ABSTRACT
The point of focusing upon narrative, upon the construction of legal stories and the voices of those who contribute to those stories is to insist upon the one feature that is, at once, the greatest strength of common law traditions and their greatest weakness. To ask about the possibility of a different voice in judgment is to try to deny that the courts form the apex of the procedural republic. As a metaphor for adjudication, the conventions of storytelling remind that legal stories are never accidental. Yet stories, even legal stories, always share another feature. Stories about misdeeds were more ambiguous. These stories were remaindered to local manor courts and were not deemed worthy of the king's justice. As the new jurisdiction of the king's court became powerful, its justice came to be associated with the protection of proprietary rights of various kinds.
