Minding the Law

Minding the Law by Bruner, Jerome. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780674002890.

In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nations leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the worlds foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Courts decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty. Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify ones claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring ones language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying cultures storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains. But a cultures stock of stories is not changeless. Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Courts race-discrimination decisions during the past century. A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing laws commitment to a humane justice.