ABSTRACT
Narrative models of different kinds have been used in and around legal studies for a number of different purposes. Lawyers have used them, for example, to justify some of the inferential processes of fact-finding in court, while social scientists have used them in a descriptive account of the processes of construction of truth by the jury. Lawyers have also begun to study the rhetorical implications of the presentation of facts by judges in their published judgments, and have noted particularly the relationship between fact and law which is implicit in that practice. Psychologists have considered the role of narrative in the operation of memory and other psychological processes-an issue clearly important for our assessment of the construction of legal facts. Some semiotic approaches, notably that of Greimas, place considerable importance upon narrative in the deep structure of signification of any form of discourse; this approach, too, has been applied to legal discourse.
