Daily Read: Virginia Woolf and Justice

This 132nd anniversary of the birth of Virginia Woolf (born Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882), is suitable for reading Jeremy Bradley's essay, Virginia Woolf and The Judicial Imagination, available on ssrn.

Virginia Stephen [Woolf] circa 1902

Through his readings and discussions of Woolf's most famous novels, Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Bradley hopes to establish that

literature brings with it evaluative commitments on the part of the reader, commitments that mirror a judge’s recognition of the significance of vulnerable events, a focus on the epistemological value of emotion, and on the competing choices human agents often face. At the same time, the practical aspect of this evaluative process is the very quality that makes analysing literature ‘so unlike dogmatic abstract legal processes. Thus to supplement judicial decision-making with imagination is to redefine what is meant by effective decision-making.

Whether or not judges can integrate empathetic imagination - - - or even whether Virginia Woolf could actualize empathy in her own life when it came to her "servants" as I've discussed in "A Servant of One's Own," available on ssrn - - - the project is an important one if we seek to achieve "justice" rather than merely legal outcomes.