Judging from Experience

A unique application of philosophical hermeneutics, literary theory and narratology to the practice of judging

Combining her expertise in legal theory and her judicial practice in criminal law in a Court of Appeal, Jeanne Gaakeer explores the intertwinement of legal theory and practice to develop a humanities-inspired methodology for both the academic interdisciplinary study of law and literature and for legal practice.

This volume addresses judgment and interpretation as a central concern within the field of law, literature and humanities. It is not only a study of law as praxis that combines academic legal theory with judicial practice, but proposes both as central to humanistic jurisprudence and as a training in the conduct of public life. Drawing extensively on philosophical and legal scholarship and through analysis of literary works, Gaakeer proposes a perspective on law as part of the humanities that will inspire legal professionals, scholars and advanced students of law alike.

Key Features

• Focuses on the importance of judging for the humanities
• Combines legal theory and legal practice to show the importance of the bond of theory and practice in law and legal theory
• Incorporates the findings of philosophical hermeneutics and narratology for our continued thought on the position of law and literature, and law and the humanities as interdisciplinary movements
• Creates philosophical–hermeneutical building blocks for a methodology for the humanistic study of law as praxis
• Reflects on interdisciplinarity in legal studies against a backdrop of the tension between the natural sciences and the humanities

Literary case studies include:

• Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet
• Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities
• Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg’s asylum poems
• Pat Barker’s Regeneration
• John Coetzee’s Disgrace
• Ian McEwan’s The Children Act
• Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised
• Juli Zeh’s The Method