Learning to Read Like a Lawyer 77discussion occurs in law schools. Implicit in this movement is the sense that one
can discern social and moral implications through unraveling a cultural logic that
is obvious or transparent.
Thus, when law professors speak of policy considerations, a great deal is packed
into their conception of policy. In effect, the questions of whether law operates in
a just manner, whether certain legal decisions were motivated by class interests or
other extralegal concerns, whether particular social conditions caused or resulted
from specific legal decisions—all these are encompassed in the broad-ranging in-
quiry into policy. And in answering these questions, students do not need to con-
sult studies or other evidence, although professors may indeed throw in casual cites
to what “studies show” from time to time. Rather, students need to unravel cul-
tural logics through the telling of persuasive stories: of poor people who must sell
their organs, of judges or juries who may well have been racially biased in particu-
lar instances (or who may have been attempting to achieve certain social results
through their decisions). Most of this discussion is anecdotal or speculative, and
indeed lapses into the use of hypothetical storytelling at times. Not surprisingly,
one can also find this form of policy discussion in the explicit language of legal
opinions themselves—although in classroom discourse, reading for policy consid-
erations frequently requires moving beyond the explicit language of the text in an
attempt to intuit underlying motives and implications.^62 However, both in the le-
gal texts themselves and in policy discussions of those texts, this move to a broad
grab bag of social and moral considerations is a brilliant, if problematic, stroke.
Were the system of textual exegesis to remain mired at the tightly constructed sur-
face, it might lack the flexibility and openness needed to retain credibility. Instead,
this approach maintains a tight, technical center, but also permits an expansive
periphery of policy considerations. In this way, the legal reading taught in law school
classes at once closely limits the kinds of warrants permitted for legal conclusions
(to layers of legal-textual authority) and at the same time encompasses virtually
any kind of social data or issues deemed culturally relevant.
Furthermore, these broader policy discussions are often accompanied by
closely related speculative storytelling regarding the motivations of the people
who are players in the case being dissected. After all, if a person is motivated by
greed or racial hatred, it is possible that in ruling for or against him or her, a court
can be encouraging or discouraging such behavior. So, side by side with specu-
lations about the real underlying policy motivations for legal decisions, one can
find speculations about why people behaved as they did in the underlying dispute
(or in the tactics they pursued when bringing legal claims). These speculations can
also serve to sharpen students’ sensibilities in a number of other ways. First, they
alert the students to a loose realist idea that there is much going on beneath the
surface of a legal text—that it is important not to accept legal rulings at face value.
Second, they push students to be mindful of the strategic effects of proceeding in
one way or another when bringing legal cases. Third, they initiate students into an
unofficial genre of legal storytelling that is reportedly quite common in practice: the
cynical recounting of the so-called real motives for formal legal maneuvers.^63 Finally,
they continue the brilliant opening up of legal readings to virtually all kinds of cul-
tural stories about why things happen or what really mattered in an interaction—