%0 Journal Article
%T Is Narrative Essential to the Law?: Precedent, Case Law and Judicial Emplotment
%A Andrew Benjamin Bricker
%J Law, Culture and the Humanities
%@ 1743-9752
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1743872115627413
%X Storytelling pervades almost every aspect of the law. Many narrativistic legal elements, however, have in fact been little more than historically transitory. Given the precarious status of narrative at law, I argue we should focus instead on one of the most historically consistent acts of legal storytelling: the judicial opinion. Here I examine in particular the invocation of precedent in legal opinions, what I call ˇ°judicial emplotment,ˇ± as an almost archetypal act of formalized storytelling. As I go on to argue, the courts justify legal outcomes by invoking precedent, thereby placing decisions within a specific and heavily formalized legal-narrative structure
%K judicial opinion
%K precedent
%K stare decisis
%K narrative
%K storytelling
%K Law and Literature
%K emplotment
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1743872115627413