Narrative and Rhetoric in Law

Abstract

Telling stories has been an innate human drive since the beginning—since Adam relayed to Eve that G-d had told him not to eat from the tree of knowledge1 . Walter Fisher, a 20th century philosopher, proposed that all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling, of narrative— that “humans are essentially storytellers2 .” We see stories being told in all aspects of the human experience: from teachers in the classroom describing the Civil War to a millennial anxiously texting her friend the latest boy drama. Storytelling, in fact, is so much a part of who we are and what we do as humans that it is often hard to pinpoint what exactly it means to be telling a story. One area in which it is especially crucial to analyze the power of a complex narrative is that of a legal battle. In this arena, the details and nuance of a story can drastically alter the trajectory of a person’s life. Perhaps this is nowhere more important than in a custody case. We need only recall the oldest recorded case to realize the significance of narrative and the many shades of gray a custody case contains: