Faculty of Law University of Toronto
Law & Literature Workshop Series 2009 – 2010
presents
Kenworthey Bilz
Northwestern University School of Law
We Don’t Want to Hear It:
The Moral and Psychological Legitimacy of Exclusion in the Law
Friday, November 27, 2009
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (room FA2) - 84 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M5C 2C5
This article challenges a fundamental tenet of the narrative model of legal judging, which argues that legal decision makers both do and should render legal judgments by assembling sensible stories out of evidence (as opposed to relying on Bayesian-type, linear models). This model is usually understood to demand that before we may judge a situation, we must give the parties the opportunity to tell their story in a manner that invites, or at least allows, empathy from the judger. I call this the inclusionary approach to the narrative model of judging. Using both hard evidence from empirical psychological research in emotions and perspective-taking, and the more intuitive techniques of literary criticism, I argue that the law in practice gives equal weight to an exclusionary approach. That is, in order to render sound, legitimate legal judgments, the law deliberately limits the sort of stories parties are allowed to tell and it does so on moral grounds, not (only) because limiting the evidence would improve the accuracy of the legal judgment. That is, conventionally, as both a descriptive and normative matter, impoverished narratives can be better than enriched ones in leading decisionmakers to acceptable legal judgments.
Kenworthey Bilz is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Prior to coming to Northwestern, she received a PhD in Social Psychology at Princeton University, and a JD at the University of Chicago. Bilz studies how people perceive and understand the law and legal institions, often arguing that citizens value laws not only for what they do, but for what they express. She draws most of her examples from the areas of criminal law and evidence.
A light lunch will be provided.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
