A Theory of the Trial

"This book is at once a treatise on legal procedure, on the philosophy of the social sciences, on political theory, and on the trial as linguistic and cultural artifact. I know of no other book that does what this one does, and I enthusiastically recommend it to readers in the field of law and in the humanities."--David Luban, Georgetown University "Robert Burns's core argument is elegantly simple: the trial is a performance. In exploring the hybrid discourse of the trial, he leads the reader on an engaging journey into this singular type of public performance.... Burns has written a wonderful book."--Milner S. Ball, Georgia Law School