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08-29-2012, 10:35 PM
http://quest.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/historicism-1.jpg
By Dennis McCarthy
Judy Cornett can't attest to it but family lore traces her lineage to Lady Mary Bruce, sister of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland and leader of Scottish independence. Regardless of the truth of the Lady Mary story, Cornett's roots sink deep into her Scottish ancestry, and she draws on the rugged independence of her heritage for her research as an associate professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
In fact, Cornett is more than just a law professor. She's also a literary scholar, with a doctorate in English from the University of Virginia, and her research into English literature has spilled over into her legal scholarship.
“As I was writing my dissertation about 18th-century English law, women, and the novel,” Cornett says, “I realized I had no idea what theoretical approach could possibly justify what I was doing. I went in search of a theoretical justification and found New Historicism.” It was a fortuitous discovery.
“New Historicism is just one of a dozen or so literary theories that came of age during the late 20th century,” Cornett notes, “and each theory has its own peculiar style and way of looking at the world.”
http://quest.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/cornett-1.jpgJudy Cornett
For instance, New Criticism—a popular literary theory in the 1940s and '50s, developed by John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and others—takes a narrow view of a literary text, Cornett says. The historical environment in which the work was written and even the author's intentions are of little value in understanding the text. To the New Critic, the literary work is a self-contained entity and should be studied only in light of the words on the page.
New Historicism—largely developed by Harvard professor and Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt—assumes an opposite point of view, Cornett says. New Historicists are more interested in the social and political milieus that shape a literary work.
“A popular approach for a New Historicist is to juxtapose two texts from the same period to see how one text casts light on the other,” she says. “I found New Historicism to be such a creative tool for literary scholarship that I began using it in my legal scholarship as well.”
Summary JudgementCornett's first legal application of New Historicism was in a seminal article on the law of summary judgment, published in the Tennessee Law Review in 2001. In the article, Cornett analyzed the Tennessee Supreme Court's 1993 decision Byrd v. Hall . She juxtaposed Byrd v. Hall with the book Gossip , by Patricia Meyer Spacks, a past-president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Cornett's dissertation advisor at the University of Virginia.
Cornett says that in Byrd the Tennessee Supreme Court misread prior US Supreme Court opinions on summary judgment, “slipping into gossip, one of the lowest forms of discourse,” when discussing the decisions of the federal court. Byrd was one of the most significant cases in the 1990s because it framed the way courts dispose of cases before trial. Cornett maintains, however, that many of the statements in Byrdthat judges and lawyers have assumed were holdings were in reality just gossip—what lawyers call “dicta”—and did not have the force of law.
In 2008, in another major summary judgment case, Hannan v. Alltel , the Tennessee Supreme Court cited Cornett's 2001 law review article when it clarified several of the issues Cornett had examined in Byrd .
Like Byrd before it, Hannan has already proved to be one of the most important cases of the decade. In an upcoming Tennessee Law Review article on Hannan , Cornett is once again stirring up controversial waters whose ripples may well be seen for years.
Legal EthicsCornett has also applied New Historicism to her scholarship on legal ethics. In an upcoming Loyola University Chicago Law Journal article, she juxtaposes a series of articles on genre theory, by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and others, to blogging. Her primary concern is the ethics of blogging by lawyers.
In explaining the uniqueness of her approach to understanding the law, Cornett says that the law “traditionally has been conceived of as a self-contained symbolic system, superior to other symbolic systems—with the possible exception of language itself—because of its coercive force.
“Legal rules and the forms in which they are articulated—typically, through statutes, regulations, and cases—were seen as abstract and universal. There was little scholarly attention given to the context in which the legal rules arose. Even the facts reported in cases were viewed simply as the legal equivalent of scientific lab observations—they merely provided the particulars that triggered the application of universal legal rules.
“My use of New Historicism to explore the law assumes just the opposite—that any manifestation of law, such as a statute or a case, is a culturally defined text and hence subject to critical literary analysis. It depends on culture; it illustrates culture; it influences culture; it's part of culture. Law is no different from or superior to any other manifestation of culture.”
Cultural ContextCornett believes that to really understand a statute or a case, you must understand its cultural context. “The use of juxtaposition—the technique of New Historicism—gives us just a little purchase on that larger culture,” she says. “You can juxtapose the representation of, for instance, women's intellect in a literary work, a feminist treatise, and a text on the law of evidence to see what a given culture at a particular time had to say about women's intellects. None of these discourses—the novel, the treatise, the law—is superior to the other. They all exist in a maelstrom of culture.”
Like most interdisciplinary scholars, Cornett uses theories and constructs from one discipline to shed light on another. She is a pioneer in applying New Historicism to legal analysis, however. But then as a descendent of the Bruce clan and Scottish independence—even if it is only family folklore—she has always been an individualist, the first to try out new ideas.
Cornett believes that New Historicism gives her a fresh set of eyes for looking at legal issues. By juxtaposing even apparently discordant texts, she is able to see patterns and relationships that she, or other legal analysts, might otherwise miss. And for Cornett, that is the essence of creativit
By Dennis McCarthy
Judy Cornett can't attest to it but family lore traces her lineage to Lady Mary Bruce, sister of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland and leader of Scottish independence. Regardless of the truth of the Lady Mary story, Cornett's roots sink deep into her Scottish ancestry, and she draws on the rugged independence of her heritage for her research as an associate professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
In fact, Cornett is more than just a law professor. She's also a literary scholar, with a doctorate in English from the University of Virginia, and her research into English literature has spilled over into her legal scholarship.
“As I was writing my dissertation about 18th-century English law, women, and the novel,” Cornett says, “I realized I had no idea what theoretical approach could possibly justify what I was doing. I went in search of a theoretical justification and found New Historicism.” It was a fortuitous discovery.
“New Historicism is just one of a dozen or so literary theories that came of age during the late 20th century,” Cornett notes, “and each theory has its own peculiar style and way of looking at the world.”
http://quest.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/cornett-1.jpgJudy Cornett
For instance, New Criticism—a popular literary theory in the 1940s and '50s, developed by John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and others—takes a narrow view of a literary text, Cornett says. The historical environment in which the work was written and even the author's intentions are of little value in understanding the text. To the New Critic, the literary work is a self-contained entity and should be studied only in light of the words on the page.
New Historicism—largely developed by Harvard professor and Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt—assumes an opposite point of view, Cornett says. New Historicists are more interested in the social and political milieus that shape a literary work.
“A popular approach for a New Historicist is to juxtapose two texts from the same period to see how one text casts light on the other,” she says. “I found New Historicism to be such a creative tool for literary scholarship that I began using it in my legal scholarship as well.”
Summary JudgementCornett's first legal application of New Historicism was in a seminal article on the law of summary judgment, published in the Tennessee Law Review in 2001. In the article, Cornett analyzed the Tennessee Supreme Court's 1993 decision Byrd v. Hall . She juxtaposed Byrd v. Hall with the book Gossip , by Patricia Meyer Spacks, a past-president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Cornett's dissertation advisor at the University of Virginia.
Cornett says that in Byrd the Tennessee Supreme Court misread prior US Supreme Court opinions on summary judgment, “slipping into gossip, one of the lowest forms of discourse,” when discussing the decisions of the federal court. Byrd was one of the most significant cases in the 1990s because it framed the way courts dispose of cases before trial. Cornett maintains, however, that many of the statements in Byrdthat judges and lawyers have assumed were holdings were in reality just gossip—what lawyers call “dicta”—and did not have the force of law.
In 2008, in another major summary judgment case, Hannan v. Alltel , the Tennessee Supreme Court cited Cornett's 2001 law review article when it clarified several of the issues Cornett had examined in Byrd .
Like Byrd before it, Hannan has already proved to be one of the most important cases of the decade. In an upcoming Tennessee Law Review article on Hannan , Cornett is once again stirring up controversial waters whose ripples may well be seen for years.
Legal EthicsCornett has also applied New Historicism to her scholarship on legal ethics. In an upcoming Loyola University Chicago Law Journal article, she juxtaposes a series of articles on genre theory, by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and others, to blogging. Her primary concern is the ethics of blogging by lawyers.
In explaining the uniqueness of her approach to understanding the law, Cornett says that the law “traditionally has been conceived of as a self-contained symbolic system, superior to other symbolic systems—with the possible exception of language itself—because of its coercive force.
“Legal rules and the forms in which they are articulated—typically, through statutes, regulations, and cases—were seen as abstract and universal. There was little scholarly attention given to the context in which the legal rules arose. Even the facts reported in cases were viewed simply as the legal equivalent of scientific lab observations—they merely provided the particulars that triggered the application of universal legal rules.
“My use of New Historicism to explore the law assumes just the opposite—that any manifestation of law, such as a statute or a case, is a culturally defined text and hence subject to critical literary analysis. It depends on culture; it illustrates culture; it influences culture; it's part of culture. Law is no different from or superior to any other manifestation of culture.”
Cultural ContextCornett believes that to really understand a statute or a case, you must understand its cultural context. “The use of juxtaposition—the technique of New Historicism—gives us just a little purchase on that larger culture,” she says. “You can juxtapose the representation of, for instance, women's intellect in a literary work, a feminist treatise, and a text on the law of evidence to see what a given culture at a particular time had to say about women's intellects. None of these discourses—the novel, the treatise, the law—is superior to the other. They all exist in a maelstrom of culture.”
Like most interdisciplinary scholars, Cornett uses theories and constructs from one discipline to shed light on another. She is a pioneer in applying New Historicism to legal analysis, however. But then as a descendent of the Bruce clan and Scottish independence—even if it is only family folklore—she has always been an individualist, the first to try out new ideas.
Cornett believes that New Historicism gives her a fresh set of eyes for looking at legal issues. By juxtaposing even apparently discordant texts, she is able to see patterns and relationships that she, or other legal analysts, might otherwise miss. And for Cornett, that is the essence of creativit