I was intrigued to learn that Frederic White, the dean at Texas Wesleyan Law, has self-published a novel, Tenure Blues: A Soap Opera. According to the website, here's the plot:
A law school dean’s son is found dead one night on a lonely, wet road—the apparent victim of a hit-and-run car accident. Accident? –Or was it something else? Three young, bright professors—each vying for promotion and tenure at a local law school—all have reasons for wanting the dean’s son out of the way. Why? Because he holds the key to their hidden secrets. Secrets that could threaten their careers as well as their personal lives. One fears that his long-ago brief affair with the dean’s son will be discovered. Another, a beautiful single black female, worries that he has discovered her torrid, illicit affair with the president of the university board of trustees. The third, desperate to shake off her blue collar past, is tormented by the dean's son. Suddenly, he winds up dead. Who’s to blame?
White is hardly the first law professor who is also a novelist. Obvious recent examples include Kim Roosevelt (Penn), Lori Andrews (Kent), Stephen Carter (Yale), Mimi Wesson (Colorado) , Paul Goldstein (Stanford), Andrew Popper (American), James Boyle (Duke), and Alafair Burke (Hofstra) and Pam Jenoff (Rutgers-Camden). Who am I missing here?
I wonder if law profs publish fiction at, above, or below the typical rate for academics across disciplines. (I suppose I'd expect professors in certain fields – say, chemistry – to publish fewer novels. But perhaps that's just a unfounded bias!)
Jed Rubenfeld's "The Interpretation of Murder" is awesome.
Dan Shaviro's "Getting It" about law firm life and the fight for partnership, set in the 1980s. A great read!
For a much earlier era, Beverley Tucker of William and Mary comes to mind. Tucker wrote a couple of novels — George Balcombe and The Partisan Leader. The former is about, among other things, a lost will. The latter is about southern secession (though it was published in the mid-1830s). Edgar Allan Poe gave some over-the-top praise to Balcombe (something like it was the best American novel to date), which I find a little hard to believe. Judge for yourself, it's on books.google.
Perhaps we're seeing a resurgence of what Robert Ferguson calls the connections between law and letters in American culture?
This sounds like the plot of the great film, "A Soldier's Story," with a law school twist. The late Adolph Caesar's character would be similar to that of White's fictional Dean.
So if we think about legal education in the abstract, Salmon Chase studied law under William Wirt, Attorney General (1817-1829) who wrote Letters of the British Spy.
Paul Heald (Georgia) wrote "No Regrets".
Other novelists include Richard H. Fallon, Jr. (Harvard) Stubborn as a Mule (2009); Michael A. Kahn (Washington University adjunct), the Rachel Gold series including Firm Ambitions, Due Diligence, Trophy Widow, etc.; Francis M. Nevins (Saint Louis University emeritus)several novels.
Scott Gerber of ONU has published at least one novel, maybe two.
You neglect to mention Bernhard Schlink, the German law prof who wrote The Reader (Der Vorleser). I would have hoped that such an obvious omission would not have been made on this blog, given the calibre of its bloggers, but should have known by now not to expect so much of American publications, especially those based on the internet.
Lest it be thought otherwise, and mislead readers, I am not the Professor Eidenmueller.
I'm sure law profs publish fiction at a higher rate than academics in other disciplines, if only because they can. The legal thrillers is a reliably marketable genre. The market for medical thrillers and science fiction is much smaller. Look at the NYT bestseller list any given week, and a substantial percentage of the titles are legal thrillers. Law profs have the material to get in that game.
Please add me to the list:
http://www.michelemartinez.com/
John Dobbyn of Villanova Law writes criminal law mystery fiction thrillers.
Hi Dan. I just saw this. Thanks for including me. Yxta Murray (Loyola) has published several novels, I believe.
George Fletcher at Columbia published The Bond.