Alafair Burke on the legal system in fiction.

In Why Fiction? in the New England Law Review, Alafair Burke—a law professor at Hofstra University as well as fiction writer—explains why she writes about the law through fiction. As Burke notes:

the work of a novelist depicting our criminal justice system in fiction is not wholly separate from the work of studying the criminal justice system in actuality. Whether an author realizes it or not, it is impossible to create an interesting, albeit fictional, depiction of the criminal justice system, without having something interesting to say about its real-world counterpart. (2)

(thanks to the Law & Humanities blog)