This course provides a basic introduction to the field of law and literature, focusing on the interdisciplinary connection between both. It is designed to examine the role of storytelling in law, and the role of law, legal reasoning, and legal institutions in literary works.It examines two commonly-discussed sub-fields: “law-in-literature” and “law-as-literature”. Law-in-literature focuses on the depiction of law and jurisprudential issues in works of literature. It aims at exploring questions such as what insights works of literature can contribute to the study of law and in what ways literature enhances our understanding of the law. Law-as-literature examines legal opinions, arguments, and concepts through a literary lens – as works or elements of literature – exploring the similarities law shares with literature and focusing on the construction of narratives by lawyers, judges, and other legal actors to advance our understanding of the law.You will also be invited to go beyond considerations of law and literature to consider law’s relationship to culture and society as a whole. This course will provide you with an opportunity to think about the law in a new way and to participate in an interdisciplinary discussion of the larger questions of law and life.In each class, we will explore one or more interrelated topics through a variety of literary and legal works of short to moderate length. Readings will include judicial opinions by judges in different jurisdictions and literary works by writers across cultures.