Diver and Bradshaw on The Grapes of Wrath: An Artful Jurisprudence @alice_diver @qubschooloflaw

Alice Diver, QUB School of Law, and Jules Bradshaw, Liverpool John Moores University Faculty of Law, have published The Grapes of Wrath: An artful jurisprudence? in volume 2021 of the Steinbeck Review. Here is the abstract.

By documenting the harsh realities of the era, The Grapes of Wrath (‘GOW’) calls to mind those distressing UN Country Reports that both describe and denounce avoidable landscapes of poverty, hunger, homelessness, and dispossession. Steinbeck embeds the novel’s harrowing images within an unforgiving framework of human rights violations, most of which flow directly from human greed. The novel’s prescient yet timeless warnings speak not only to the various humanitarian crises brought about by climate change and unethical commercial practices, but also to many ongoing, perennial global atrocities: corrupt political regimes, gendered injustices, ethnic cleansing, and displacement of entire populations. It is landscapes such as these that still serve to both spark and underpin refugee existence: the need for a compassionate system of asylum-granting, firmly grounded in human rights law, clearly remains as urgent now as it was in Steinbeck’s time. As witnesses to such chronic disregard for human dignity, readers of the novel are not only tasked with judging those responsible: we must also evaluate the perennial failings of the various global and domestic systems that have enabled and perpetuated such egregious rights violations. The final scene, drenched in symbolism, still serves as a quasi-courtroom: before the bared breast of a Lady Justice figure we become jurists, and cannot help apportioning blame for all that has been witnessed over the course of the Joad’s journeying. A close reading now, almost a century later, serves as a timely reminder that similar atrocities continue: migrant and refugee populations remain especially vulnerable, not least where they have been displaced by poverty or political crises from all that was once familiar. This article argues that the novel’s central focus on “social realism” demands much in the way of “moral and emotional effort” (Benson, 9) from the reader: we should leave the book with nothing less than a highly “active compassion for the dispossessed” (Wyatt, 12).

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Cooper @SteveCooperEsq on Steinbeck and This Year's Election

Stephen Cooper discusses the meaning and relevance of John Steinbeck in the wake of Tuesday's election results. Mr. Cooper, a former D.C. public defender, is now a full-time writer who lives in Woodland Hills, California.

Texas, the Law, and the "Lennie Standard"

The case of Moore v. Texas raises the question of whether the "Lennie Standard," named for and adopted from the character of Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, is appropriate for determining whether an intellectual disabled defendant can appropriately be held responsible for his or her acts. More here in a discussion from On the Media, here from NPR, and here from the New York Times.

Of Intellectual Disability and the Death Sentence

From the New York Times: In Moore v. Texas, No. 15-797, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the question of mental capacity and whether a defendant should be eligible for the death sentence if he or she has an I.Q. that is so low that s/he is essentially unable to function in society. This standard is named after the character of Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.  

More about Lennie and the "Lennie Standard" below.

Carl Bailey, "He's Dumb as Hell, But He Ain't Crazy."

Julia Barton, Judging Steinbeck's Lennie. Life of the Law.

Dianna Wray, "Texas Uses 'Of Mice and Men Standards' To Execute Mentally Disabled  Man," Houston Press, January 29, 2015.