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''Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law'' is a collection of ten essays, written by
James Boyd White James Boyd White (born 1938) is an American law professor, literary critic, scholar and philosopher who is generally credited with founding the " law and Literature" movement. He is a proponent of the analysis of constitutive rhetoric in the anal ...
in 1985, that examine
forensic rhetoric Forensic rhetoric, as coined in Aristotle's '' On Rhetoric'', encompasses any discussion of past action including legal discourse—the primary setting for the emergence of rhetoric as a discipline and theory. This contrasts with deliberative rhe ...
as it creates community, as an example of what White calls
constitutive rhetoric Constitutive rhetoric is a theory of discourse devised by James Boyd White about the capacity of language or symbols to create a collective identity for an audience, especially by means of condensation symbols, literature, and narratives. Suc ...
. White supported the Law and Literature Movement. This movement was in contrast to two other movements of the 1970s and 1980s,
Law and economics Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law. The field emerged in the United States during the early 1960s, primarily from the work of scholars from the Chicago school of econ ...
and Critical Legal Studies (CLS), in holding that a scientific view of law left little room to examine the rhetoric of written and spoken law itself.


Content summary

In ''Heracles' Bow: Persuasion and Community in Sophocles Philoctetes, James Boyd White, through an analysis of the ancient Greek play
Philoctetes Philoctetes ( ''Philoktētēs''; , ), or Philocthetes, according to Greek mythology, was the son of Poeas, king of Meliboea (Magnesia), Meliboea in Thessaly, and Demonassa or Methone (Greek myth), Methone. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer ...
, distinguishes between two methods of persuasion: dolos (deceitful persuasion) and peitho (genuine statements made for the purpose of forming community). White compares using rhetoric on another person as a means-to-an-end against viewing the person as an end-in-itself. He relates this to the teaching of law through a discussion of methods that an attorney should use in the art of persuading others.White, James Boyd. ''Heracles' Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law''. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Print. In ''Rhetoric and Law: The Arts of Cultural and Communal Life'', White compares two definitions of law: his own, which is that law is a branch of rhetoric, and the traditional view of law as institutional authority. He outlines three elements specific and necessary to legal rhetoric: first, that lawyers need to speak the language of their
audience An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or ...
, or that law is culture-specific; second, that law is always a creative performance; and third, that legal rhetoric contains an ethical identity, or
ethos ''Ethos'' is a Greek word meaning 'character' that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the ...
. ''The Study of Law as an Intellectual Activity: A Talk to Entering Students'', originally a lecture given to a class of first-year law students, outlines how learning law is not simply memorizing a set of rules. White claims that, in learning law, it is imperative that students first identify their own ethos to become effective practitioners. In ''The Invisible Discourse of the Law: Reflections on Legal Literacy and General Education'', originally a lecture given to educators on writing, White argues that legal language is difficult to understand because the law is generalized and non-specific. These characteristics mean that legal language is always subject to the interpretation of the reader, thus creating a rhetorical situation. White contends in ''Reading Law and Reading Literature: Law as Language'' that law is a language and a lawyer must also operate as a
literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
. He explains how law is its own form of language, which means that it is subject to open interpretation. The language of the law creates a
legal culture Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...
just as spoken languages have cultures associated with them. A lawyer must use good judgment in interpreting the law just as individuals use good judgment in interpreting how to speak to one another. In ''The Judicial Opinion and the Poem: Ways of Reading, Ways of Life'' White examines how reading poems and cases during his legal training enforced his belief that the practice of law is an art, and one can use this training to discover Truth. In ''Fact, Fiction, and Value in Historical Narrative: Gibbon's Roads of Rome'', White reasons that it is impossible for a narrative to exclude the author's values, no matter how factual it may be. Using
Gibbon Gibbons () are apes in the family Hylobatidae (). The family historically contained one genus, but now is split into four extant genera and 20 species. Gibbons live in subtropical and tropical forests from eastern Bangladesh and Northeast Indi ...
's
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', sometimes shortened to ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. The six volumes cover, from 98 to 1590, the peak of the Rom ...
as an example, he illustrates how the form, syntax, and presentation of any writing necessarily shape the way a reader receives the facts. As a result, the opinion of the reader is shaped by the opinion of the writer. ''Telling Stories in the Law and in Ordinary Life: The'' Oresteia ''and "Noon Wine"'' explores how legal stories take root in the stories told by laypeople in social situations. He argues that it is impossible to tell a story in the language of the law without relying on a non-legal situation. In ''Making Sense of What We Do: The Criminal Law as a System of Meaning'', White asks whether
criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It proscribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and Well-being, welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal l ...
makes sense as a system of meaning. He seeks to answer that question through an examination of the purpose of criminal law, which he concludes to be placing blame. He examines the rhetoric of criminal law in order to identify its true audience. In the last essay, ''Plato's'' Gorgias ''and the Modern Lawyer: A Dialogue on the Ethics of Argument'', White constructs his own
Socratic dialogue Socratic dialogue () is a genre of literary prose developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC. The earliest ones are preserved in the works of Plato and Xenophon and all involve Socrates as the protagonist. These dialogues, and subse ...
to determine whether the ancient Platonian argument of rhetoric vs. dialectic can be applied to modern law. He argues that today's attorneys are a modern-day version of Plato's "
Gorgias Gorgias ( ; ; – ) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years ...
" and concludes with the importance of maintaining ethics in the practice of law.


Scholarly review

David Cole argues that White's view and the CLS are not that different; both are built on
ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
. Cole criticizes White for relying too much on law as an end in itself, and failing to address the practical application of tangible, codified law. Meanwhile, Weisberg's main criticism of ''Heracles' Bow'' is that White's explanation remains too abstract. He contends that White does not express any knowledge of the actual law or the application thereof. Weisburg argues that White relies on law too much as a function of pure rhetoric, and that he ignores the scientific aspect of the discipline. This is a common criticism of the Law and Literature Movement. Victoria Kahn claims that White's view of the law ignores the relationship of law and inequality. She criticizes his work for its lack of explaining how the rhetoric of law is applied to different genders, races, and classes in different ways. She argues that seeing law simply as a rhetorical situation ignores the real-life power struggles within the application of law to society.Kahn, Victoria. “Rhetoric and the Law.” The Johns Hopkins University Press 19.2 (1989): 21-34. JSTOR. Web. 23 April 2013.


References

{{improve categories, date=December 2022 Works about law Rhetoric 1988 non-fiction books American essay collections University of Wisconsin Press books