ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to interrogate the process by which the ordinary stories of ordinary people become 'legal stories'. It explores the way in which those legal stories are transformed into a single authoritative account whose narrative coherence locates it within the 'seamless web' of law. Every legal case begins in polyvocality. The heart of the law lies in the movement from polyvocality to narrative coherence. If law begins with ordinary people and ordinary stories, each story must be honed, stripped of inessential elements and tested in the fire of argument. The sheer ordinariness of such a story, and its frequent intractability, seems an ideal vehicle for a preliminary sketch of the way in which ordinary stories become legal stories. The legal stories are, always, inferior to the human stories. Within the bounds of the appellate jurisdiction, all that remains are legal stories.
