What is it like to be like that? The progress of law and literature's “other” project

Abstract

A central interest of the modern law and literature movement has been how literature can show lawyers what it is like to be different from what they are – in a word, “other.” This essay examines the course of that “other” project through three critical phases: the taxonomic, which purported to give lawyers an external account of others, the better to serve their own clients; the empathetic, which has tried to give lawyers an internal account of others, the better to enable lawyers to improve the lot of those others; and the exemplary, which holds up models of how lawyers themselves might be more firmly and effectively committed to the commonweal, particularly the good of others less well-off. It argues that the law and literature movement should embrace this third phase of the “other” project. Although analytically last, this phase is chronologically first, anticipated in Plato's Republic. This essay concludes by placing the exemplary phase of the “other” project at the center of the law and literature movement's mission, with the Republic at the core of the movement's canon.

Citation

Atkinson, R. (2008), "What is it like to be like that? The progress of law and literature's “other” project", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue Law and Literature Reconsidered (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 43), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 21-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(07)00602-3