From ratios to stories
When I first came to law school, my passion for all things literary was separate and distinct from anything I’d learn out of a casebook or sample in a previous student’s summary of a course. Not once did it cross my mind that the law is infused with stories. Not once did it occur to me that case decisions are the stories judges tell, which are comprised of stories the competing lawyers argue, which are themselves contrived from the stories of their clients. Nor did I care for the historical development of the law. In class, the introduction of each new topic always contained a bunch of facts and cases that we did not (technically) have to know.
My focus was not on how the law developed but to what the law currently is. Facts were irrelevant, leaving cases bereft of what once was. When reading a judge’s opinion, I searched for the couple of paragraphs that clearly state the law; I only read as much as I had to. Now, charged with assessing evidence, I’m part creator of the story that I eschewed prior. It is clear that the real people, the real impact on the lives entangled in the law cannot and must not be ignored.
