, The Ethical Significance of Free Choice: A Reply to Professor West 99 Harv. L. R. 1431 (1986)
  • Parker B. Potter, Jr., Ordeal by Trial: Judicial References to the Nightmare World of Franz Kafka, 3 Pierce L. Rev. 195, 195-96 (2005)
  • Robin West, Submission, Choice, and Ethics: A Rejoinder to Judge Posner,  99 Harv. L. Rev. 1449 (1986)
  • Robin West, Authority, Autonomy, and Choice: The Role of Consent in the Moral and Political Visions of Franz Kafka and Richard Posner, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 384 (1985)
  • Samuel Wolff & Kenneth Rivkin, The Legal Education of Franz Kafka, 22 Columbia-VLA J. Law & the Arts 407 (1998)

The Trial

 

Heinrich von Kleist

Michael Kohlhaas

 

Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird

  • Note, Being Atticus Finch: The Professional Role of Empathy in To Kill a Mockingbird, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 1682 (2004)
  • Rob Atkinson, Liberating Lawyers: Divergent Parallels in Intruder in the Dust and To Kill a Mockingbird, 49 Duke L.J. 601 (1999)
  • Robert Batey, Atticus Finch, Boris A. Max, and the Lawyer’s Dilemma, 12 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 389 (2005)
  • Tim Dare, Lawyers, Ethics, and To Kill a Mockingbird, 25 Phil. & Lit. 127 (2001)
  • Monroe H. Freedman, Atticus Finch – Right and Wrong, 45 Alabama L. Rev. 473 (1994)
  • Monroe H. Freedman, Atticus Finch, Esq., R.I.P., 14 Legal Times 20 (1992)
  • Monroe H. Freedman, Finch: The Lawyer Mythologized, 14 Legal Times 25 (1992)
  • Steven Lubet, Reconstructing Atticus Finch, 97 Mich. L. Rev. 1339 (1999)
  • Michael Newcity, Why is There No Russian Atticus Finch? Or Even a Russian Rumpole?, 12 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 271 (2005)
  • John Jay Osborne, Jr., Atticus Finch – The End of Honor: A Discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird, 30 U.S.F. L. Rev. 1139 (1996)
  • Teresa Godwin Phelps, Atticus, Thomas, and the Meaning of Justice, 77 Notre Dame L. Rev. 925 (2002)
  • Teresa Godwin Phelps, The Margins of Maycomb: A Rereading of To Kill A Mockingbird, 45 Ala. L. Rev. 511 (1994)
  • Thomas L. Shaffer, The Moral Theology of Atticus Finch, 42 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 181 (1981)

Herman Melville

General

Bartleby the Scrivener

  • Thane Rosenbaum, Body and Soul Under the Law, and the Response from Law and Literature in Bartleby, the Scrivener and Billy  Budd, Sailor, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2425 (2005)
  • Robin West, Invisible Victims: A Comparison of Susan Glaspell’s Jury of Her Peers, and Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, 8 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 203 (1996)

Benito Cereno

 

Billy Budd

  • Robert Cover, Of Creon and Captain Vere, in Justice Accused (1975)
  • Jami K. Elison, The Prosecution of Billy Budd (Ultra Vires of Positive Law),  35 Willamette L. Rev. 57 (1999)
  • C.B. Ives, Billy Budd and the Articles of War, 34 American Literature 31 (1962)
  • Alfred S. Konefsky, The Accidental Legal Historian: Herman Melville and the History of American  Law, 52 Buff. L. Rev. 1179 (2005)
  • Judith Schenck Koffler, The Feminine Presence in Billy Budd, 1 Cardozo Studies in L. & Literature 1 (1989)
  • Robert P. Lawry, Justice in Billy Budd, in Law and Literature Perspectives (Bruce L. Rockwood ed. 1996)
  • James McBride, Revisiting a Seminal Text of the Law and Literature Movement: A Girardian Reading of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, 3 Margins 285 (2003)
  • New Essays on Billy Budd (Donald Yannella ed. 2002)
  • Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature 165-173 (2d ed. 1998)
  • Readings on Billy Budd (Laura Marvel ed. 2003)
  • The Honorable Juan Ramirez, Jr., Amy D. Ronner, Voiceless Billy Budd: Melville’s Tribute to the Sixth Amendment, 41 Cal. W. L. Rev. 103 (2004)
  • Charles A. Reich, The Tragedy of Justice in Billy Budd, 56 Yale Rev. 368 (1967).
  • Thane Rosenbaum, Body and Soul Under the Law, and the Response from Law and Literature in Bartleby, the Scrivener and Billy  Budd, Sailor, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2425 (2005)
  • Kevin W. Saunders, Billy Budd and the Federal Sentencing Mandates, 22 Oklahoma City U. L. Rev. 211 (1997)
  • Daniel J. Solove, Melville’s Billy Budd and Security in Times of Crisis, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2443 (2005)
  • Symposium, Billy Budd,1 Cardozo Studies in L. &  Literature 1 (1989)
  • Brook Thomas, Billy Budd and the Untold Story of the Law, 1 Cardozo Studies in L. & Literature 49 (1989)
  • Richard Weisberg, How Judges Speak: Some Lessons on Adjudication in Billy Budd, Sailor With an Application to Justice Rehnquist, 57 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1 (1982)
  • Richard Weisberg, The Failure of the Word (1984)
  • Richard Weisberg, Poethics And Other Strategies of Law and Literature pp. 104-16 (1992)
  • Robin West, The Feminine Silence: A Response to Professor Koffler, 1 Cardozo Studies in L. & Literature 15 (1989)
  • Steven L. Winter, Melville, Slavery, and the Failure of the Judicial Process, 26 Cardozo L. Rev.  2471 (2005)
  • Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., Fated Boy: Billy Budd and the Laws of War, 31 J. Maritime L. & Commerce 615 (2000)
  • Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., Melville’s Billy Budd and the Trials of Captain Vere, 45 St. Louis U. L.J. 1109 (2001)

 

George Orwell

General

  • John J. Bonsignore, George Orwell–A Political Assessment, 8 ALSA Forum 422 (1984)
  • Richard Epstein, Does Literature Work as Social Science: The Case of George Orwell, 73 U Colo. L. Rev. 987 (2002)

Nineteen Eighty-Four

 

Katherine Ann Porter

Noon Wine

  • Robert Batey, Punishment by Family and Community in Katherine Ann Porter’s Noon Wine, 29 Akron L. Rev. 205 (1996)

 

JK Rowling

Harry Potter Series

  • Anonymous, Harry Potter and the Law, 12 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 427 (2005)
  • Benjamin H. Barton, Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy, 104 Mich. L. Rev. 1523 (2006)
  • William P. MacNeil, “Kidlit” as “Law and Lit”: Harry Potter and the Scales of Justice, 14 Law & Literature 545 (2002)
  • Aaron Schwabach, Harry Potter and the Unforgivable Curses: Norm Formation, Inconsistency, and the Rule of Law in the Wizarding World, 11 Roger Williams U. L. Rev. 309 (2006)

 

William Shakespeare

General

The Merchant of Venice

  • Anita L. Allen & Michael R. Seidl, Cross-Cultural Commerce in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, 10 Am. U. J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 837 (1995)
  • M. Andrews, Law versus Equity in The Merchant of Venice (1965)
  • Alice N. Benston, Portia, the Law, and the Tripartite Structure of the Merchant of Venice, in The Merchant of Venice: Critical Essays 163 (1991)
  • Thomas C. Bilello, Accomplished With What She Lacks: Law, Equity, and Portia’s Con, 16 Law & Literature 11 (2004)
  • Daniela Carpi, Law, Discretion, Equity in The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2317 (2005)
  • Jane M. Cohen, Feminism and Adaptive Heroism: The Paradigm of Portia as a Means of Introduction, 25 Tulsa L.J. 657 (1990)
  • Christopher A. C olmo, Law and Love in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, 26 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 307 (2001)
  • Erin A. Cook, Shining Lights at the Bar: Shakespeare’s Portia as a Model for Female Attorneys, 30 Cumberland L. Rev. 517 (2000)
  • Christine Alice Corcos, Portia and Her Partners in Popular Culture: A Bibliography, 22 Legal Studies Forum 269 (1998)
  • Christine Alice Corcos, Portia Goes to Parliament: Women and their Admission to Membership in the English Legal Profession, 75 Denver L. Rev. 307 (1998)
  • John T. Doyle, Shakespeare’s Law: The Case of Shylock
  • Jonathan M. Hyman & Lela P. Love, If Portia Were a Mediator: An Inquiry Into Justice in Mediation, 9 Clinical L. Rev. 157 (2002)
  • Ken Masugi, Race, The Rule of Law, and The Merchant of Venice, 11 Notre Dame J. L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 197 (1997)
  • Carrie Menkel‑Meadow, Portia Redux: Another Look at Gender, Feminism, and Legal Ethics, 2 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 75 (1995)
  • Trisha Olson, Pausing Upon Portia, 19 J.L. & Religion 299 (2004)
  • Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature (2d ed. 1998)
  • Richard Weisberg, The Failure of the Word (1984)
  • Richard Weisberg, Poethics And Other Strategies of Law and Literature pp. 94-104 (1992)
  • Symposium, The Merchant of Venice, 5 Cardozo Stud. L. & Lit. 1 (1993)
  • Michael Jay Wilson, A View of Justice in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Merchant of Venice, 70 Notre Dame L. Rev. 695 (1995)
  • Kenji Yoshino, The Lawyer of Belmont, 9 Yale J. L. & Humanities 183 (1997)
  • Theodore Ziolkowski, The Mirror of Justice: Literary Reflections of Legal Crisis(1997)

King Lear

Hamlet

  • Norman J. Finkel, Achilles Fuming, Odysseus Stewing, and Hamlet Brooding: On the Story of the  Murder/Manslaughter Distinction, 74 Neb. L. Rev. 742 (1995)
  • William M. Hawley, Hamlet and the Wager of Law, in Shakespearean Tragedy and the Common Law (1998)
  • Prakash Mehta, An Essay on Hamlet: Emblems of Truth in Law and Literature, 83 Geo. L.J. 165 (1994)
  • Steven M. Oxenhandler, The Lady Doth Protest Too Much Methinks: The Use of Figurative Language from Shakespeare’s Hamlet in American Case Law, 23 Hamline L. Rev. 370 (2000)

Measure for Measure

  • Robert Batey, Kenneth Starr–Among Others–Should Have (Re)Read Measure for Measure, 26 Oklahoma City U. L. Rev. 261 (2001)
  • Daniela Carpi, Law, Discretion, Equity in The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, 26 Cardozo L. Rev. 2317 (2005)
  • John Frow, Measure for Measure: A Response to Steven Mailloux, 9 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 11 (1997)
  • David J. Gless, Measure for Measure, the Law, and the Convent (1979)
  • Louise Halper, Measure for Measure: Law, Prerogative, Subversion, 13 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 221 (2001)
  • Daniel J. Kornstein, Comment on Prof. Halper’s Reading of Measure for Measure, 13 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 265 (2001)
  • Amy Ross, Vienna Then and Now: The Impact of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure on the Twenty-First Century Legal Profession, 46 S.D. L. Rev. 781 (2001)
  • Margaret Scott, “Our City’s Institutions”: Some Further Reflections on the Marriage Contracts in Measure for Measure, 49 English Legal History 790 (1982)
  • Dan Schiff & Wilbur Dunkel, Law and Equity in Measure for Measure, 13 Shakespeare Q. 275 (1962)
  • Michael Jay Wilson, A View of Justice in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Merchant of Venice, 70 Notre Dame L. Rev. 695 (1995)

The Tempest

  • Katrin Trustedt, Secondary Satire and the Sea Change of Romance: Reading William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, 17 Law & Literature 321 (2005)

Sophocles

Antigone

  • Robert Cover, Of Creon and Captain Vere, in Justice Accused (1975)
  • Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette, Antigone, Creon, and Captain Vere: A Response to David A. Reidy, 19 Legal Studies Forum 273 (1995)
  • David Gurnham, The Otherness of the Dead: The Fates of Antigone, Naricissus and the Sly Fox, and the Search for Justice, 16 Law & Literature 327 (2004)
  • G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit ch. 6 (A.V. Miller trans. 1977)
  • Mark S. Howenstein, The Tragedy of Law and the Law of Tragedy in Sophocles’ Antigone, 24 Legal Studies Forum 493 (2000)
  • David A. Reidy, Antigone, Hegel and the Law: An Essay, 19 Legal Studies Forum 239 (1994)
  • George Steiner, Antigones: How the Antigone Legend Has Endured in Western Literature, Art, and Thought (1984)
  • Susan W. Tiefenbrun, On Civil Disobedience, Jurisprudence, Feminism and the Law in the Antigones of  Sophocles and Anouilh, 11 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 35 (1999)
  • Theodore Ziolkowski, The Mirror of Justice: Literary Reflections of Legal Crisis(1997)

Wallace Stevens

General

  • Thomas C. Grey, The Wallace Stevens Case: Law and the Practice of Poetry (1991)
  • Thomas C. Grey, Hear the Other Side: Wallace Stevens and Pragmatist Legal Theory, 63 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1569 (1990)
  • Daniel J. Kornstein, The Double Life of Wallace Stevens: Is Law Ever the “Necessary Angel” of Creative Art, 41 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 1187 (1997)
  • David A. Skeel, Jr., Book Review: Toward An Aesthetics of Legal Pragmatism, 78 Cornell L. Rev. 84 (1992) (reviewing Thomas C. Grey, The Wallace Stevens Case: Law and the Practice of Poetry (1991))
  • Steven L. Winter, Book Review: Death is the Mother of Metaphor, 105 Harv. L. Rev. 745 (1992) (reviewing Thomas C. Grey, The Wallace Stevens Case: Law and the Practice of Poetry (1991))

 

Mark Twain

General

  • Daniel J. Kornstein, Mark Twain’s Evidence: The Never Ending Riverboat Debate, 72 Tenn. L. Rev. 1 (2004)
  • Lucia A. Silecchia, Things Are Seldom What They Seem: Judges and Lawyers in the Tales of Mark Twain, 35 Conn. L. Rev. 559 (2003)
  • Brook Thomas, American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract (1997)

Huckleberry Finn

 

Tom Wolfe

Bonfire of the Vanities