In Legal Memories and Amnesias in America's Rhetorical Culture, Marouf Hasian, Jr. critically examines the rhetoric of law--specifically, the shifting lines between the notions of liberty and license. Hasian, Jr. explores how such issues as immigration, labor, national identity, race, and genetics have caused society to change how it thinks about, and uses, laws. In Legal Memories and Amnesias in America's Rhetorical Culture, Marouf Hasian, Jr. critically examines the rhetoric of law--specifically, the shifting lines between the notions of liberty and license. Hasian, Jr. explores how issues such as immigration, labor, national identity, race, and genetics have caused society to change how it thinks about, and uses, laws. The author builds on critical race theory, feminist studies of the law, and critical legal studies, and he uses a case study framework that covers topics such as Sarah Roberts and the separate but equal doctrine, John Brown's enactment of natural law at Harper's Ferry, Typhoid Mary Mallon, the Holocaust, Susan Smith, the human genome project, and Rosewood. All of the aforementioned are tied together by an introduction that clearly delineates the basic theoretical stance of the book. Without a doubt, the subject of this book is provocative, timely, and timeless.

1. Introduction: Understanding the Importance of Critical Legal Rhetorics; Discursive Threads in the Tapestries of Critical Legal Rhetorics; Rhetoricians' Roles in Theorizing and Criticizing the Rule of Law,; Substantive Units of Analysis in Critical Legal Rhetorics; Trajectory of the Book's Chapters; Notes; 2. Patriots, Traitors, and Civic Virtue: Redefining the American Character in the Case of Major Andre; History, Law, and Collective Memory; Patriotic Narrations of Andre's Capture; British Interpretations of Andre's Hanging; Ambiguous Defenses of American Civic Virtue; Elite and Populist Reconstructions of the Revolutionary War; Modern Memories, Histories, and Laws; Notes; 3. Sarah Roberts, Lemuel Shaw, and the Legal Invention of the Separate but Equal Doctrine; Afro-Americans and the Segregation of Boston Schools; The Roberts Case, Boston's School Board Committees, and Judge Lemuel Shaw; Boston's Reactions to Lemuel Shaw's Opinion in Roberts,; Notes; 4. Jurisprudence As Performance: John Brown's Enactment of Natural Law at Harper's Ferry; Jurisprudence As Performance; Construction of the Legal Rhetorical Culture, 1800-1859; John Brown's Performances at Harper's Ferry; Northern and Southern Reactions to Brown's Natural-Law Performances; Heuristic Implications for the Study of Law and Rhetoric; Notes; 5. Typhoid Mary, Bacteriology, and Progressive Law Courts; Medical Technology, Bacteriology, and the Invention of the Typhoid Carrier,; Genealogy of Detention, Isolation, and Quarantine Laws; Race, Class, and Gender in Mallon's Confrontation with Legal Authority; The Past As Prologue: The Reappearance of Other Typhoid Marys; Notes; 6. Judicial Rhetoric in a Fragmentary World: Character and Storytelling in the Leo Frank Case; Crafting a Fragmentary Approach to Judicial Rhetoric; Deploying Fragmentary Legal Rhetorics: Recontextualizing the Frank Case; Reconstructions of Gender; Reconstructions of Race; Reconstructions of Class; The Continuing Legacy of the Frank Case; Notes; 7. Judging the Perpetrators of the Holocaust: The Crisis of Legal Representation; Events Preceding the Nuremberg Trials and Denazification,; Nazi Concentration Camps and the Crisis of Representation; Jackson's Closing Remarks at Nurembe