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4 Savannah L. Rev. 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/savanlr4 and id is 1 raw text is: AVANNAH VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1 Is LAW THE MYTH BEFORE THE MYTH BEGAN? Garrett Epps* The legal fictions we have been talking about today are stories that we invent about the law to make it run more smoothly. This court has jurisdiction over the affray with swords and staves because Paris, France, is located in the county of Middlesex, England. My client, the Exxon Corporation, is a person and is present in this courtroom. There is a state called Delaware. I am going to talk about a very different meaning of the words legal fiction. For the past ten years, I have taught short story writing to law students. From that experience, I have begun to suspect a different possibility. At the very deepest level, I wonder: is it possible that we (lawyers, clients, police, judges, legislators) are the fictions and that the law tells the story? In his poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, Wallace Stevens, who was himself a lawyer, writes of what he calls the first idea. That is, what was it that had to come into existence in order to create art and human civilization? And he says: But the first idea was not to shape the clouds In imitation. The clouds preceded us. There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began. Venerable and articulate and complete.' *Professor of Law, University of Baltimore; Contributing Writer and Supreme Court Correspondent, THE ATLANTIC (Online); LL.M., Duke University, 1994; J.D., Duke University, 1991; M.A. (Creative Writing), Hollins College, 1975; B.A. (English), Harvard University, 1972; author, The Floating Island: A Tale of Washington (1985); The Shad Treatment(1977), winner of the 1978 Southern Regional Council Lillian Smith Award for Best Work of Fiction About the South. I'd like to thank the editors of Savannah Law Review for their work organizing the Conference of Legal Fictions and extending to me the chance to participate; to the faculty of Savannah Law School, particularly Professors Caprice Roberts and Andrew Wright for their warm welcome to Savannah Law School; and to the audience of participants, students, faculty, and community members who tolerated my delaying their dinner to deliver the speech that formed the basis of this article. 1