Law and the modern condition : literary and historical perspectives

xv, 266 pp. xv, 266 pp. Using fiction as a lens to view our present circumstances and our growing concerns about terrorism and civil liberties, each of the essays discusses a work of literary fiction - some classical, some modern - that concerns, directly or indirectly, the historical development of the law. Each essay considers the legal lessons about the fictional event or events at its core, lessons that tell us something worth remembering as we continue to chart law's evolution. These lessons, like those that may be found in all great literature, necessarily extend beyond the historical confines of the characters and plot and background of each story to embrace the modern condition - which, as these great stories suggest, is and always has been the only condition.Published by Talbot Publishing, an imprint of the Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Deriving law from the Biblical narrative : the Book of Ruth / George Dargo -- The women will be out : a new look at the law in Hamlet / Carla Spivack -- From Hillary Clinton to Lady Macbeth : or, Historicizing gender, law and power in Shakespeare's Scottish play / Carla Spivack -- Bartleby, the Scrivener : "a house like me" / George Dargo -- Law, force, and resistance to disorder in Herman Melville's Billy Budd / Lawrence Friedman -- Reclaiming Franz Kafka, doctor of jurisprudence / George Dargo -- Digital communications technology and new possibilities for private ordering : William Gibson's Pattern Recognition / Lawrence Friedman -- Disappearing civil liberties : the case of post-September 11 fiction / Carla Spivack -- Conceptions of the enemy in the War on Terror : Ward Just's Forgetfulness / Lawrence Friedman.