Walter Benn Michaels

Law-related classes taught: ENG 446 – Theories of Legal Interpretation

Law-related scholarly interests: Theories of legal interpretation (textualism, intentionalism, "dynamic" interpretation); legal issues in American literature (19th and 20th century), particularly in relation to contract and racial identity.

Law-related publications:

"Against Formalism: The Autonomous Text in Legal and Literary Interpretation." Poetics Today, Vol. 1, no. 1-2 (Autumn 1979), 23-34. Reprinted with revisions as "Against Formalism: Chickens and Rocks" in The State of the Language. Edited by Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1980, pp. 410-420.

 Review: "Philip Bobbitt, Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution." Texas Law Review, Vol. 61, no. 4 (December 1982), 765-776. Reprinted as "The Fate of the Constitution" in Interpreting Law and Literature, ed. by Sanford Levinson and Steven Mailloux. Northwestern U. P., 1988, 383- 391.

"Response to Perry and Simon." Southern California Law Review, Vol. 58, no. 2 (January 1985), 673- 681. 

"The Contracted Heart." New Literary History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring 1990), 495-531.

"Intention, Identity, and the Constitution." In collaboration with Steven Knapp. In Legal Hermeneutics, edit. by Gregory Leyh (Berkeley, 1992), 187-199.

"The No-Drop Rule." Critical Inquiry 20 (Summer 1994), 758-769. Reprinted in Identities, ed. by K.A. Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., U. of Chicago Press: 1995.

Not a Matter of Interpretation. In collaboration with Steven Knapp. San Diego Law Review Vol. 42, No. 2 (Spring 2005), 651-668.