Jeanne Gaakeer
Judging from experience: law, praxis, humanities
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2019, 312 pp.
ISBN: 9781474442480
Combining her expertise in legal theory and her judicial practice in criminal law in a Court of Appeal, Jeanne Gaakeer explores the intertwinement of legal theory and practice to develop a humanities-inspired methodology for both the academic interdisciplinary study of law and literature and for legal practice.
This volume addresses judgment and interpretation as a central concern within the field of law, literature and humanities. It is not only a study of law as praxis that combines academic legal theory with judicial practice, but proposes both as central to humanistic jurisprudence and as a training in the conduct of public life. Drawing extensively on philosophical and legal scholarship and through analysis of literary works, Gaakeer proposes a perspective on law as part of the humanities that will inspire legal professionals, scholars and advanced students of law alike.
Literary case studies include:
Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet
Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities
Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg's asylum poems
Pat Barker's Regeneration
John Coetzee's Disgrace
Ian McEwan's The Children Act
Michel Houellebecq's Atomised
Juli Zeh's The Method
Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet
Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities
Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg's asylum poems
Pat Barker's Regeneration
John Coetzee's Disgrace
Ian McEwan's The Children Act
Michel Houellebecq's Atomised
Juli Zeh's The Method
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I: The Enchantment of Knowledge: Fact and Fiction in Law and Literature
1. The Enchantment of Knowledge and Its Apotheosis: Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet
2. A Raid on the Inarticulate
3. Explanation or Understanding: Language and Interdisciplinarity
4. Understanding Fact and Fiction in Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities
5. Poetry That Does Not Fade: Gerrit Achterberg’s Experience with Law and Forensic Psychiatry
Part II: Iuris Prudentia or Insightful Knowledge of Law
6. Practical Knowledge: Facts, Norms and Phronèsis
7. Metaphor and (Dis)belief
8. Narrative Intelligence: Empathy, Mimesis and the Equitable
9. Towards a Legal Narratology I: Probability, Fidelity, and Plot
10. Towards a Legal Narratology II: Implications and Pathologies
Part III: The Perplexity of Judges
11. Empathy Revisited: Who’s in Narrative Control?
12. Person and Poiesis in Technology and Law: Questioning Builds a Way
13. Control, Alt, Delete? Information Technology and the Human
Coda
Bibliography
Index.
Acknowledgements
Part I: The Enchantment of Knowledge: Fact and Fiction in Law and Literature
1. The Enchantment of Knowledge and Its Apotheosis: Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet
2. A Raid on the Inarticulate
3. Explanation or Understanding: Language and Interdisciplinarity
4. Understanding Fact and Fiction in Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities
5. Poetry That Does Not Fade: Gerrit Achterberg’s Experience with Law and Forensic Psychiatry
Part II: Iuris Prudentia or Insightful Knowledge of Law
6. Practical Knowledge: Facts, Norms and Phronèsis
7. Metaphor and (Dis)belief
8. Narrative Intelligence: Empathy, Mimesis and the Equitable
9. Towards a Legal Narratology I: Probability, Fidelity, and Plot
10. Towards a Legal Narratology II: Implications and Pathologies
Part III: The Perplexity of Judges
11. Empathy Revisited: Who’s in Narrative Control?
12. Person and Poiesis in Technology and Law: Questioning Builds a Way
13. Control, Alt, Delete? Information Technology and the Human
Coda
Bibliography
Index.
Jeanne Gaakeer is Professor of Legal Theory at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, and Senior Justice in the criminal law section at the Court of Appeal in The Hague.