Storytelling (was Critical Race Theory)

[Robert O'brien]

Mark Graber offered:

> A nasty thought.  Stories are important to law because lawyers, being
> trained as advocates, are likely to be better at story telling than
> social scientists.  Because of their training, most social scientists
> are better than lawyers at gathering and assessing the reliability of
> more generalized data.  Thus, the greater the role of stories in
> making policy (constitutional or otherwise), the greater the role of
> legal training and lawyers.

Phooey.  Story telling has long been recognized as important by lawyers
because they have discovered that is the most effective way to influence a
jury.  Some years ago I came across a book by two social scientists who
observed several trials and reached the conclusion that the best story won.
 They were surprised to learn that lawyers are story tellers; I was taught
in law school to be a story teller and that was a lesson taught lawyers
long before I was--or the two social scientists were--born.


Robert O'Brien                        West Virginia Wesleyan College
obrien at .wvwc.edu