Law and the Modern Condition: Literary and Historical Perspectives

xv, 266 pp. xv, 266 pp. Using fiction as a lens to view our present circumstances and our growing concerns about terrorism and civil liberties, each of the essays discusses a work of literary fiction - some classical, some modern - that concerns, directly or indirectly, the historical development of the law. Each essay considers the legal lessons about the fictional event or events at its core, lessons that tell us something worth remembering as we continue to chart law's evolution. These lessons, like those that may be found in all great literature, necessarily extend beyond the historical confines of the characters and plot and background of each story to embrace the modern condition - which, as these great stories suggest, is and always has been the only condition.Published by Talbot Publishing, an imprint of the Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.