Today begins National Poetry Month , no foolin’. Given concerns voiced here about the blindering of America’s lawyers, how about honoring this ” cruellest month ” with a Convictions Poetry Slam? Let’s hear nominations for best, or worst, law poetry. By “law poetry” I mean:
- use of poetry in legal writing, by judges, lawyers, or legal scholars
- poems about law, or about law’s effect on society
- passages of prose that, intentionally or not, are poetic
To mark the month over at IntLawGrrls I reprinted America by Gertrude Stein . With effort that poem might be shoehorned into example No. 2. But it’s not a great fit, and in any event I’d rather kick off our slam with this snippet, representing example No. 3:
The facts of this
case
are, we must
hope,
extraordinary.
Michael H. v. Gerald D. (1989), by Antonin Scalia
More to come as the month unfolds; looking forward to your entries.
