Giustizia e New Deal : linciaggi, casi celebri, processi e immaginazione forense

This article is an excerpt from the first chapter of Scarpino’s forthcoming book Anni Trenta alla sbarra: giustizia e letteratura nella Grande Depressione, which investigates how the categories of law and social justice are represented in 1930s literature and culture. The excerpt combines thematic specificity (lynching and trials) with anthropological, philosophical and political concerns and benefits from studies in "Law and Literature" entailing interdisciplinary analyses of law in literature and law as literature that posit a residual, ancillary, factually vicarious but symbolically decisive function of literature in regard to law. In dealing with lynching, the article attempts to show how the interrelated work of law and literature helped enlarge the scope of citizenship in terms of racial inclusiveness. The part on trials draws a more literary analogy between New Deal law and literature focusing on the narrative pact between narrator and reader and on the unprecedented role of the reader as a juror who has to adjudicate cases of social injustice.