This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Ben-Yishai, A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Victorian Precedents: Narrative Form, Law Reports and Stare Decisis

University of Haifa, Israel, abenyishai{at}univ.haifa.ac.il

Victorian-era law reports are often choppy or truncated, miserly in detail, and utterly lacking in character descriptions, creating what I have identified as an "anti-narrative" style. This article shows how the law reports use narrative conventions — often in counter-intuitive ways — to manifest the tension between a concrete case and the abstract rule which is its potential precedent. Incorporating a discussion of nineteenth-century theories of legal precedent and the history of common law reporting with a formal analysis, I contend that the insular "anti-narrative" form of the reports enables the communal nature and goal of precedential reasoning: the creation of a common law, dating from "time immemorial." It also reveals a legal doctrine — and a narrative genre — in crisis.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, Vol. 4, No. 3, 382-402 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1743872108093103


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?