Washington and Lee University
Last fall, the W&L Law School hosted its 16th annual alumni seminar focusing on topics in law and literature. The program featured F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the most lyrical and eloquent of all the great American novels, Fitzgerald's novel of the "Jazz Age" delves into the difference between the ethical and the unethical, the legal and the criminal, the accepted social world and the rejected criminal underworld. Ultimately this deeply moral novel seeks to explore the elements in our nature that lead us to cross the line of what society can allow and what it must curtail--that is, the very essence of law. Fitzgerald asks us to ponder the hazards of misbegotten dreams, the corrupting influence of wealth and social standing pursued at whatever cost, and the tragic inevitability of a collision between illusion and reality. Teaching in the program were W&L Law professors Scott Sundby and David Millon, along with former colleague Dave Caudill and English professor Marc Conner. The weekend program, running from late Friday afternoon through midday Saturday, again earned high praise from participants. The Law School co-sponsors the program each fall with the W&L Alumni College.
In its 17th year, the Law and Literature Seminar will turn to another American classic, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. Published in 1939 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1940, The Grapes of Wrath is set during the Great Depression. The novel traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers. While Steinbeck's novel did much at the time to publicize the injustices of migrant labor, it remains a classic treatise on economic and political injustice in America, posing fundamental questions about the ownership and stewardship of the land, the role of government, law, and the inherent inequities of a society governed by unfettered capitalism. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. The honor cited Steinbeck's "realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." The program will again be led by Dave Caudill and Marc Conner, with two guest faculty from the W&L Law School.
As a bonus to practicing attorneys, the program will again seek approval for two hours of Continuing Legal Education ethics credit. The program is open to anyone interested in law and literature.
