Reconstructing American law: the politics of narrative and Eudora Welty's empathic vision

Article Abstract:

Eudora Welty's novel 'Losing Battles' illustrates the contention of some legal scholars that American law must be reformulated to remove bias against minorities, women and the poor by incorporating their narrative viewpoints. This poststructuralist legal theory maintains that law is based on subjective stories rather than on objective truth and that all peoples' stories must be given a hearing if discrimination is to be prevented. Welty's comic novel reflects this idea by having a judge reinterpret the law based on empathy for a family's troubles.

Law, Welty, Eudora, Sociological jurisprudence, Law and literature

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A reply to Richard King, "The Discipline of Fact/The Freedom of Fiction?" (Journal of American Studies, vol. 25, p. 171, 1991)

Article Abstract:

Richard King overlooks the uncertainties plaguing historical research in his defense of the empirical approach to historical scholarship and attack on historical relativism. King criticized the relativists' contention that literature is of little use to historians in reconstructing the past. However, King fails to acknowledge that the precariousness of historical data renders history a largely figurative endeavor.

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Response to Alun Munslow

Article Abstract:

Alun Munslow failed to acknowledge that historical conventions cannot be investigated without the empirical assumption that facts can be discovered which will prove or refute the conventions. Moreover, historical relativists cannot deny that historical problems are essentially objective. Hence narratives, tropes and other forms from literature do shape the nature of historical data.

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