<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Keep Law Alive, the latest book by law and literature scholar James Boyd White, is an important apologia for the traditional understanding and practice of law in the United States. Law, White argues, has served as a language in a sense closely parallel to what we mean by referring to English or Spanish as a language: law provides those fluent in it with the tools to describe the social world and to imagine its transformation, but without scripting what the speaker must say. White also envisions law as an art that evokes imagination, emotion and personal judgment, as well as the mind, and that is fundamentally oriented toward the realization of justice. Intellectual, social and political changes, however, threaten to displace law as a language and art with a view of law as an essentially empty rhetoric that cloaks the use of abstract and impersonal reasoning often borrowed from other disciplines. The survival of law depends on the willingness of those who speak it to continue its practice as an art that serves a humane vision of political life.</p></abstract>

Keep Law Alive, the latest book by law and literature scholar James Boyd White, is an important apologia for the traditional understanding and practice of law in the United States. Law, White argues, has served as a language in a sense closely parallel to what we mean by referring to English or Spanish as a language: law provides those fluent in it with the tools to describe the social world and to imagine its transformation, but without scripting what the speaker must say. White also envisions law as an art that evokes imagination, emotion and personal judgment, as well as the mind, and that is fundamentally oriented toward the realization of justice. Intellectual, social and political changes, however, threaten to displace law as a language and art with a view of law as an essentially empty rhetoric that cloaks the use of abstract and impersonal reasoning often borrowed from other disciplines. The survival of law depends on the willingness of those who speak it to continue its practice as an art that serves a humane vision of political life.

Law as a Language, Law as an Art: Reflections on James Boyd White's <italic>Keep Law Alive</italic>

British Journal of American Legal Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Law as a Language, Law as an Art: Reflections on James Boyd White's 

Keep Law Alive, the latest book by law and literature scholar James Boyd White, is an important apologia for the traditional understanding and practice of law...

Law as a Language, Law as an Art: Reflections on James Boyd White's Keep Law Alive

Publié en ligne: 29 janv. 2021

Pages: 155 - 170

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2020-0024

Mots clés
Law as Language, Law as an Art, Imagination, Form of Life, Justice

© 2021 H. Jefferson Powell, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Law as a Language, Law as an Art: Reflections on James Boyd White's Keep Law Alive

Publié en ligne: 29 janv. 2021

Pages: 155 - 170

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2020-0024

Mots clésLaw as Language, Law as an Art, Imagination, Form of Life, Justice

© 2021 H. Jefferson Powell, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
Law as Language, Law as an Art, Imagination, Form of Life, Justice