Artefacts of Legal Inquiry The Value of Imagination in Adjudication

What is the value of fictions, metaphors, figures and scenarios in adjudication? This book develops three models to help answer that question: inquiry, artefacts and imagination.

Legal language, it is argued, contains artefacts – forms that signal their own artifice and call upon us to do things with them. To imagine, in turn, is to enter a distinctive epistemic frame where we temporarily suspend certain epistemic norms and commitments and participate actively along a spectrum of affective, sensory and kinesic involvement.

The book argues that artefacts and related processes of imagination are valuable insofar as they enable inquiry in adjudication, ie the social (interactive and collective) process of making insight into what values, vulnerabilities and interests might be at stake in a case and in similar cases in the future.

Artefacts of Legal Inquiry is structured in two parts, with the first offering an account of the three models of inquiry, artefacts and imagination, and the second examining four case studies (fictions, metaphors, figures and scenarios).

Drawing on a broad range of theoretical traditions – including philosophy of imagination and emotion, the theory and history of rhetoric, and the cognitive humanities – this book offers an interdisciplinary defence of the importance of artefactual language and imagination in adjudication.

Introduction
I. The Claim
II. The Story of a Project
III. Limits and Scope of this Book
IV. The Painting on the Cover

Part I: Models
1. Inquiry
I. Beyond the Dichotomy of Justification and Discovery
II. Social: Interactive and Collective
III. Diachronic
IV. Experimental
V. Normative
2. Artefacts
I. Rhetoric
II. Cognitive Humanities
III. Fictionality
IV. Signalling Artifice
V. Calling on us to Participate
3. Imagination
I. Approaching Imagination
II. Entering a Distinctive Epistemic Frame
III. Varieties of Participation I: Affective
IV. Varieties of Participation II: Sensory
V. Varieties of Participation III: Kinesic
4. Enabling Inquiry
I. The Four Case Studies
II. Enabling Inquiry I: Individual
III. Enabling Inquiry II: Social

Part II: Case Studies
5. Fictions
I. Approaching Fictions
II. Fictions of Causation
6. Metaphors
I. Approaching Metaphors
II. Of Trees and Mistresses
7. Figures
I. Approaching Figures
II. The Officious Bystander
8. Scenarios
I. Approaching Scenarios
II. The Expert Abroad – Or in Hong Kong

Conclusion
I. Legal Techne: Couplings of Form and Cognition
II. The Variability of Artefacts and Imagination
III. Kinesic Legal Theory and History
IV. The Politics of Artefacts and Imagination
V. Varieties of Play in Legal Education