The course will bring together American literary and legal texts in order to examine the ways in which the two can illuminate each other. It will focus on the works of American literature that take law as their central theme; works that include trials or are inspired by famous cases; works that have lawyers as protagonists; and works that address issues of law and justice. Students will also bring methods of literary analysis to bear on the study of important cases or legal decisions in order to understand the rhetoric of law, the unstated assumptions contained in it, and the voices excluded from it.