Document Type
Article
Publication
Harvard Law Review
Year
2002
Citation Information
Pierre Schlag, The Aesthetics of American Law, 115 Harv. L. Rev. 1047 (2002), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/561.
Abstract
Before the ethical dreams and political ambitions of law can even be articulated, let alone realized, the aesthetics of law have already shaped the medium within which those projects will have to do their work. This work attempts to retrieve and expose those recurrent forms that shape the creation, apprehension, and identity of law. What is at stake is an attempt to reveal the aesthetics within which American law is cast. The point is not simply to appreciate these aesthetics, but to understand how "substantive" conflicts in law are often motivated, sustained and circumscribed by the aesthetics through which they are manifested.
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