This course will examine the treatment of legal themes in literary texts as part of a broader consideration of the relationship between literature and the law. The course will consider how literature and the law address common concerns, including morality, justice, equality, and agency from different perspectives, aesthetic styles, and formal constraints. Students will consider how literary texts, like legal texts, have power to influence politics and society. Many readings will invite consideration of alterity in literary texts and the treatment of minorities in the judicial system. Students will be exposed to contemporary critical readings that have significantly modified, and, in some instances, all but undermined, traditional readings of the judgments rendered canonical texts such as the Shakespeare plays and Billy Budd. To enable students to compare literary and legal approaches, a handful of judicial decisions involving literature will be studied to illustrate how lawyers and judges have resolved issues involving literary texts.