The Judge’s Voice: Literary and Legal Emblemata
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Jeanne Gaakeer
Abstract
In literary-legal discussions of the subject of “voice” in law the focus is often on the voices of defendants and victims, on the view that for a variety of reasons their voices are the ones most often diminished or even totally “unheard.” On the view that voice and speech are connected and that one’s voice is therefore important for one’s identity, I aim to look in this paper at the judge’s voice in law and literature. While the metaphor “the voice of the law” is traditionally taken to refer to judicial impartiality and/or a formalistic view of law as distant from the actions or disputes it is supposed to govern, I want to take the words literally and, on the view that getting a voice of one’s own as a judge requires more than institutional authority and power, ask questions including, but not limited to: What if the voice of the judge is oppressed or even silenced, e.g. by undue influence of a third party? What if the judge is unable to find the right voice when she experiences cognitive dissonances between her institutional voice and her conscience? What space is the judge allowed in the public sphere to speak her voice on cases pending or on societal developments? What space is the judge allowed to show her emotions inside the courtroom? I hope to illustrate my point with emblemata for further discussion in the form of European Human Rights Court decisions and literary works including Lowell B. Komie’s short story “Ash,” Ernst Wiechert’s novella “The judge,” and Kiran Desai’s novel The Inheritance of Loss.
©2015 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Shakespeare and the Law
- Weak Kings and Perverted Symbolism. How Shakespeare Treats the Doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies
- Free Will and Folly in As You Like It
- Romeo and Juliet: The Importance of a Name
- Unreliable Sources for Law: Dying Declarations in Shakespeare’s King John, Othello & King Lear
- Disruptions and Negotiations of Identity in Act 1 of Shakespeare’s Othello
- Research
- Illegal Search and Seizure, Due Process, and the Rights of the Accused: The Voices of Power in the Rhetoric of Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker
- The Judge’s Voice: Literary and Legal Emblemata
- Power and the Trial: The Tension Between Voices and Silence
- Voice, Authority and the Law in Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang
- Silence, Power and Suicide in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours
- Celsus and Chatwin go Walkabout
- Representing the Unrepresentable: Making Law Anyway?
- Book Reviews
- Gary Watt: Dress, Law and Naked Truth. A Cultural Study of Fashion and Form
- José Calvo González: Direito curvo
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Shakespeare and the Law
- Weak Kings and Perverted Symbolism. How Shakespeare Treats the Doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies
- Free Will and Folly in As You Like It
- Romeo and Juliet: The Importance of a Name
- Unreliable Sources for Law: Dying Declarations in Shakespeare’s King John, Othello & King Lear
- Disruptions and Negotiations of Identity in Act 1 of Shakespeare’s Othello
- Research
- Illegal Search and Seizure, Due Process, and the Rights of the Accused: The Voices of Power in the Rhetoric of Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker
- The Judge’s Voice: Literary and Legal Emblemata
- Power and the Trial: The Tension Between Voices and Silence
- Voice, Authority and the Law in Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang
- Silence, Power and Suicide in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours
- Celsus and Chatwin go Walkabout
- Representing the Unrepresentable: Making Law Anyway?
- Book Reviews
- Gary Watt: Dress, Law and Naked Truth. A Cultural Study of Fashion and Form
- José Calvo González: Direito curvo
