Abrams on References to Children's Stories and Fairy Tales in Judicial Opinions and Written Advocacy @mobarnews

Douglas E. Abrams, University of Missouri School of Law, has published References to Children's Stories and Fairy Tales in Judicial Opinions and Written Advocacy at 76 Journal of the Missouri Bar 212 (Sept.-Oct. 2020). Here is the abstract.

Professor Abrams authors a column, Writing it Right, in the Journal of the Missouri Bar. In a variety of contexts, the column stresses the fundamentals of quality legal writing — conciseness, precision, simplicity, and clarity.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Fables of the Law: Fairy Tales in a Legal Context. A New Volume Edited By Daniela Carpi and Marett Leiboff Available From DeGryuter

New from DeGryuter:

Fables of the Law: Fairy Tales in a Legal Context (Daniela Carpi and Marett Leiboff, 2016) (Law & Literature; 13).


This very interesting volume includes essays by Luis Gomez Romero, The Wondrous (Baroque) Gender Revolution, or the Rise and Fall of the Empire of Fairies, Cristina Costantini, The Haunting Memory of Law: Mystic Fables, Uncanny Presences and Normative Spectrality, Doris Pichler, Playing with Conventions and Traditions: The Modern Legal Fairy Tale, Anna Enrichtta Soccio, Divorce and the Failure of Law in Dickens's "Hard Times,"  Daniela Carpi, Fables of the Holocaust: Hansel and Gretel, and Giovanna Ligugnana, An Invented Executive: The Ministry of Magic in "Harry Potter." 

So many fascinating pieces: I've mentioned only a few.  Complete table of contents here.

Daniela Carpi and Marett Leiboff's New Book on Fairy Tales in a Legal Context

New: Fables of the Law: Fairy Tales in a Legal Context (Daniela Carpi and Marett Leiboff, eds., DeGruyter, 2016) (Law & Literature; 13). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

The latest development concerning the metaphorical use of the fairy tale is the legal perspective. The law had and has recourse to fairy tales in order to speak of the nomos and its subversion, of the politically correct and of the various means that have been used to enforce the law. Fairy tales are a fundamental tool to examine legal procedures and structures in their many failings and errors. Therefore, we have privileged the term "fables" of the law just to stress the ethical perspective: they are moral parables that often speak of justice miscarried and justice sought. Law and jurists are creators of "fables" on the view that law is born out of the facts (ex facto ius oritur) so that there is a need for narrative coherence both on the level of the case and the level of legislation (or turned the other way around: what does it mean if no such coherence is found?). This is especially of interest given the influx of all kinds of new technologies that are "fabulous" in themselves and hard to incorporate in traditional doctrinal schemes and thus in the construction of a new reality.

 Via @maksdelmar.

ICYMI: Abate on Filicide in Snow White

ICYMI: Michelle Ann Abate, Ohio State University, Department of English, and Teaching and Learning Administration, "You Must Kill Her": The Fact and Fantasy of Filicide in "Snow White," 26 Marvels & Tales 178-203 (2012).

Dr. Abate has also published Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History (Temple University Press, 2008).

Graphing Little Red Riding Hood

Krisztina Szűcs, a Budapest-based data visualization designer, provides an interesting graphic interpretation of five different versions of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale here.  You can see more clearly the differences in violence, the parties, and the outcomes, depending on who's telling the story.