OUP is publishing a new book on
law, literature, and America’s Wars.
ABOUT THE BOOK
It can be said that western
literature begins with a war story, the Iliad; and that this is
true too of many non-Western literary traditions, such as the Mahabharata.
And yet, though a profoundly human subject, war often appears to be by
definition outside the realm of structures such as law and literature. When we
speak of war, we often understand it as incapable of being rendered into rules
or words. Lawyers struggle to fit the horrors of the battlefield, the torture
chamber, or the makeshift hospital filled with wounded and dying civilians into
the framework of legible rules and shared understandings that law assumes and
demands. In the West's centuries-long effort to construct a formal law of war,
the imperative has been to acknowledge the inhumanity of war while resisting
the conclusion that it need therefore be without law. Writers, in contrast,
seek to find the human within war--an individual story, perhaps even a moment
of comprehension. Law and literature might in this way be said to share
imperialist tendencies where war is concerned: toward extending their dominion
to contain what might be uncontainable.
Law, literature, and war are thus all profoundly connected--and it is this
connection this edited volume aims to explore, assembling essays by preeminent
scholars to discuss the ways in which literary works can shed light on legal
thinking about war, and how a deep understanding of law can lead to interpretive
insights on literary works. Some of the contributions concern the lives of
soldiers; others focus on civilians living in war zones who are caught up in
the conflict; still others address themselves to the home front, far from the
theatre of war. By collecting such diverse perspectives, the volume aims to
illuminate how literature has reflected the totalizing nature of war and the
ways in which it distorts law across domains.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Alison L. LaCroix is
Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law and an Associate Member of the Department
of History at the University of Chicago.
Jonathan S. Masur is the John P. Wilson Professor of Law at the
University of Chicago Law School.
Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor
of Law and Ethics in the Law School and the Philosophy Department at the
University of Chicago
Laura Weinrib is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Suzanne
Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction, Alison L. LaCroix,
Jonathan S. Masur, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Laura Weinrib
Chapter 1: Law, Literature, and
War: A Plenary Panelm with Justice, Stephen G. Breyer, Judge Diane P. Wood,
Paul Woodruff, and Martha C. Nussbaum
PART I: FORMING A NATION THROUGH
WAR'S CRUCIBLE
Chapter 2: Law and War in the New
World: The Last of the Mohicans, The Spy, and The Pioneers, Douglas Baird
Chapter 3: New Light on the Trial
of Billy Budd, Richard H. McAdams and Jacob I. Corré
Chapter 4: Two Humanitarianisms
in Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," John Fabian
Witt
Chapter 5: Law and its Limits in
Albion Tourgée's Bricks without Straw, Kate Masur
PART II: THE TWO GREAT WARS
Chapter 6: Trenches, Cadences,
and Faces: Social Connection and Emotional Expression in the Great War, Nancy
Sherman
Chapter 7: Crucified by the War
Machine: Britten's War Requiem and the Hope of Postwar Resurrection, Martha C.
Nussbaum
Chapter 8: Undivided Loyalty: The
Problem of Allegiance in the Literature of War, Alison L. LaCroix and William
A. Birdthistle
Chapter 9: Law and Legitimacy in
A Farewell to Arms, Laura Weinrib
Chapter 10: Lawmaking, Bilateral
Rules, and a Debunking of Catch-22, Saul Levmore
Chapter 11: Catch-22 and the Law
of Large Organizations, Jonathan S. Masur
PART III: AFTERWARD
Chapter 12: Sympathizing with
Both Sides: Racism and American Intervention in Vietnam, Paul Woodruff
Chapter 13: Paul Beatty, the
Rhetoric of War, and the Selling Out of Civil Rights, Elizabeth Anker
Chapter 14: How War Makes (and
Unmakes) the Democratic State: Reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit
West In A Populism Age, Aziz Z. Huq
Chapter 15: Black Radicalism,
Autobiography, and Prisoners of War, Tommie Shelby
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