To think of and read judicial opinions as narratives is dangerous business. Opinions that tell a story of the choice to send a boy to execution, to take children away from their father and mother, to obliterate living communities, are vividly connected with violence. But the power of Cover's lesson was that he taught us to see the violence of law everywhere, even in apparently mundane judicial choices. It is the violence of the world. Law talk is rational and calm, even dispassionate.
Judicial opinions are generally well-controlled pieces of apparently rational discourse.
Even in dissent, judges ultimately seem to take on the sense of detachment and cool rationality that is part of the ascribed cultural role of judges. Reading opinions as narratives can become another way of suppressing the violence of these texts. If reading opinions as narratives obscures that point, it is a pernicious endeavor. I hope instead to read opinions as narratives as a way of illuminating the idea of law as composed essentially of choices made for and against people, and imposed through violence. Theorizing about Narratives 5.