ABSTRACT
People experience property and contractual relations over and over in their daily lives. Just as the vast majority of people see many more violent deaths, sexual acts, black-tie galas, exotic animals, even many more people through representations than in actuality, and our knowledge of trials is a literary and media construct. Western religion and philosophy have trials at important early moments in their stories. As to literature, the representation of a trial is the most high-profile device whereby literature takes on law as subject matter. Murder trials make for particularly interesting stories: they feature the worst of deeds and the highest stakes: a guilty person is being pursued by justice, an innocent one falsely accused, or something more complicated is at play. A trial equips a story with a set of ready-made but malleable characters: the judge, the defendant, the victim, the lawyers for each side, the jury, the public, not to mention witnesses, reporters, and spectators.
