Introduction to the Volume

Abstract

It was indeed a special occasion. The setting was ideal: Boalt Hall of the University of California at Berkeley. The accommodations were spectacular: the Claremont Hotel and the careful organization of details by John Osborn made everyone as comfortable as lotus eaters. But these merely physical aspects hardly begin to describe the uniquely stimulating atmosphere that enveloped the and Literature Symposium on September 30 October 2, 1995. Sponsored by the and Humanities Institute, the and Literature Association of Australia, and the University of California (Berkeley), the symposium may well have been the first international conference of its kind. For three days, more than 100 judges, lawyers, scholars (and even some people with no legal background) from at least two continents gathered to discuss and debate fascinating and controversial issues in law and literature. Now we have the happy occasion of publishing some of the papers delivered at the wonderful 1995 symposium. This and the next issue of the Cardozo Studies in and Literature are devoted to that pleasant task. The papers reflect the wide range of topics discussed at the conference. Seven panels ran the gamut from Classics of and Literature Reconsidered to Feminism: the View from Australia and North America, from Theory of and Literature: Comparative Perspective to Memory, Race and Legal Narrative, from Nietzsche and the Law to Speech: Its Costs and Freedoms, and, finally, Lawyers, Judges and Scholars on Legal Storytelling. The range of topics shows only one facet of the diversity that marked the conference. The moderators, speakers and panelists came from different molds. Academics were not the only people who spoke. Practicing lawyers and sitting judges actively participated. It was precisely this difference in background and specific vocation that added zest to the conference.