Sparking The Legal Imagination in Theory and Practice: a Humanistic Approach to Law

Abstract

James Boyd White’s The Legal Imagination has been with me since I first read it when I was working on my dissertation in the early 1990s. Perhaps this opening sentence does not augur well for an impartial reflection on the impact of The Legal Imagination on the study and practice of law that the editors of this special issue envisage. To justify it, I add that while I then thought that as an academic I understood the book theoretically, it wasn’t until I became a judge that I understood its lessons for legal, and more specifically judicial practice. That is why, by way of introduction, I indulge in a small archeological and archival exercise, privileged as I have been to have had many conversations with the man himself when writing my dissertation. For one trained in a continental European civil law jurisdiction with an emphasis in legal education on codified law, The Legal Imagination seemed odd to say the least. As one Dutch reviewer remarked, “This is the most unusual book in our field that I have ever had in my hands . . . The title does not explain anything, the subtitle not much more, and the rather detailed ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction to the Student’ do not provide a clear presentation.”3 To me, The Legal Imagination seemed to me a rich but daunting Pandora’s Box of suggestions for making a life for oneself in and with law.