'Poetic Justice'? Reading Law and Literature | ||||
| Transcultural Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences | ||||
| Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 25 September 2022 | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/tjhss.2022.157364.1106 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
Mohammed Ismail K 
| ||||
| Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Law and literature are generally thought of as two mutually independent pursuits whose paths do not often cross. Though their functions on the human person are antithetical- literature enables human creative expressions while law restricts unfettered human behavior- their value to human flourishing cannot be discredited. The exercise of reading/interpretation is common to both domains, albeit in varying senses and degrees. The primary aim of this paper is to attempt a ‘reading’ of law through a legal text from the literary vantage point. This act of ‘reading’ shall remain sensitive to the functional differences between the two pursuits as regards their instrumental goals in society. The legal text under analysis is the Supreme Court of India’s 2017 judgment in Justice Puttaswamy v. Union of India on the constitutional protection to privacy. The judgment, which presented a comprehensive study of the legal and constitutional implications of privacy, declared that the right to privacy is a fundamental right protected under the Constitution of India. In analyzing the judgment, the paper also seeks to illustrate the dynamics of legal reasoning and the interpretive modes that form the background of judicial opinions. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Law; Literature; Interpretation; Jurisprudence; Privacy | ||||
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