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Lifting the legal veil in The case of the speluncean explorers

This dissertation seeks to “lift the legal veil” of Lon L. Fuller’s famous legal case of The Case of the Speluncean Explorers and Peter Suber’s The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions through the application of literary theories of meaning, interpretation, writing and truth, in particular Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” to analyze the legal and jurisprudential problems in the fictional legal cases and to trace the literary qualities of law that it has consciously renounced and unconsciously forgotten. Introducing what Peter Goodrich calls “interruption of law” (Courts of Love 5) to the reading and analysis of the two legal fictions, this dissertation reveals the way that law upholds its authority and legitimacy through language, presents alternative perspectives of understanding the nature and problems of law, illustrates the relationship of “law as literature,” and discusses the utility and significance of legal fictions and stories to the understanding of law and to the illustration of the relationship between law and literature. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/181476
Date January 2012
CreatorsKwong, Wing-hang., 鄺詠恒.
PublisherThe University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong)
Source SetsHong Kong University Theses
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypePG_Thesis
Sourcehttp://hub.hku.hk/bib/B49616237
RightsThe author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License
RelationHKU Theses Online (HKUTO)

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