Judging from Experience

Jeanne Gaakeer is Professor Emerita of Jurisprudence: Hermeneutical and Narrative Foundations, at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and retired senior justice at the Court of Appeal, the Hague, the Netherlands.

• Preface; Acknowledgements; Part I: The Enchantment of Knowledge: Fact and Fiction in Law and Literature; 1. The Enchantment of Knowledge and Its Apotheosis: Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet; 2. A Raid on the Inarticulate; 3. Explanation or Understanding: Language and Interdisciplinarity; 4. Understanding Fact and Fiction in Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities; 5. Poetry That Does Not Fade: Gerrit Achterberg’s Experience with Law and Forensic Psychiatry; Part II: Iuris Prudentia or Insightful Knowledge of Law; 6. Practical Knowledge: Facts, Norms and Phronèsis; 7. Metaphor and (Dis)belief; 8. Narrative Intelligence: Empathy, Mimesis and the Equitable; 9. Towards a Legal Narratology I: Probability, Fidelity, and Plot; 10. Towards a Legal Narratology II: Implications and Pathologies; Part III: The Perplexity of Judges; 11. Empathy Revisited: Who’s in Narrative Control?; 12. Person and Poiesis in Technology and Law: Questioning Builds a Way; 13. Control, Alt, Delete? Information Technology and the Human; Coda; Bibliography; Index.

This fascinating volume examines how far we have come in the law and literature debate and considers the influence of technology in law. Being a judge, Gaakeer interrogates herself on how to judge equitably, setting herself between empathy and objectivity, respect for the human being and the use of the latest tools in legal investigation.