Assignment Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/An-Annotated-Bibliography-Of-Law-Review 👈

1. An Annotated Bibliography
of Law Review Articles Addressing
Feminist Perspectives on “Law in Literature”*
Tammy R. Pettinato**
Ms. Pettinato provides a selective annotated bibliography covering law review
articles that address the topic of “law in literature” from a feminist perspec-
tive. She includes an essay that explains the motivation for the bibliography,
the working definitions of law in literature and feminism used in its construc-
tion, and the methodology for finding and selecting articles for inclusion.
[L]iterature has often been touted for its potential to upset what we take for granted, to
open our eyes to our unacknowledged assumptions. In this respect, the law and literature
movement shares much with feminist jurisprudence, which has also sought to uncover
and to challenge hidden preconceptions—about such matters as truth, objectivity, or gen-
der—that lurk within the law, often to the distinct detriment of women.1
¶1 Though the “law and literature” movement arguably began in 1973 with the
publication of James Boyd White’s seminal work The Legal Imagination,2
only
in the 1980s did it begin to gain acceptance as a legitimate area of inquiry in the
legal academy. Since then, the movement has grown rapidly; at last count, eighty-
four law schools in the United States and Canada offered at least one course in the
field,3
and two major law journals now devote large portions of their scholarship
to it.4
As one of the movement’s founders, Judith Koffler, has said, “These days,
law library shelves groan under the weight of new books on law and narrative, law
and semiotics, and law and literary ideas, while their dusty co-tenants (traditional
jurisprudence tomes) make grudging room.”5
* © Tammy R. Pettinato, 2007.
** MSI Candidate, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. The author would like to thank
Barbara Garavaglia, head of reference at the University of Michigan Law Library, for her advice,
encouragement, and support throughout the writing of this bibliography.
1. Jane B. Baron, Language Matters, 34 J. MARSHALL L. REV. 163, 166 (2000).
2. JAMES BOYD WHITE, THE LEGAL IMAGINATION: STUDIES IN THE NATURE OF LEGAL THOUGHT AND
EXPRESSION (1973).
3. Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette, Law and Literature: Joining the Class Action, 29 VAL. U. L. REV. 665,
666 (1995).
4. Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature and Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities.
5. Judith Koffler, Review Essay: Three Looking Glasses for Law and Literature, 10 CARDOZO STUD. L.
& LITERATURE 69, 70 (1998). Koffler also noted, “A recent issue of the New York Review of Books
advertises the Oxford Book of Short Legal Stories, and that indisputable arbiter of authority, Westlaw,
reveals 1,592 iterations of the phrase ‘Law and Literature’ in its legal periodicals.” Id.
55

2. ¶2 Yet from its beginning, the law and literature marriage suffered an ailment
inherited from both its legal and literary forebears which was identified in a 1990
Yale Law Journal article by law professor Judith Resnik and literature professor
Carolyn Heilbrun—a white male standard for what merited study.6 In particular,
Resnik and Heilbrun noted the near absence of feminist perspectives in the law
and literature movement and concluded that the field would not live up to its
potential to make the law more humane until this absence was recognized and
rectified.7
Resnik and Heilbrun’s call to arms sparked a tremendous growth in law
and literature scholarship with a feminist perspective. The purpose of this selected
annotated bibliography is to track the best of that scholarship coming out of the
American legal academy. The most important criterion for inclusion was thought-
ful, well-documented analysis; however, a number of other factors also played a
role in determining which articles were included.
¶3 First, a note about terminology. Both “law and literature” and especially
“feminism” are nonmonolithic ideas encompassing a plethora of perspectives,
not all of them consistent with or uncritical of one another. This bibliography
focuses on a subcategory of the law and literature movement known as law in
literature, which “traces the workings and development of law, lawyers, legal
themes, and theories through literary works.”8
Furthermore, it includes only those
works addressing law in literature from an explicitly feminist perspective. These
pieces analyze how the play of law in the text either treats women differently
than men or, conversely, treats them similarly without recognizing that they are,
in fact, differently situated. In other words, this bibliography includes pieces that
gave a feminist jurisprudential reading of literary texts. For a working definition
of feminism, I begin from the liberal feminist tradition of equal treatment for men
and women, adopting Catherine MacKinnon’s critique of the difference/sameness
conception of equality, which she has argued ignores hierarchies of power,9
and
incorporating some of Carol Gilligan’s and Robin West’s views on women’s ethics
as being qualitatively different than men’s.10
Still, I offer this bibliography with the
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
6. “But when we delved into the newly-minted discipline, we found to our dismay . . . that like both
‘law’ and ‘literature,’ much of that hyphenated field examines a world in which white men attempt
from a place of power to speak as if for us all.” Carolyn Heilbrun & Judith Resnik, Convergences:
Law, Literature, and Feminism, 99 YALE L. J. 1913, 1913 (1990). The authors labeled which portions
of the article were written by each. In one of her sections, Resnik says, “While some of the history of
the domain ‘law and literature’ has been told, relatively little attention has been paid to the question
of the canon—of who is given voice, who cited, quoted, repeated, and who marginalized, ignored
submerged.” Id. at 1936.
7. See id. at 1914, 1952–53.
8. Teree E. Foster, But is it Law? Using Literature to Penetrate Societal Representations of Women, 43
J. LEGAL EDUC. 133, 133 (1993).
9. See generally CATHARINE MACKINNON, FEMINISM UNMODIFIED: DISCOURSE ON LIFE AND LAW (1987).
10. See, e.g., CAROL GILLIGAN, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE: PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AND WOMEN’S
DEVELOPMENT (1982); ROBIN WEST, CARING FOR JUSTICE (1997).
56

3. caveat that the very possibility and even desirability of analyzing from a “woman’s
perspective” is hotly contested in feminist circles.11
¶4 As noted earlier, the scope of this bibliography is limited to pieces treat-
ing “law in literature” with an explicitly feminist analysis. Thus, articles that
dealt chiefly with, for example, women’s narratives in the courtroom were not
included. Nor were articles that analyzed a literary work chiefly for its legal or
feminist implications, but not both. Additionally, I did not automatically character-
ize certain women’s issues as “feminist”; thus, a piece dealing with, say, abortion
laws in Victorian literature may or may not have been included depending on the
author’s treatment and emphasis. I chose to include only works that appeared in
United States legal publications, particularly law reviews, though I did not limit
the authors to law professors or practitioners. My reasons for this limitation were
partly practical—to limit the number of journals being reviewed—and partly pro-
fessional—I was looking for legal, rather than purely literary, criticism. I firmly
believe that these two traditions, law in literature as jurisprudential method versus
law in literature as literary criticism, though similar, differ in fundamental ways,
most obviously in their implications. As a lawyer and avid believer in the legal
possibilities of the law in literature movement, I wanted to focus on how other
legal practitioners envisioned these possibilities. Books were not included because
an insignificant amount dealt with these issues in any depth;12
the chief arena for
the overlap of law in literature with feminist jurisprudence is the law review.
¶5 Furthermore, in the nonhierarchical spirit of feminism, I did not exclude
articles based on the repute of their author. Thus, works by students and practitio-
11. Drucilla Cornell has eloquently summarized this debate: “If there is to be feminism at all, as a
movement unique to women, we must rely on a feminine voice and a feminine ‘reality’ that can be
identified as such and correlated with the lives of actual women. Yet all accounts of the Feminine
seem to reset the trap of rigid gender identities, deny the real differences among women (white
women have certainly been reminded of this danger by women of color), and reflect the history of
oppression and discrimination rather than an ideal to which we ought to aspire.” Drucilla Cornell, The
Doubly-Prized World: Myth, Allegory and the Feminine, 75 CORNELL L. REV. 644, 644–45 (1990).
For an introduction to more specific critiques from a variety of perspectives, see AUDRE LORDE, The
Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, in SISTER OUTSIDER: ESSAYS AND SPEECHES
110 (1984); Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics,
and Violence Against Women of Color, in CRITICAL RACE THEORY: THE KEY WRITINGS THAT FORMED
THE MOVEMENT 357 (Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw et al. eds., 1995); Adrienne Rich, Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, in POWERS OF DESIRE: THE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY 177
(Ann Snitow et al. eds., 1983); JUDITH BUTLER, GENDER TROUBLE: FEMINISM AND THE SUBVERSION
OF IDENTITY (1990); Chandra Mohanty, Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses, in THIRD WORLD WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF FEMINISM 51 (Chandra Mohanty et al. eds.,
1991).
12. Readers interested in books about the intersection of law in literature and feminism might consider
MARIA ARISTODEMOU, LAW AND LITERATURE: JOURNEYS FROM HER TO ETERNITY (2000); SUSAN
SAGE HEINZELMAN & ZIPPORAH BATSHAW WISEMAN, REPRESENTING WOMEN: LAW, LITERATURE AND
FEMINISM (1994); JACQUELINE ST. JOAN & ANNETTE BENNINGTON MCELHINEY, BEYOND PORTIA:
WOMEN, LAW AND LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES (1997); WEST, supra note 10; MELANIE
WILLIAMS, EMPTY JUSTICE: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LAW, LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY (2002).
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 57

4. ners, as well as law professors, were considered and included provided they treated
the subject matter in a thorough, complex, and thoughtful manner. This, to me, is
the highest criterion for credibility. Similarly, the attuned reader will notice that
some prominent names in both the law in literature movement and the feminist
jurisprudence movement are missing; this was simply because their scholarship,
though central to these movements, was not sufficiently focused in the specific
disciplinary overlap that is the subject of this bibliography. Book reviews were
included provided they offered original thoughts on the topic, rather than simply a
description of a given book’s contents. Lastly, though I did limit this bibliography
to works treating “literature”—thus excluding films and other important nonprint
humanistic media—I did not limit my conception of literature to what could be
called “high,” “medium,” or “low-brow” works. Though by its nature and due to
the interests of its chief practitioners, law in literature scholarship tends to analyze
classic works, articles on less “serious” texts were also included. Such inclusion
is especially important in a field where what counts as literary and legal texts
has been part of the struggle in making women’s voices heard. Additionally, as
Carolyn Heilbrun has pointed out, such works often take risks that provide the
building blocks for more complicated treatments.13
¶6 My method for locating articles was twofold. First, I searched major law
review databases and online indexes, including Westlaw, LexisNexis, HeinOnline,
LegalTrac, and the Index to Legal Periodicals. I typically searched for some combi-
nation of the terms “law and literature,” “law in literature,” and “feminism,” using,
of course, expanders, connectors, and other tools offered by individual databases
as appropriate. I also searched for major authors and articles in the law and litera-
ture field to find other articles in which they were mentioned. Second, I read the
footnotes of the articles I reviewed for references to other articles and authors that
may have been overlooked in my initial searches. I stopped my research when both
of the above methods began consistently yielding the same articles and names.
¶7 The works that follow were selected for their thorough and well-analyzed
treatments of a complicated and sometimes contentious subject. I offer them to
the reader with a sense of hope founded in the fact that, sixteen years after the
publication of Resnik and Heilbrun’s “manifesta” in the Yale Law Review,14 there
are enough excellent works addressing feminist perspectives in the field of law and
literature to merit a selected annotated bibliography, even when focusing on only
one aspect of the field. Here’s to many more.
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
13. Heilbrun argues that writers of popular fiction often prefigure movements that are taken up and
improved upon later in literary fiction. “The way is cleared for geniuses, whether in music, or litera-
ture, or art, by less astonishingly gifted creators who take chances, try out the new, and leave behind
works deeply flawed and oddly original. They never achieve the magnificence, the style, the elegance
of those who will eventually follow them, but they are as essential to the production of geniuses as
they are often ignored or disdained.” Carolyn Heilbrun, The New Female Detective, 14 YALE J. L. &
FEMINISM 419, 419–20 (2002).
14. Heilbrun & Resnik, supra note 6.
58

5. Bibliography
Allen, Anita. “The Jurisprudence of Jane Eyre.” Harvard Women’s Law Journal
15 (1992): 173–238.
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre has been viewed by many critics as a feminist work.
Allen argues, however, that far from being a manifesto of women’s liberation,
Jane Eyre depicts a world of constraint, much of it rooted in unfair laws that
found their justification in the liberal positivism articulated by Bronte’s contem-
porary, legal philosopher John Austin. Over the course of the novel, Jane comes
to terms with the rightness of following civil law and agrees with the positivist
notion that, through reason, one can learn what is moral and just. Though Allen
notes that Jane is rebellious in the sense that she ultimately determines that her
own intellect and judgment are as reliable as those of the social elites, she argues
that the ultimate outcome is one friendly to conservatives—that were feminism
or other social reforms to prevail, the ultimate sense of what is good and right in
society would change little. Thus, the jurisprudence of Jane Eyre is one that asks
for fairness but maintains the greater structures of oppression in society.
Angel, Marina. “A Classical Greek Influences an American Feminist: Susan
Glaspell’s Debt to Aristophanes.” Syracuse Law Review 52 (2002): 81–103.
As the title suggests, this article discusses the influence of Aristophanes’s
Lysistrata15
on Susan Glaspell’s 1916 one-act play Trifles,16
which she also
turned into a short story titled “A Jury of Her Peers.”17
In Glaspell’s story, a
woman murders her abusive husband, but the investigation is thwarted by two
sympathetic women. Angel argues that Glaspell Americanized, modernized, and
feminized Aristophanes’s image of female solidarity through the women, who
use traditional female knowledge, such as that of quilting, to hide evidence that
would have led to the accused’s conviction. In Lysistrata, on the other hand, a
group of Greek women protest and ultimately help to end a war by denying sex
to their husbands. Angel argues that Aristophanes provided Glaspell both liter-
ary inspiration and a departure point inasmuch as Glaspell’s work is concerned,
in a way that Lysistrata is not, with direct violence against women and direct
instances of women seeking justice for themselves.
Angel, Marina. “Criminal Law and Women: Giving the Abused Woman Who Kills
A Jury of Her Peers Who Appreciate Trifles.” American Criminal Law Review
33 (1996): 229–348.
Susan Glaspell’s short story “A Jury of Her Peers”18 and its play version Trifles19
are considered classic literary works on feminism and the law. Here, Angel uses
15. ARISTOPHANES, LYSISTRATA (411 B.C.E.), reprinted in 2 THE COMPLETE GREEK DRAMA: ALL THE
EXTANT TRAGEDIES OF AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, AND EURIPIDES, AND THE COMEDIES OF ARISTOPHANES
AND MENANDER, IN A VARIETY OF TRANSLATIONS 809 (Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill Jr. eds.,
1938).
16. Susan Glaspell, Trifles, in LIFTED MASKS AND OTHER WORKS 259 (Eric S. Rabkin ed., 1993).
17. Susan Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers, EVERYWEEK, Mar. 5, 1917, at 42, reprinted in THE BEST
AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY 18 (John Updike ed., 2000).
18. Susan Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers, EVERYWEEK, Mar. 5, 1917, at 42, reprinted in THE BEST
AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF 1917, at 256 (Edward J. O’Brien ed., 1918).
19. Glaspell, supra note 16.
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 59

6. them as a jumping off point for discussing women’s unique relationship to crimi-
nal law. Angel begins with a discussion of “A Jury of Her Peers” as a pedagogical
device before branching into the history of legalized woman abuse in a variety of
legal systems, including Roman law, English law, and early American law. From
there, Angel traces American political struggles such as the right to vote and
the right to sit on juries, before moving into a historical-sociological analysis of
patterns of woman abuse, differences in male and female perceptions, and how
these two factors play out in the criminal justice system. Angel argues that until
diversity is accounted for, the criminal justice system will continue to serve only
those who originally created it—white males.
Angel, Marina. “Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers: Woman Abuse
in a Literary and Legal Context.” Buffalo Law Review 45 (1997): 779–844.
When Susan Glaspell wrote Trifles20 and “A Jury of Her Peers,”21 the battered
woman defense did not exist. Angel analyzes the play and story in this historical
and legal context as an expression of the treatment of abused women under the
law. She examines how Glaspell was influenced by various personal and politi-
cal forces, including a real-life case, to create a story that starkly contrasted the
different ways men and women viewed and experienced the law.
Angel, Marina. “Teaching Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers and Trifles.”
Journal of Legal Education 53 (2003): 548–63.
As its title indicates, this article explores the pedagogical value of teaching Susan
Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”22 and its play version Trifles23 in the legal class-
room. Angel argues that these stories can be integrated into a discussion of legal
topics such as self-defense, provocation, or general jurisprudence to help expose
law students to the conflict between understanding and accepting multiple per-
spectives and creating laws that represent and reflect a cohesive society. She also
emphasizes the importance of literature in creating empathy and the value of
such empathy as an aspect of legal learning.
Aristodemou, Maria. “The Seduction of Mimesis: Theater as Woman and the Play
of Difference and Excess in Aeschylus’s Oresteia.” Cardozo Studies in Law
and Literature 11 (1999): 1–34.
Aristodemou’s exploration of the Oresteia24 is centered in the meanings inher-
ent in performance. She argues that reality, including legal reality, is a kind of
theater, and that drama can be used to expose the performative aspect of this
reality. In particular, Aristodemou argues for a feminist reading/performance of
Aeschylus’s Oresteia that accounts for the murdered mother, sacrificed daugh-
ter, and restrained Furies. By questioning the conception of the Oresteia as a
play about the triumph of ordered justice, Aristodemou believes the meaning of
justice itself can be questioned. She analogizes this to the courtroom, implicitly
arguing that the law itself is a play open to revision based on previously uncon-
sidered perspectives.
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
20. Id.
21. Glaspell, supra note 18.
22. Glaspell, supra note 17.
23. Glaspell, supra note 16.
24. AESCHYLUS, THE ORESTEIAN TRILOGY (Philip Vellacott trans., Penguin 1956).
60

7. Ashe, Marie. “The ‘Bad Mother’ in Law and Literature: A Problem of Represen-
tation.” Hastings Law Journal 43 (1992): 1017–38.
Ashe argues that literature should be incorporated into clinical legal education
because it provides an arena for students to explore moral ambiguity and to
engage with social contexts that they may not understand. She contends that by
developing such understanding, students will be better able to deal with clients
who make them uncomfortable. In particular, Ashe analyzes Toni Morrison’s
Beloved25
as a tool for problematizing students’ notions of what constitutes a
“bad mother” and argues that such a reading could help students come to terms
with representing parents accused of neglect or abuse.
Ayres, Susan. “Incest in A Thousand Acres: Cheap Trick or Feminist Re-Vision?”
Texas Journal of Women and the Law 11 (2001): 131–56.
JaneSmiley’sAThousandAcres26
waswrittenasamodernizationofShakespeare’s
King Lear27
from the perspective of the latter’s two “evil” daughters, Goneril and
Regan. Ayres sees this modernization as a particularly feminist revision. She
argues that several of Smiley’s plot changes, particularly the addition of father-
daughter incest and an emotional and psychological subtext of longing for the
mother, provide an alternative view of patriarchal reality in which the feminine
voice is no longer silenced or suppressed. Ayres compares Smiley’s revisions
with what happens in the courtroom as opposing narratives battle for the title of
“truth,” a particularly apt comparison since Smiley has stated, the author tells us,
her desire to be the “lawyer” for Goneril and Regan. Further, Ayres notes how
the differing reactions of Smiley’s sisters—renamed Ginny and Rose—to their
father align with contemporary legal debates over rules versus context, or what
Robin West calls the ethic of justice versus the ethic of care.28
Ayres acknowl-
edges possible critiques of her feminist reading, but argues that the novel is
ultimately an effective portrayal of the sexual shame imposed by male violence
against women.
Baron, Jane B. “Language Matters.” John Marshall Law Review 34 (2000) 163–80.
Baron sees the connection between law and literature and feminism in the poten-
tial for both to unveil hidden assumptions and unmask stereotypes by revealing
that most aspects of our world and language are socially constructed. Yet she
warns that in discussing the law in this way, scholars risk creating their own
social construction of the law as eternally separate and oppressive. She argues
that it is important to analyze the role of language in creating social roles, not for
the opportunity such an analysis might offer to step outside of the social realm,
which she sees as impossible, but to understand how these roles are constructed
and how they can be changed.
Bryan, Patricia L. “Stories in Fiction and in Fact: Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her
Peers and the 1901 Murder Trial of Margaret Hossack.” Stanford Law Review
49 (1997): 1293–1364.
25. TONI MORRISON, BELOVED (1987).
26. JANE SMILEY, A THOUSAND ACRES (Ballantine Publ’g Group 1996) (1991).
27. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR (R.A. Foakes ed., Thomas Nelson & Sons 1997) (First Folio
1623).
28. See WEST, supra note 10.
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 61

8. Susan Glaspell’s short story, “A Jury of Her Peers,”29 was based on a real-life
case that she had covered as a young newspaper reporter. In that case, an abused
woman was convicted of murdering her husband as he slept, and the abuse was
considered a motive rather than a mitigating factor. Bryan shows how Glaspell
built on this story to illustrate the injustices of a male-dominated legal system that
could not or would not listen to female perspectives and narratives. She argues
that certain legal outcomes depend heavily on whose story is told and believed,
which is often a factor of who controls the power in the courtroom. Storytelling
and empathetic listening are thus key to creating more just outcomes.
Bulman, Jessica. “Edith Wharton, Privacy and Publicity.” Yale Journal of Law and
Feminism 16 (2004): 41–82.
In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published an influential law review
article, “The Right to Privacy,”30 in which they argued that privacy was, at its
heart, the right to be let alone. Bulman explores the connections between Warren
and Brandeis’s conception of privacy and privacy as conceived in the novels of
Edith Wharton. She argues that contrary to Warren and Brandeis, Wharton felt
that some level of self-publicity preceded privacy, particularly for women. Under
Warren and Brandeis’s view, privacy was essential to selfhood and was necessary
to establish intimacy. Bulman shows how this view of privacy depended on the
Victorian notion of separate public and domestic spheres. She then argues that
Wharton inverts this conception in her novels by revealing the centrality of dis-
play and self-promotion to the creation of womanhood at the turn of the twentieth
century. Bulman argues that for women at this time, publicity preceded privacy.
Cairney, Kathleen F. “Recognizing Acquaintance Rape in Potentially Consensual
Situations: A Re-Examination of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”
American University Journal of Gender and the Law 3 (1995): 301–32.
Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles31 is typically recognized as a novel
about the injustice of the differing sexual mores imposed upon men and women
in the nineteenth century. However, Cairney points out that the common literary
interpretation is that Tess’s downfall is the result of a seduction. Cairney refutes
this interpretation, arguing that Tess was actually a victim of acquaintance rape.
She argues that reading Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles can illuminate the issue
of acquaintance rape and its consequences for women, especially the fundamen-
tal problem of society’s perception of what constitutes consent. Cairney argues
from the premise that literature can change social perceptions, especially about
controversial issues, by giving readers the opportunity to experience and explore
concrete, realistic situations within the confines of fiction.
Coffman, Carrie. “Gingerbread Women: Stereotypical Female Attorneys in the
Novels of John Grisham.” Southern California Review of Law and Women’s
Studies 8 (1998): 73–100.
Coffman argues that images of law in popular culture play a powerful role in
creating public perceptions of the law, lawyers, and legal practice. Thus, popu-
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
29. Susan Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers, EVERYWEEK, Mar. 5, 1917, at 42, reprinted in SOCIAL INSIGHT
THROUGH SHORT STORIES 62 (Josephine Strode ed., Harper & Brothers 1946).
30. Samuel Warren & Louis Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 HARV. L. REV. 193 (1890).
31. THOMAS HARDY, TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES (David Skilton ed., Penguin Books 1978).
62

9. lar images of female lawyers can create misconceptions and stereotypes about
women as able players in the game of law. Coffman analyzes the novels of John
Grisham, arguing that they contain many stereotypical images of female attor-
neys as sexually manipulative, emotionally troubled, or both. The most compe-
tent of the attorneys are, on the other hand, so cold as to seem almost inhuman.
Such images risk perpetuating the myth that women cannot be professionally
successful without losing or sacrificing some trait or quality essential to their
womanhood.
Cohen, Jane Maslow. “‘TheArrival of the Bee Box’: Feminism, Law, and Literature.”
Harvard Women’s Law Journal 13 (1990): 345–61.
This essay introduces a collection of feminist literary pieces published in the
Harvard Women’s Law Journal and discusses the possibilities and risks of such
writing as contributions to feminist legal theory. Cohen argues that the possibility
of what she deems “a literature of protest and anger” (p.359) to affect political
change within the law should be structured around interpretive method rather
than simply around substance. For Cohen, the chief potential of adding overtly
feminist texts to the law and literature canon is their ability to inspire discussion
in the course of their interpretation, thus opening up the possibility for tolerance
and persuasion.
Cohen, Jane Maslow. “Feminism and Adaptive Heroinism: The Paradigm of Portia
as a Means of Introduction.” Tulsa Law Journal 25 (1990): 657–734.
The image of Portia from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is often invoked
as a symbol for female lawyering. This article analyzes more closely exactly
what type of lawyer Portia is. Cohen argues that the image of Portia offers a
sense of agency to women operating in a world of constraint, especially those
who prefer to take small steps toward progress rather than abandoning the system
all together. Yet analyzing Portia can also illuminate the ethical risks attendant
with wielding the power of the law, particularly in noticing how quickly Portia
went from seeking salvation for Antonio to seeking vengeance against Shylock.
Cohen argues that such risks mean feminists must engage with the professional
ethos of the law. Yet unlike many other authors, she sees potential for progress
not in bringing “feminine” values to bear on the law but in subverting the very
notions of justice as masculine and mercy as feminine.
Durst, Ilene. “Valuing Women Storytellers: What They Talk About When They
Talk About Law.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 11 (1999): 245–68.
Building on Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and
Women’s Development,32 Durst argues for the importance to legal practice of
Robin West’s “ethic of care,”33 which Durst defines as an ethic that goes beyond
people should be treated equally to no one should be harmed. Durst analyzes
two books by and about women, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees34 and
Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World,35 to show how women’s moral reasoning is
32. CAROL GILLIGAN, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE: PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AND WOMEN’S DEVELOPMENT
(1982).
33. See WEST, supra note 10.
34. BARBARA KINGSOLVER, THE BEAN TREES (1989).
35. JANE HAMILTON, A MAP OF THE WORLD (1994).
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 63

10. often different than men’s and thus different than the dominant legal paradigm. In
these books, the female characters encounter a world of rules with the knowledge
that true justice requires compassion. Durst suggests that reading such narratives
can help law students not only to understand “other” voices—the perspectives
of people with whom they may never identify except in a lawyer-client relation-
ship—but also to imagine possibilities for change.
Foster, Teree E. “But Is It Law? Using Literature to Penetrate Societal Represen-
tations of Women.” Journal of Legal Education 43 (1993): 133–48.
Debate continues to rage as to the value of literature in legal education. Foster
casts a vote for the legitimacy of literature in the law school curriculum while
detailing her experience teaching a law and literature course aimed at under-
standing societal perceptions of women. Foster argues that an essential aspect
of legal education is learning to sympathize with and understand multiple view-
points. She argues that to learn these skills, law students must understand the
context in which various social roles are created and enacted and that literature
provides a prime ground for working through these issues. In her class, Foster
focused on the role of women, but she argues that literature could be used to fos-
ter understanding of other minority groups as well. Additionally, she argues that
literature offers more practical benefits for lawyers, such as ideas for improving
the situations of disadvantaged groups and language skills like the use of meta-
phor and rhetoric.
Gemmette, ElizabethVilliers. “Filling in the Silence: DomesticViolence, Literature
and Law.” Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal 32 (2000): 91–112.
Gemmette discusses the importance of literature for teaching empathy and an
understanding of the human condition, qualities that she sees as essential to just
legal practice. She argues that by reducing human stories to only a specified set
of facts, legal opinions attempt to create concrete, logical answers in place of
a more nuanced reality, limiting their readers’ (particularly legal practitioners)
ability to respond to the human stories behind the words. Using the example of
domestic violence, Gemmette shows the importance of knowing the full story in
reacting to a given situation and claims that reading literature can help legal prac-
titioners to avoid making mistakes caused by an inability to empathize. In par-
ticular, she uses facts from three fictional accounts of domestic violence, Susan
Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers,”36 Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked into
Doors,37 and Jane Hamilton’s The Book of Ruth,38 to illustrate how differently a
fact pattern and its actors can appear depending on context.
Gemmette, Elizabeth Villiers. “Law and Literature: Joining the Class Action.”
Valparaiso University Law Review 29 (1995): 665–860.
This article updates an earlier survey of North American law schools conducted
by the author in 1987.39 In the updated survey, Gemmette focuses on the way
law and literature courses are being taught and the motivations for teaching
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
36. Susan Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers, EVERYWEEK, Mar. 5, 1917, at 42, reprinted in LAW IN LITERATURE:
LEGAL THEMES IN SHORT STORIES (Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette ed., 1995).
37. RODDY DOYLE, THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS (1997).
38. JANE HAMILTON, THE BOOK OF RUTH (1988).
39. Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette, Law and Literature: An Unnecessarily Suspect Class in the Liberal Arts
Component of the Law School Curriculum, 23 VAL. U. L. REV. 267 (1989).
64

11. them. She finds multiple changes since the 1987 survey, which she classifies into
three broad categories: “pedagogy,” “story-telling,” and “the Law and Literature
canon.” Included in these changes is an increase in law and literature courses
whose primary aims are to explore and critique representations of women and to
otherwise further the goals of feminist jurisprudence. The article also includes
three appendixes: a list and description of the courses taught, arranged by law
school; a cumulative bibliography of fiction being taught or recommended in
such courses; and a cumulative bibliography of nonfiction being taught or recom-
mended in such courses.
Goodwin, Michele Cammers. “The Black Woman in the Attic: Law, Metaphor and
Madness in Jane Eyre.” Rutgers Law Journal 30 (1999): 597–682.
A central claim of the law and literature movement is that literature can illuminate
how law and other social forces are enacted in people’s lives.Yet members of the
movement must be careful not to reinscribe certain aspects of oppression in their
eagerness to expose others. Goodwin takes issue with the feminist neglect of the
racism implicit in the construction of insanity and blame in Charlotte Bronte’s
Jane Eyre,40 analyzing the intersection of race, gender, madness, and the law in
the novel. She notes that madness and the legal treatment of the mad in Victorian
England and elsewhere was irrevocably tied to ideas about gender roles and racial
superiority as well as poverty. She also uses the novel to analyze property laws
that disadvantaged and disenfranchised women and children of all races.
Harrison, Melissa. “A Time of ‘Passionate Learning’: Using Feminism, Law,
and Literature to Create a Learning Community.” Tennessee Law Review 60
(1993): 393–429.
This article describes and discusses an independent study course on law, litera-
ture, and feminism that its author taught at the University of Montana in the early
1990s. Harrison argues that a major benefit of the course was its ability to pro-
vide a safe space for the students to learn and discuss in ways that were shut out
in the regular law school curriculum. In particular, she cites other articles about
the alienation and overt hostility that many women feel in law school and the
legal field in general, and argues that both literature and feminism can provide
modes of empowerment for these women.
Heilbrun, Carolyn, and Judith A. Resnik. “Convergences: Law, Literature, and
Feminism.” Yale Law Journal 99 (1990): 1913–56.
In this essay, a literature professor (Heilbrun) and a law professor (Resnik)
explore the absence of feminism and feminist texts in law and literature cur-
riculums and speculate on the causes and consequences of this absence. The
essay analyzes the exclusion of feminism from the law and literature canon,
arguing that recent developments in feminist literary criticism, particularly those
informed by such French theorists as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and
especially Jacques Derrida, should be brought to bear on legal studies and legal
thought. As it stands, the law and literature movement remains dominated by
white male voices and perspectives that reify the legitimacy of this perspective
in both fields. Feminist theory offers a way to challenge this perspective and to
thereby enhance the potential of the law and literature movement to generate real
40. CHARLOTTE BRONTE, JANE EYRE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (New American Library 1982) (1847).
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 65

12. change in who decides which voices are heard. As a sample of the possibilities of
a law and literature canon informed by feminism, the authors provide the sylla-
bus for a course they jointly taught, titled Feminist Theory: Law and Literature.
Hirshman, Linda R. “Bronte, Bloom, and Bork: An Essay in the Moral Education
of Judges.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 137 (1988): 177–231.
This article begins with a discussion of how the success of Alan Bloom’s The
Closing of the American Mind,41 which attacked moral relativism and found its
solution in the study of the humanities, portended a similar trend in legal studies
as evidenced by the contemporaneous rejection of Robert Bork’s nomination to
the United States Supreme Court. Hirshman argues that law-related studies have
begun to show that judging always involves moral choice and that this realization
demands a method of instructing future and current judges on how to make such
choices. Adopting Bloom’s solution, Hirshman sees the field of law and litera-
ture as a locus for such education. She illustrates her argument with an extended
discussion of how certain texts about women, particularly Charlotte Bronte’s
Jane Eyre,42 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter,43 and Margaret Atwood’s
The Handmaid’s Tale,44 can illuminate what she sees as the major moral/legal
dilemma of today—reproductive choice. Hirshman argues that abortion can be
justified morally because of its centrality to the feminist project of women’s
equality and that literature about the role of reproductive control in structuring
women’s lives can help make this case.
Hirshman, Linda R. “Sex, Money, and Classical Philosophy: A Comment on Anita
Allen’s ‘The Jurisprudence of Jane Eyre.’” Harvard Women’s Law Journal 15
(1992): 239–44.
Hirshman rejects Anita Allen’s contention, made in an article45 published in the
same volume of the Harvard Women’s Law Journal, that Charlotte Bronte’s Jane
Eyre reinscribes legal positivism and is thus a weak tool for showing how the law
can be expanded to include different voices. Instead, Hirshman argues, Jane is an
almost perpetual rebel. Though she works within the constraints of her time, she
retains her independent moral judgment, thereby acting as both a feminist and
a democrat. Furthermore, her occasional acquiescence to civil law is consistent
with a pluralistic, communitarian, Aristotelian view of the law rather than accep-
tance of the legal positivist order.
Kalsem, Kristen Brandser. “Looking for Law in All the ‘Wrong’ Places: Outlaw
Texts and Early Women’s Advocacy.” Southern California Review of Law and
Women’s Studies 13 (2004): 273–325.
Kalsem argues that an analysis of nineteenth-century women’s writing is useful
for illuminating the role of women in legal history. By giving women’s voices an
arena in which they could question the truth and authority of the law, nineteenth-
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
41. ALAN BLOOM, THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND (1987).
42. CHARLOTTE BRONTE, JANE EYRE (1847), reprinted in THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF LITERATURE BY
WOMEN: THE TRADITION IN ENGLISH 351 (Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Guber eds., 1985).
43. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THE SCARLET LETTER (1850), reprinted in GREAT SHORT WORKS OF
HAWTHORNE 43 (Frederick C. Crews ed., 1967).
44. MARGARET ATWOOD, THE HANDMAID’S TALE (1985).
45. Anita Allen, The Jurisprudence of Jane Eyre, 15 HARV. WOMEN’S L.J. 173 (1992).
66

13. century novels, which had a largely female readership, were practicing a kind of
feminist jurisprudence. More specifically, Kalsem shows how Sarah Grand’s The
Beth Book46 and George Paston’s A Writer of Books47 explicitly promulgated a
feminist politics that rejected the notion that women’s natural role was as wife
and mother. This article also has an analysis of some nineteenth-century nonfic-
tion by women. Kalsem’s ultimate argument is that a proper understanding of
women’s legal history, especially the role of women’s resistance and agency in
creating it, is to be found outside of traditional legal texts, which often excluded
women’s voices.
Koffler, Judith. “The Feminine Presence in Billy Budd.” Cardozo Studies in Law
and Literature 1 (1989): 1–14.
The place of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is firmly secured in the law and lit-
erature canon, but it is most often analyzed as a masculine text about the rule of
law. Koffler takes a different tack, arguing that the novella’s preoccupation with
the “feminine in man” is ultimately highly subversive of traditional notions of
masculine and feminine because it argues against the traditional binary concep-
tion of the two sexes. She shows how both masculine and feminine combine in
the character of Billy Budd who is an innocent object of love and envy, and then
reappear later when Captain Vear invokes the patriarchal authority of law to sup-
press the “feminine” desire to spare Billy’s life. The juxtaposition of these depic-
tions argues for a natural bisexuality that, if repressed by the hypermasculinity
of war and industrialization, risks quashing the love of men for men, which is
metaphorically feminine.
Koffler, Judith. “Review Essay: Three Looking Glasses for Law and Literature.”
Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 10 (1998): 69–88.
This essay reviews three books on law and literature, one of which, Robin West’s
Caring for Justice,48 looks at the field from a feminist perspective. Koffler gives
a comprehensive overview of West’s arguments and adds her own insights into
some of West’s themes. She argues that West’s book touches on some important
points for feminist theorists of law and literature: the ways in which narratives
and images of injury help to make victims seem more real, the ability of literature
to unmask legal and other theories that attempt to legitimatize oppression, and
the importance of giving voice and ear to harms that are not legally cognizable.
However, she also critiques West’s overreliance on gendered binaries in develop-
ing her jurisprudential arguments.
Komisaruk, Adam. “The Privatization of Pleasure: ‘Crim. Con’ in Wollstonecraft’s
Maria.” Law and Literature 16 (2004): 33–58.
Komisaruk traces the historical law of criminal conversation (crim. con.) under
which men could sue their wives’ lovers. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or The
Wrongs of Woman49 has often been viewed as a critique of the “crim. con.” law,
but Komisaruk argues that its implicit acceptance of the capitalist system of
46. SARAH GRAND, THE BETH BOOK: BEING A STUDY OF THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH CALDWELL MACLURE, A
WOMAN OF GENIUS (Dial Press 1980) (1897).
47. GEORGE PASTON, A WRITER OF BOOKS (Academy Chi. Publishers 1999) (1899).
48. ROBIN WEST, CARING FOR JUSTICE (1997).
49. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, MARY; AND THE WRONGS OF WOMAN (Gary Kelly ed., 1998).
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 67

14. private property is actually of a piece with the underlying rationale of the law.
Similarly, Wollstonecraft’s acceptance of certain aspects of middle-class values
undermines her fight for sexual justice because it leaves in place many of the
structures that cause injustice. The author ties this analysis to what he claims are
false representations of the private as more “free” than the public, pointing out
that laws about what goes on in the public sphere are often much more protective
of victims of oppression.
Ledwon, Lenora. “Maternity as a Legal Fiction: Infanticide and Sir Walter Scott’s
The Heart of Midlothian.” Women’s Rights Law Reporter 18 (1996): 1–16.
Law and literature theorists often note the ways in which law is falsely conceived
as somehow more objective and truthful than other types of texts. Ledwon argues
that the law is inherently fictional, built, as are novels, from an evidentiary
epistemology, that is, one that relies on collections of testimony and evidence
to create its truth. Ledwon further contends that because the law is associated
with the masculine and the novel with the feminine, literary texts about the law
are a particularly ripe ground for examining the role of the law in the social
construction of particular aspects of femininity. To wit, she analyzes the role of
the maternal in Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian,50
concluding that the
novel’s murderous mother character reveals an underlying fear that maternity,
rather than being a female role that naturally helps to secure social stability, is in
reality a legal fiction.
Minton, Shira Pavis. “Hawthorne and the Handmaid: An Examination of the Law’s
Use as a Tool of Oppression.” Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal 13 (1998):
45–74.
Minton argues that the law is essentially male-centered. Certain laws, such as
those surrounding reproductive rights, can be most accurately viewed as attempts
to dominate women by controlling their sexuality. To illustrate her point, Minton
analyzes images of the sexual control of women in two novels—Nathanial
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter51
and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s
Tale.52
Minton argues that these two novels offer frighteningly similar accounts,
though set several centuries apart, of the extremes to which a society premised on
male-centered laws controlling female sexuality could turn if allowed to follow
to its logical conclusion.
Murnaghan, Sheila. “Staging Ancient Crimes: A Response to Aristodemou,
Tiefenbrun, Purkiss, and Pantazakos.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature
11 (1999): 77–90.
This article analyzes several other articles addressing the theme of law in
Greek drama that appeared in the same volume of Cardozo Studies in Law and
Literature.53 Murnaghan shows how three of those articles provide feminist
analyses of the law through critical readings of the tragic heroines Clytemnestra,
Medea, and Antigone. She also examines some of the problems associated with
appropriating these dramatic characters for feminist jurisprudence.
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
50. SIR WALTER SCOTT, THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN (Everyman’s Library 1984) (1818).
51. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THE SCARLET LETTER (Washington Square Press 1994) (1850).
52. ATWOOD, supra note 44.
53. See Symposium, Classical Greek Themes in Contemporary Law, 11 CARDOZO STUDIES L. &
LITERATURE 1 (1999).
68

15. Pether, Penelope. “Jangling the Keys to the Kingdom: Some Reflections on The
Crucible, on an American Constitutional Paradox, and on Australian Judicial
Review.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 8 (1996): 317–38.
Pether sees the project of law and literature as one of questioning power, an
“appeal” to a higher authority for justice. She notes the gendered binaries
implicit in the discourse of law versus equity, where the former is seen as mas-
culine and the latter as feminine. She also argues the merits of a poststructuralist
feminist analysis of law and literature, which could call attention to and question
such binaries. The essay includes an analysis of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible
with a focus on the pregnant Elizabeth Proctor as well as some discussion of the
use of literary portrayals of law to challenge authority and provide metaphorical
“judicial review” for silenced voices.
Pether, Penelope. “Sex, Lies and Defamation: The Bush Lawyer of Wessex.”
Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 6 (1994): 171–202.
This article looks at women’s unequal interactions with the law through the lens
of the novels of Thomas Hardy. Pether argues that women’s perspectives can be
incorporated into the law and literature movement not because literature pro-
vides concrete examples of realistic situations (a proposition that, according to
the author, has been discredited in literary studies), but rather because literature
provides a grounds for exploring varying realities and their accompanying ethi-
cal dilemmas. For Pether, women’s real stories are their own case studies, while
literature is a place where the act of storytelling itself and its consequences can
be considered and compared with legal narratives.
Purkiss, Diane. “The Children of Medea: Euripides, Louise Woodward, and
Deborah Eappen.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 11 (1999): 53–64.
This article compares the modern-day murder trial of a nanny accused of kill-
ing the baby she was hired to care for with the classical drama of a murderous
mother, Euripides’s Medea.54
Purkiss analyzes the media’s sexist treatment of
both the nanny and the mother who hired her, particularly in the way the lat-
ter was constructed as neglectful for continuing to work after she had a child.
Purkiss argues that both Medea and the real-life drama reveal deep underlying
cultural fears about the nature of maternal love, especially the fear that women
may not love their infants above all else.
Resnik, Judith. “Changing the Topic.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 8
(1996): 339–62.
Six years after her original critique55 of the lack of feminist voices in the law and
literature movement, written jointly with Carolyn Heilbrun, Resnik argues that
feminist theory remains on the margins of the emerging movement, to the detri-
ment of both women and the movement itself. She shows how the creation of the
law and literature canon faces some of the same problems of ignoring women’s
voices as legal doctrine and the court system. She argues that the claimed
purposes of law and literature practitioners, as well as the texts they choose to
effect those purposes, are plagued by the same centrality of the male perspective
that feminist jurisprudence has shown distorts justice in a wide variety of legal
54. EURIPIDES, MEDEA (Rex Warner trans., Univ. of Chi. Press 1955).
55. Heilbrun & Resnik, supra note 6.
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 69

16. situations. Resnik then advocates for a law and literature in which hierar-
chies—law over literature and certain legal texts over others—are explored and
dismantled to allow for the emergence of silenced or as-yet-unimagined perspec-
tives, particularly those of women.
Sanger, Carol. “Seasoned to the Use.” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 1338–
1406.
Sanger reviews two legal novels, Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent56 and Sue
Miller’s The Good Mother.57 In both books, Sanger argues, women are “pun-
ished” (p.1339) for nonmarital sex. Sanger notes that both novels paint the
female victims as bad mothers and argues that sexuality is implicitly pitted
against motherhood. She further argues that the images in the novels show how
sexually active single mothers are often seen to be bad mothers and thus worthy
of less sympathy by both society and the law, even when they have been overtly
victimized. Sanger believes that literary works go beyond reflecting reality to
creating it. Thus, works like Presumed Innocent and The Good Mother risk par-
ticipating in the creation of an unjust legal system where women who engage in
sex for fun or profit are less protected under the law.
Threedy, Debora L. “The Madness of a Seduced Woman: Gender, Law, and
Literature.” Texas Journal of Women and the Law 6 (1996): 1–46.
This article first gives an overview of the law and literature movement, discuss-
ing the various relationships between the two fields as separate entities as well
as the multiple ways that the two fields together have been studied. Threedy is
especially concerned with what she sees as a recent consideration of law and
literature—the importance of narrative and authorship. The article goes on to
analyze Susan Fromberg Schaeffer’s 1983 novel, The Madness of a Seduced
Woman,58 to illustrate how certain themes that have been central to feminist
jurisprudence, such as the indeterminacy of the truth, are played out in the novel.
Threedy’s goal is to show how this new novel by and about a woman fits into the
law and literature canon as literary feminist jurisprudence.
Turano, Margaret Valentine. “Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and the Marital
Property Law.” Harvard Women’s Law Journal 21 (1998): 179–226.
Under the law of coverture, women lost all rights to own property after they
were married, effectively making them the wards of their husbands. Turano uses
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre59 and Jane Austen’s Emma60 as lenses through
which to examine this law, arguing that both books reflect the influence of cov-
erture while simultaneously subverting it through strong, intelligent heroines.
Turano also examines some of the underlying rationales for coverture, such as
the husband-as-guardian, and shows how these rationales were treated in the
novels.
Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
56. SCOTT TUROW, PRESUMED INNOCENT (1987).
57. SUE MILLER, THE GOOD MOTHER (1986).
58. SUSAN FROMBERG SCHAEFFER, THE MADNESS OF A SEDUCED WOMAN (Penguin Books 1991) (1983).
59. CHARLOTTE BRONTE, JANE EYRE (Bantam 1987) (1847).
60. JANE AUSTEN, EMMA (1816), reprinted in JANE AUSTEN: HER COMPLETE NOVELS 587 (1981).
70

17. Warren, James. “Bristol Molly: Sexuality, Power, Silence.” Cardozo Studies in
Law and Literature 1 (1989): 21–26.
Responding to an article by Judith Koffler on the feminine in Billy Budd pub-
lished in the same volume of Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature,61
Warren
argues that Koffler’s feminist analysis of the story as subversive of gender roles
itself reveals stereotypical images of masculine and feminine present in the
novella. He argues contrary to Koffler that Melville does not comment on the
suppression of the feminine but instead invokes it as a symbol for victimization.
Thus, Billy Budd is actually not at all subversive of gender roles, but instead uses
them as convenient literary devices.
Weil, Lisa. “Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse: Toward an Integrated
Jurisprudence.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 6 (1994): 1–70.
The namesake journey portrayed inVirginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse62
has been
analyzed as a symbol for multiple philosophical, emotional, and social journeys.
Here, Weil interprets the novel as a work of legal philosophy, where the voyage
to the lighthouse is symbolic of a quest for justice. Weil argues that the domestic
setting of the novel and the personalities of the characters reveal how women’s
different ways of knowing and making judgments were undervalued in the face of
patriarchal privilege. Further, she argues that Woolf envisioned a legal system that
would integrate both the masculine and feminine perspectives. In doing so, Woolf
pre-figured both the feminist jurisprudence and the law and literature movements’
emphasis on subjectivity as an essential characteristic of justice.
West, Robin. “The Feminine Silence: A Response to Professor Koffler.” Cardozo
Studies in Law and Literature 1 (1989): 15–20.
Responding to Judith Koffler’s article on the feminine in Billy Budd published
in the same volume of Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature,63
West reviews
Koffler’s analysis that the feminine is repressed in the novella and asks whether
this fact makes Billy Budd a less valuable member of the law and literature
canon. West considers how the novella would have been different had several of
the key characters been female, concluding that the suppression of the feminine
was the source of injustice. For West, Billy can be likened to a battered woman
and his fate can act as a cautionary tale about what happens when certain voices,
here feminine voices, cannot be heard. Thus, West reaffirms the novella’s place
in the canon but with an interpretive twist.
West, Robin. “Invisible Victims: A Comparison of Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her
Peers, and Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener.” Cardozo Studies in
Law and Literature 8 (1996): 203–52.
West uses Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener64 and Susan Glaspell’s “A
Jury of Her Peers” to illustrate that the law is often complicit in harms that it
fails to address. West argues that there is a certain class of harms that are unno-
61. Judith Koffler, The Feminine Presence in Billy Budd, 1 CARDOZO STUDIES L. & LITERATURE 1
(1989).
62. VIRGINIA WOOLF, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (Harvest/HBJ 1989) (1927).
63. Koffler, supra note 61.
64. HERMAN MELVILLE, THE SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE (Raymond Weaver ed., 1956).
An Annotated Bibliography of Law Review Articles
2007-03] 71

18. Law Library Journal [Vol. 99:1
ticed or purposefully denied by legal institutions and that literature is one way,
indeed sometimes the only way, to give voice to these harms. She shows how
both are concerned with the process by which previously unrecognized harms
are legitimated in the social world, especially through human solidarity. In her
discussion of “A Jury of Her Peers” in particular, West focuses on the suffering
of women under patriarchal marriage and notes the danger of a certain strand
of feminism that, by seeking to deny that all women are victims, risks ignoring
those who are.
72