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

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Cited authorities 3

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Author	H. Jefferson Powell
Position	Professor of Law, Duke University
Pages	155-170











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 uent 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 Language, Law as an Art, Imagination, Form of Life, Justice





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

 















10 Br. J. Am. Leg. Studies (2021)



              

           

 The Legal Imagination   

       

      

           







 





 



 Keep Law Alive   

  

   

      

Keep Law Alive





 See, e.g.  “Terms of Heart”: Judicial Style in 

 

  The Legal Imagination 

     

           

           Three

Approaches to Law and Culture

     

             

   See, e.g.

 Reections        

The Failure of the Word 



 See  Reections supra          

            

        Compare     

  



with What Can A Lawyer Learn from

Literature?Law and Literature

 

    

     

         See  

 



156

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Search over 120 million documents from over 100 countries including primary and secondary collections of legislation, case law, regulations, practical law, news, forms and contracts, books, journals, and more.
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Updated daily, vLex brings together legal information from over 750 publishing partners, providing access to over 2,500 legal and news sources from the world’s leading publishers.
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Advanced A.I. technology developed exclusively by vLex editorially enriches legal information to make it accessible, with instant translation into 14 languages for enhanced discoverability and comparative research.
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Founded over 20 years ago, vLex provides a first-class and comprehensive service for lawyers, law firms, government departments, and law schools around the world.

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

You can sign up for a trial and make the most of our service including these benefits.

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users

You can sign up for a trial and make the most of our service including these benefits.

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users

You can sign up for a trial and make the most of our service including these benefits.

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users

You can sign up for a trial and make the most of our service including these benefits.

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users

You can sign up for a trial and make the most of our service including these benefits.

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users

You can sign up for a trial and make the most of our service including these benefits.

Why Sign-up to vLex?

Over 100 Countries

Thousands of Data Sources

Find What You Need, Quickly

Over 2 million registered users