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Law's Cosmos: Juridical Discourse in Athenian Forensic Oratory

Law's Cosmos: Juridical Discourse in Athenian Forensic Oratory

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Victoria Wohl
Cambridge University Press, 1/7/2010
EAN 9780521110747, ISBN10: 0521110742

Hardcover, 376 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English

Recent literary-critical work in legal studies reads law as a genre of literature, noting that Western law originated as a branch of rhetoric in classical Greece and lamenting the fact that the law has lost its connection to poetic language, narrative, and imagination. But modern legal scholarship has paid little attention to the actual juridical discourse of ancient Greece. This book rectifies that neglect through an analysis of the courtroom speeches from classical Athens, texts situated precisely at the intersection between law and literature. Reading these texts for their subtle literary qualities and their sophisticated legal philosophy, it proposes that in Athens' juridical discourse literary form and legal matter are inseparable. Through its distinctive focus on the literary form of Athenian forensic oratory, Law's Cosmos aims to shed new light on its juridical thought, and thus to change the way classicists read forensic oratory and legal historians view Athenian law.

Preface
before the law
Introduction
the rhetoric of law
Part I. The Boundaries of Legal Discourse
1. The world of law
oratory and authority
2. Legal violence and the limit of justice
Part II. The Legal Subject
3. Legal fictions
subjects probable and improbable
4. Logos biou
law's life stories
Part III. Time, Memory, Reproduction
Law's Past and Future
5. Civic amnesia and legal memory
remembering and forgetting in the lawcourts
6. Family/law
legal genealogies
Conclusion
the paradigmatic law.