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Fragile Performances: The Dialogics of Judgment in A Theory of the Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Martha Merrill Umphrey
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Extract

Robert Burns's A Theory of the Trial offers a fresh, subtle, and erudite analysis of the Anglo American trial, one that subjects the insights of current scholarship on trials (both legal and sociolegal) to the rigors of a philosophically trained mind long-steeped in trial practice. At once wide ranging and tightly focused, the richness of this book lies in the seriousness with which Burns offers a “careful, attentive description, ideally without presuppositions, of what we actually do” in order to identify the “spirit” of the trial as a human practice (Burns 1999, 4). Like Poe's hero Dupin in “The Purloined Letter,” who recovers a stolen letter slyly “hidden” out in the open in a barely disguised envelope, Burns looks with a discerning eye beyond the “received view” of the trial as a forum for actualizing the rule of law in the context of specific factual disputes (Burns 1999, 11), and suggests that the essence of the trial lies in its linguistic practices—an essence that, as Poe puts it, “escape[s] observation by dint of being excessively obvious” (1984,694).

Type
Review Symposium on Robert Burns's A Theory of the Trial
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Spring 2003 , pp. 527 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2003 

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