Making the Case ― The Art of the Judicial Opinion

Writing in the tradition of Karl Llewellyn’s classic The Bramble Bush, Paul Kahn speaks in this book simultaneously to students and scholars. Drawing on thirty years of teaching experience, Kahn introduces students to the deep, narrative structure of the judicial opinion. Learning to read the opinion, the student learns the nature of legal argument. Thus Kahn’s exposition of the opinion simultaneously offers a theory of legal meaning that will be of great interest to scholars of law, humanities, and the social sciences. At the center of Kahn’s approach are ideas of narrative, persuasion, and self-government. His sweeping account of interpretation in law offers innovative views of the nature of authorship, the development and decline of doctrine, and the construction of facts.

Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities and director of Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. His previous publications include The Reign of Law, Legitimacy and History, and Law and Love.