The creation of legal meaning is the focus of the essays listed here. The social constitution of legal doctrine and interpretive processes within the law are addressed in topics ranging from legal melancholy in Balzac to theories of Constitutional interpretation and discussions of affirmative action.

J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "Is Affirmative Action a Christian Heresy?," Summer 1996, 55: 59-73.

David Bates, "Crisis Between the Wars: Derrida and the Origins of Undecidability," Spring 2005, 90: 1-27.

Stephen Best and Saidiya Hartman, eds., Redress, special issue, Fall 2005, number 92.

Richard H. Brodhead, "Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America," Winter 1988, 21: 67-96.

Peter Brooks, "The Overborne Will," Fall 1998, 64: 1-20.

Judith Butler, "An Affirmative View," Summer 1996, 55: 74-83.

Margaret D. Carroll, "'In the Name of God and Profit': Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait," Fall 1993, 44: 96-132.

Barbara T. Christian, "Camouflaging Race and Gender," Summer 1996, 55: 120-28.

Marianne Constable, "The Regents on Race and Diversity: Representations and Reflections," Summer 1996, 55: 92-97.

Colin Dayan, "Legal Terrors," Fall 2005, 92: 42-80.

Carolyn Dean, "Law and Sacrifice: Bataille, Lacan, and the Critique of the Subject," Winter 1986, 13: 42-62.

Troy Duster, "Individual Fairness, Group Preferences, and the California Strategy," Summer 1996, 55: 41-58.

François Ewald, "Norms, Discipline, and the Law" (trans. Marjories Beale), Spring 1990, 30: 138-61.

Michael Feher, "Empowerment Hazards: Affirmative Action, Recovery Psychology, and Identity Politics," Summer 1996, 55: 84-91.

Takashi Fujitani, "Right to Kill, Right to Make Live: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans During WWII," Summer 2007, 99: 13-39.

Jane C. Ginsburg, "Copyright Without Walls?: Speculations on Literary Property in the Library of the Future," Spring 1993, 42: 53-73.

Anna Kirkland, "Representations of Fatness and Personhood: Pro-Fat Advocacy and the Limits and Uses of Law," Spring 2003, 82: 25-51.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette, "The Puzzling Case of the Deceased Wife's Sister: Nineteenth-Century England Deals with a Second-Chance Plot," Summer 1990, 31: 142-66.

Elizabeth Hanson, "Torture and Truth in Renaissance England," Spring 1991, 34: 53-84.

David A. Hollinger, "Group Preferences, Cultural Diversity, and Social Democracy: Notes Toward a Theory of Affirmative Action," Summer 1996, 55: 31-40.

Lorna Hutson, "Forensic Aspects of Renaissance Mimesis," Spring 2006, 94: 80-109.

Steven Justice, "Inquisition, Speech, and Writing: A Case from Late-Medieval Norwich," Fall 1994, 48: 1-29.

Ben Kafka, "The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror," Spring 2007, 98: 1-24.

Michael Lucey, "Legal Melancholy: Balzac's Eugénie Grandet and the Napoleonic Code," Fall 2001, 76: 1-26.

Katharine Eisaman Maus, "Proof and Consequences: Inwardness and Its Exposure in the English Renaissaince," Spring 1991, 34: 29-52.

Miranda Oshige McGowan, "Diversity of What?" Summer 1996, 55: 129-38.