Legal Fictions examines how both literature and the law work together to imagine, produce, or impede justice. Underpinning our research are the questions: What makes for a just world? What are the limits of the law? How do creative writers and legal professionals respond to injustice?
This project was developed through WVU’s Honors College. Read more about who we are and this project’s scope.
GLOBAL JUSTICE IN FOUR LEGAL FIELDS
To explore these areas further, click on the underlined titles below:
DEFINING OUR FIELDS OF STUDY
1.
Environmental Law
Environmental Law deals with laws that relate to the rights of the environment, the right to access its resources, and the ways in which the law can maintain its sustainability. To do so, we studied lac of water access in Bolivia and oil extraction in the Niger Delta.
2.
Citizenship & Immigration
Citizenship and Immigration Law were studied regarding the United States’ Immigration policies and the way the government and people of the country view and treat Native Americans. As a class, we looked at the ways these policies and ideas answered the question “Who gets to be an American?”
3.
Property Law
Although property law is incredibly complex and affected by varying factors, our class aimed to understand the ways that property rights are affected by gender and class. We read several texts that examine property law, especially in historically patriarchal and classist societies such as Southern India.
4.
Human Rights Law
International human rights covers a broad expanse of law, but we narrowed it down to two topics. We studied the international laws that govern migration, as well as the human rights laws that were enacted in South Africa in response to the horrific events that occurred during the apartheid rule.
“The Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times”
— Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”
Legal Fictions 