Constructing Legal Narratives: Client-lawyers’ Stories

2016 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Keyword(s):  
Legal Narratives

Law and the Culture of Capital: A Critical Perspective on Labour’s Right to Associate in Developing Societies

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. A. Visano ◽  
Nicholas Adete Bastine
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Complex Form ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
Labour Standards ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Developing Societies ◽  
International Labour Standards ◽  
The Impact

Informed by critical theory, this paper focuses on the dialectical interplay between law and economics evident in the practices and policies of the International Labour Organization (ILO). It is argued, first, that governments do not comply with international labour standards because of the inherent weaknesses of the ILO as the source and enforcer of international obligations. Second, the parochial politicization of rights defers to the arrogance of ignorance. Third, developing societies are overwhelmingly preoccupied with socioeconomic development. In exploring the impact of ILO practices on developing societies within the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), this paper asks the following questions: to what extent does capital form and inform the law in relation to conflicting economic narratives of development and nationhood? How and why does the ILO talk up legal narratives of regulation and contest? How does law hegemonize capital integration? How does law symbolically function to mediate labour relations meanings and manipulate the inaction of civil society? Within the larger structure of “market forces,” the commodity of law is a complex form of social communication that diverts attention away from the political impact of predatory economies.

Legal Worlds and Legal Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Aaron J. Walayat ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Reflective Function ◽  
Moral Communication ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
Reflexive Function ◽  
The Way

More than a simple command of a sovereign, law is a form of moral communication, something that helps constitute the way we conceive of ourselves, our community, and our culture. In this essay, I argue that law is a form of “world projection,” a way for human communities to use law as an aesthetic way to understand themselves. Within this legal world are narratives that present an idealized reflection of our world. Law has two functions, a reflective function, in which it mirrors the actual world and a reflexive function, in which it corrects undesirable aspects of the actual world. It is through these functions that law describes the narratives within legal relationships in order to say something real and important about those corresponding relationships in the actual world.

scholarly journals Telling Stories out of School: An Essay on Legal Narratives

1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Farber ◽  
Suzanna Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Legal Narratives ◽  
Out Of School

scholarly journals First occupants: the erosion of indigenous sovereignty through legal narratives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor MacLean
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Court System ◽  
Land Claim ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty

Land claim cases within Canada have yielded mostly small wins for Indigenous nations. While certain cases represent success in reinstating rights to cultural practices, granting certain levels of autonomy, and acknowledging rights to land use for culturally relevant activities, overriding sovereignty rests with Canada. Even land claim cases deemed successful are still adjudicated within the Canadian court system, and it is the nation-state of Canada that determines the validity of Indigenous claims to traditional territories. In this paper, I explore the discursive and narrative devices utilized within judicial rulings that uphold Crown sovereignty and deny Indigenous sovereignty. I argue that Indigenous sovereignty is undermined in legal discourse through the use of concealed narrative acts, which serve to sterilize racialized legal doctrines and distort the social and political history of relations between Indigenous nations and the Crown.

Turning Vanity Fair into The Cœlestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray

Pólemos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-145
Author(s):  
Matteo Nicolini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Vanity Fair ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
English Constitutional History

Abstract The article addresses the different narratives that characterize English constitutional history. It first examines the mainstream narrative, i. e., the retrospective reading of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century constitutional events dispensed by jurists and politicians in an attempt to pack the Establishment Constitution. It then focuses on the alternative legal narratives about the Constitution elaborated during the Civil War and the Restoration. Among them, it ascertains John Bunyan’s impact on the Establishment Constitution. Bunyan was a member of the New Model Army, a radical, and a Puritan who ended up in prison. Despite this background, he exerted a strong influence on Victorian society and on Thackeray’s representation of the body politic. As a consequence, Bunyan entered the political discourse in the first half of the nineteenth century when politicians started to reform English representative institutions, and therefore became part of the Establishment Constitution.

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