As we segue to
May
, the month set aside to mark Better Sleep, Good Car Care, Photography, Salad, Eggs, and Barbecue—I kid you not—let’s end April’s
Convictions Poetry Slam
with one last post on law and poetry.
Turns out it’s the subject of
Law and Poetry
, 11 Roger Wms. L. Rev. 353 (2006), by
Edward J. Eberle
and
Bernhard Grossfeld
, law professors at Roger Williams and Universität Münster, respectively. In addition to discussing some of the questions that
Kenji
and
I
explored, the article includes a number of passages mentioned here this month. To talk of Justice Harry A.
Blackmun and baseball
and of Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist and the flag
, the authors add Ninth Circuit Judge
Stephen Reinhardt
‘s
quotation
of the anti-lynching ballad
Strange Fruit
in n.14 of his dissent in a capital punishment case. The article continues with many more examples of ways that law influences poetry and that poetry influences law. I leave you with one such quote, from “Variations on Variations on a Theme” by
Lawrence Joseph
, a St. John’s law professor:
And that’s the law. To bring to light
most hidden depths. The juror screaming
defendant’s the devil staring at her
making her insane. The intense strain
phrasing the truth, the whole truth, nothing
but sentences, endless sentences.
most hidden depths. The juror screaming
defendant’s the devil staring at her
making her insane. The intense strain
phrasing the truth, the whole truth, nothing
but sentences, endless sentences.