On Becoming a Legal Person 101The wildly successful introduction of economics into law school teaching
overall may well mean that what we observe in the Contracts classroom will be
generalizable to other classes. However, it is important to note that we can expect
somewhat different nuances to appear depending on the central features of perti-
nent doctrinal developments. In Criminal Law classes, for example, students will
have to learn what features of an individual’s behavior might suffice as evidence
that crimes were committed intentionally, or in the heat of passion, and so forth.
In Family Law, students will begin to untangle the unwieldy mess surrounding legal
attempts to discern the “best interests” of a child. In all of these cases, what is im-
portant about people is dictated by legal doctrine, as deciphered through a geneal-
ogy of analogies. Each area of law will pose its own dilemmas for students, requiring
them to separate some things that might otherwise be assumed to be linked in stan-
dard cultural accounts (someone’s prior behavior, perhaps, from one’s assessment
of how he acted in this particular instance).
I want to stress again that this is a double-edged process: the very same legal
norms that may strip a story of arguably important social context may also require
that we set aside biases against people based on background or past behavior that
should not be part of the judgment in a particular instance. But in either case, stu-
dents must prioritize doctrinal definitions of the person, setting aside other kinds
of information and approaches. As we will see, some kinds of cultural information
will be let in, in somewhat sneaky fashion, through the analogical process of doc-
trinal definition; others will not. Not surprisingly, it will be easier for the cultural
assumptions of the dominant group in society to make their way into a legal calculus
than it will be for other viewpoints. Nonetheless, to avoid any overly simplistic
mischaracterization of the process of legal reading being taught, it is important to
note that there is still an open texture to this reading that allows competing infor-
mation to enter at times, and yet also a rigidity to the frame that can discourage
some forms of open prejudice. At the same time, the effects of other forms of co-
vert social prejudice and power are disguised through a focus on layered legal-
linguistic frames.
PEOPLE WHO ARGUE AND STRATEGIZE:REPORTED SPEECH,
FOOTING,AND FRAMES
We begin with the first two approaches to delineating legal personae, those that
cross doctrines and areas of law. These approaches define people’s central identi-
ties in terms of their roles as sources of argument and strategy. One of the most
ubiquitous characterizations of the people occupying the legal landscapes dis-
cussed in law school classrooms involves their capacity to make arguments and
to strategize. The parties, or people, whose disputes are described in the cases,
the lawyers who bring the cases, the judges deciding the cases, and the students
discussing the cases all share this central characteristic. They may make better or
worse arguments, may strategize with more or less acumen, but these activities are
central to who they are in legal narratives. Predictably, one common method of
focusing students’ attention on the centrality of strategic argument is to invite them
to occupy the roles of attorneys, judges, and parties—to make these characters’