Creating Legal Worlds: Story and Style in a Culture of Argument

A legal judgment is first and foremost a story, a narrative of facts about the parties to the case. Creating Legal Worlds is a study of how that narrative operates, and how rhetoric, story, and style function as integral elements of any legal argument.

Through careful analyses of notable cases from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Greig Henderson analyses how the rhetoric of storytelling often carries as much argumentative weight within a judgement as the logic of legal distinctions. Through their narrative choices, Henderson argues, judges create a normative universe – the world of right and wrong within which they make their judgements – and fashion their own judicial self-images. Drawing on the work of the law and literature movement, Creating Legal Worlds is a convincing argument for paying close attention to the role of story and style in the creation of judicial decisions.

Greig Henderson is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.