Preface to the Symposium

Abstract

Less than a score of years ago, my welcoming toast would have semed an impudent conceit both in the world of the law and in the world of literature. Law school curriculum committees viewed a course in Law and Literature as a frill in the rigor of traditional legal studies; likewise, literature departments found much to contemplate as to the interrelation but did not yet consider it a true sub-specialty. Now, such courses are offered in the majority of American law schools (and no small number abroad), and literary critics and theoreticians are heavily involved in the discourse. So the world moves swiftly. With the inspiration of J. Allen Smith, then of the Rutgers Law faculty, and with the energy of Richard H. Weisberg of the fledgling Benjamin N. Cardozo School, the Law and Humanities Institute was born in 1979. In its first salvo, LHI announced as an early goal the publication of a scholarly journal dedi cated to the cross-fertilization of those twin disciplines, law and litera ture. In subsequent years, LHI has staged annual international sympo sia and frequent local gatherings on topics of interest not only to scholars, but to bar, bench, artists, and the laity as well. To offer a journal has been somewhat more arduous and dis tant in accomplishment than first imagined. From the earliest days of LHI, the Cardozo family has been friendly and generous in offering its support, particularly from the office of Dean Monroe E. Price and the Jacob Burns Institute. The fruit of this collaboration is now in your hands, the new and long awaited Cardozo Studies in Law and Litera ture, edited by members of LHI, by Cardozo Law School faculty, by prominent writers, and by other distinguished academics and lawyers. One of LHI's liveliest gatherings was the October 1987 sym posium under the able direction of Professor L.H. LaRue, at the law school of Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia. For the first time, an LHI conference focused on one author, one work: Herman Melville's final creation, the enigmatic and complex Billy Budd, Sailor. From the keynote comments of Professor Harrison