Wesson on The Chow: Depictions of the Criminal Justice System as a Character In Crime Fiction @ColoLaw @alafairburke

Marianne Mimi Wesson, University of Colorado Law School, has published The Chow: Depictions of the Criminal Justice System as a Character in Crime Fiction at 51 New Eng. L. Rev. 101 (2017). Here is the abstract.

Having been honored by a request to contribute to a Symposium honoring my talented friend Alafair Burke, I composed this essay describing the various ways the criminal justice system has been depicted in English-language crime fiction. This survey, necessarily highly selective, considers portrayals penned by writers from Dickens to Tana French. Various dimensions of comparison include the authors’ apparent beliefs about the rule of law (from ridiculously idealistic to uncompromisingly cynical), the characters’ professional perspectives (private detective, police officer, prosecutor, defense lawyer, judge, victim, accused), and the protagonists’ status as institutional insiders or outsiders or occupants of the uncomfortable middle. The essay considers as well the protagonists’ insights (often useful, too often nonexistent) regarding issues of gender, race, and economic status — in their own professional lives, and as determinants of how one accused of a crime, or victimized by one, will experience the institutions of criminal justice. The essay concludes with some worried observations about what the election of Donald Trump may portend for crime fiction, in its likely corrosion of the rule of law and thus of the institutions of criminal justice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Burke on Why Novelists Write About the Criminal Justice System @alafairburke @Hofstra_Law

Alafair S. Burke, Hofstra University School of Law, is publishing Why Fiction? in the New England Law Review (2017). Here is the abstract.

When I sold my first novel the summer after my first year as a tenure-track law professor, I assured the dean of my law school that fiction was a hobby, completely separate from my academic work, no different than if a colleague were training for a marathon in her spare time. Fifteen years later, this symposium asks its participants - four of us published novelists, one of us a judge, all of us trained lawyers - to reflect on the depiction of the criminal justice system in fiction. Our contributions make clear that the promise I made to my dean was itself a type of fiction. Whether an author realizes it or not, it is impossible to create an interesting, albeit fictional, depiction of the criminal justice system without having something to say about its real-world counterpart. Successful legal fiction uses the legal system as a defining component of the narrative that feels entirely realistic, even if the plot that unfolds there is wholly fictional. To be of interest, a novel’s legal setting must serve a purpose. Legal detail should advance the development of character, plot, or atmosphere. Separate from the question of why a novelist might write about law is the question of why a legal professor might choose to write fiction. This symposium presses me to respond to that query. Fortunately, the five thoughtful and diverse essays contributed to this collection have helped clarify a decade and a half of my own thoughts. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on three themes that I hope I have developed at least as well through fiction as through traditional legal scholarship: (1) individual actors in the criminal justice system matter; (2) legal rules are only a starting point; and (3) justice is not inevitable. Comparing these three points to narrative, one could say that they provide lessons about character, structure, and surprise endings.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stern on Narratives of Criminal Procedure from Doyle to Chandler to Burke @ArsScripta @alafairburke

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing Narratives of Criminal Procedure from Doyle to Chandler to Burke in volume 51 of the New England Law Review (2017). Here is the abstract.

Despite the considerable body of work aimed at showing that law is a form of narrative, these efforts have not found many adherents for the view that legal briefs and judicial opinions make better bedtime reading than mystery novels or courtroom dramas. This well-attested preference for fictional narrative suggests that the kind of satisfaction it offers is very different from the pleasures to be had from the genres of professional writing that we associate with forensic advocacy and decision-making. In the latter case, narrative serves the purpose of persuasion. Fiction may also seek to persuade, but more fundamentally it seeks to engage readers in the characters and the events, encouraging a kind of immersion in the story that is hardly necessary, and is rarely attainable, in legal writing. Writers who have been successful in both areas are rare, because they have had to master a variety of skills that are often breezily assumed to be complementary or even cognate, but that turn out to have little in common once we look under the overarching label of “narrative” and try to specify them more concretely. Consider, for example, the roles of dialogue, characterization, and perspective (not to mention the orchestration of events so as to pique the reader’s curiosity, rather than simply to make the details readily comprehensible). The usual forms of legal writing offer no opportunity for cultivating these skills, whereas the novelist can hardly do without them. Alafair Burke is among the few writers who have pursued a truly successful literary career while also producing a significant amount of work in the legal arena. In what follows, I consider the place of the criminal justice system in her most recent novel, The Ex. To provide some context for that discussion, I first show how legal mechanisms for investigating and prosecuting crime have figured in British and American literature over the last three hundred years. Then, I turn to Burke's novel, showing how it uses techniques of literary narrative to conspire with its treatment of doctrinal questions in criminal procedure. Bennett Capers's Re-Reading Alafair Burke's The Ex, also on SSRN, is a contribution to the same NELR Symposium.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Capers on Re-Reading Alafair Burke's "The-Ex" @alafairburke @brooklynlaw

I. Bennett Capers, Brooklyn Law School, is publishing Re-Reading Alafair Burke's The Ex in the New England Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Alafair Burke’s best-selling novel The Ex is certainly entertaining. What enhances its entertainment value several times over is its grounding in the law, which not only contributes to its verisimilitude but also makes it a prime example of law in literature. Although the novel is, on one level, escapist genre fiction, a thriller, and a beach read, on an entirely other level it speaks of and to the law. One could even say that the criminal justice system — the network of constitutional protections, rules of ethics, police regulations and protocol, together with the prosecutors and defense lawyers, judges and the media — functions on the level of a character in the novel. Thus, it is unsurprising that the New England Law Review has devoted a symposium issue to The Ex. My goal in this brief essay is to touch on three things. Part One begins by discussing The Ex as entertainment enhanced by a grounding in the law. Part Two takes up the issue of inequality in criminal justice, as alluded to in The Ex. Part Three takes up a different point entirely, situating The Ex in the context of literary theory, specifically an influential and apropos work of criticism, The Novel and the Police.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Fiction!

From Alafair Burke, Professor of Law, Hofstra University School of Law, comes news of a competition:

Mystery Writing Competition

Have you ever thought about writing crime fiction? Hofstra Law, along with Professor Alafair Burke and Mulholland Books, is offering you the unique opportunity to have your short story read by best-selling crime novelists and published online. See below for the official rules and regulations. View the competition flyer.

RULES

1. Your story must feature a lawyer as a main character.
2. Your story must be original, unpublished, and less than 3,500 words.
3. Submissions must be in Microsoft Word, using a 12-point font and double-spaced. The document must be emailed as an attachment to lawasb@hofstra.edu by May 1, 2014, with the subject line “mystery writing competition.”
4. The first-place story will be published on the website of Mulholland Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company devoted to publishing the best in suspense fiction. All authors will retain copyright.

PRIZES

FIRST PRIZE: $500 and Online publication and promotion by Mulholland Books
SECOND PRIZE: $200
THIRD PRIZE: $100

JUDGES

LEE CHILD is the No. 1 internationally best-selling author of 18 Jack Reacher thrillers. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and had a long career in television production
before deciding to write his first novel. The 2012 film Jack Reacher was based on his novel One Shot and starred Tom Cruise.
MARCIA CLARK is the best-selling author of three novels featuring Los Angeles Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight. Her books have been optioned for a one hour drama series by TNT. Marcia is attached as an executive producer and the pilot is currently in production. She is a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney, and was the lead prosecutor in the OJ Simpson murder case.
ALAFAIR BURKE is a professor of law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. She is also the bestselling author of ten novels, including the Ellie Hatcher series. Her next book, All Day and a Night, features a wrongful conviction case and will be published by HarperCollins in June.