« Another encouraging report on those released under federal CARES Act | Main | New CCJ commission to examine factors driving veterans' involvement in criminal justice system »
August 22, 2022
"Legal Fiction: Reading Lolita as a Sentencing Memorandum"
The title of this post is the title of this intriguing new article authored by Christina Frohock now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:
The idea of a legal narrative often focuses on identifying a narrative within the law, for example, the persuasive power of storytelling in a trial court motion or an appellate brief. The story emerges from the law. This Article proposes inverting that focus so that we identify the law within a narrative. Using the example of Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel Lolita, the Article explains how we can read the novel as a prolonged sentencing memorandum. That memorandum casts the infamous first-person narrator, recounting his crimes under the pseudonym of Humbert Humbert, as a defendant writing pro se.
In Lolita, the law emerges from the story, showing that an entire legal document may be redrawn as a narrative. The legal document and the narrative are one, with a distinct point of view in favor of the criminal defendant. This unity between law and narrative illuminates a deep, essential goal shared by both genres: garnering sympathy. The notion of law without sympathy thus rings hollow. Finally, this essential link between law and sympathy shines a new light on the law’s role to promote justice. Justice must be measured at least partly as an expression of sympathy rather than solely as a cold calculation of costs and benefits.
August 22, 2022 at 09:05 PM | Permalink
Comments
Positively brilliant made even moreso with Nabokov.
Posted by: Fluffyross | Aug 23, 2022 9:27:07 AM
Lolita was cancelled ffs.
Posted by: whatever | Aug 23, 2022 4:31:29 PM
The book, genius. That's where one finds narrative.
Posted by: Fluffyross | Aug 23, 2022 7:07:56 PM