Burns, Robert P. : Northwestern University School of Law
Robert P. Burns is Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, where he teaches evidence, legal
ethics, and procedure. He has practiced law for twenty-five years and has published widely in law journals and
reviews.
Review
"This book is at once a treatise on legal procedure, on the philosophy of the social sciences, on political
theory, and on the trial as linguistic and cultural artifact. I know of no other book that does what this one does,
and I enthusiastically recommend it to readers in the field of law and in the humanities."
--David Luban, Georgetown University
"Robert Burns's core argument is elegantly simple: the trial is a performance. In exploring the hybrid discourse
of the trial, he leads the reader on an engaging journey into this singular type of public performance.... Burns
has written a wonderful book."
--Milner S. Ball, Georgia Law School
Princeton University Press Web Site, September, 2002
Summary
Anyone who has sat on a jury or followed a high-profile trial on television usually comes to the realization
that a trial, particularly a criminal trial, is really a performance. Verdicts seem determined as much by which
lawyer can best connect with the hearts and minds of the jurors as by what the evidence might suggest. In this
celebration of the American trial as a great cultural achievement, Robert Burns, a trial lawyer and a trained philosopher,
explores how these legal proceedings bring about justice. The trial, he reminds us, is not confined to the impartial
application of legal rules to factual findings. Burns depicts the trial as an institution employing its own language
and styles of performance that elevate the understanding of decision-makers, bringing them in contact with moral
sources beyond the limits of law.
Burns explores the rich narrative structure of the trial, beginning with the lawyers' opening statements, which
establish opposing moral frameworks in which to interpret the evidence. In the succession of witnesses, stories
compete and are held in tension. At some point during the performance, a sense of the right thing to do arises
among the jurors. How this happens is at the core of Burns's investigation, which draws on careful descriptions
of what trial lawyers do, the rules governing their actions, interpretations of actual trial material, social science
findings, and a broad philosophical and political appreciation of the trial as a unique vehicle of American self-government.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. The Received View of the Trial
II. The Trial's Linguistic Practices
III. The Trial's Constitutive Rules
IV. An Interpretation from One Trial
V. The Trial's Most Basic Features and Some Observed Consequences
VI. Thinking What We Do
VII. The Two Sides of the Trial Event
VIII. The Truth of Verdicts