Kader poetry and law book reviewed

An anthology of law poems compiled by professor David Kader, Poetry of the Law: From Chaucer to the Present, was reviewed in the June issue of Law & Society Review.

The book, co-authored by Michael Stanford, an attorney in the Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix and a College of Law alumnus, is “the first significant compilation of law-related poems to be published in the United States.

“The collection has a special place in any personal or institutional law library because not only is it an entertaining read but also an invaluable lyrical historical record of key legal cases, characters, and commentary. Poetry of the Law probes, challenges, and teases out the underlying uncertainties hidden within the detail of the life of law and significantly, it also illustrates the capacity of the poem to reach into the very core of our essential human connectedness.”

Both Kader and Stanford have had a lifelong love of poetry. Kader, an affiliate faculty member of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies and the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies, was an English major in college with an emphasis in poetry. He edited his college poetry magazine, in which he published some poems, and considered pursuing a master of fine arts degree before deciding on law school.
Stanford, who has a doctorate in English, also edited his college literary magazine and won the Academy of American Poets literary prize for a collection he wrote as a student. He has published poetry and literary criticism, and has taught at the University of Virginia and Stanford University, as well as ASU’s Barrett, The Honors College.

Eventually, Stanford and Kader connected and began to share their interests in law, literature and poetry, and wondered at the lack of a poetry anthology devoted to law.

To read the review, click here.

Kader teaches in the areas of criminal procedure, torts, state constitutional law and religion and the Constitution. He recently taught a summer course on Religion & Government at the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at Sarajevo University in Bosnia/Herzogovina, as well as visiting Turkey as part of an Arizona delegation under the auspices of the Foundation for Inter-Cultural Dialogue. He is a faculty affiliate in the ASU Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict.

Megan Stewart, mlstewa3@asu.edu
Office of Communications, College of Law
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