Foreword: Telling Stories

Why is there such a rush to storytelling? Why has narrative become such an important and recurring theme in legal scholarship these days?

This issue testifies to the attractiveness of, and limits to, storytelling as a force in law. But whose stories are told? Who listens? And who responds? This symposium explores these questions, challenging traditional practices and exploring new ones in the telling of stories in the law. One important lesson that can be learned from this issue is that narrative is a way of organizing, coping with, even acting on the world. Stories carry power because they have the ability to convey truths even if the stories themselves are not the only ways of seeing the world. Stories re-present experience, and can introduce imagination and new points of view.

To make sense of law and to organize experience, people often tell stories. And these stories are telling.