Interview with James Boyd White

In an interview, Professor James Boyd White talked about a broad array of topics, varying from the possibilities and impossibilities of Law and Economics, and Law and Literature, to legal interpretation and the interrelation of law and politics, with the issue of Guantanamo Bay as a poignant example. On law and economics, White said that languages and the practices they entail mark out distinct domains, and that translation between them is always imperfect. To think of economics and law from this point of view, he would say that these are radically different enterprises that work on different premises and by different methods. One cannot do economics in the language of law, nor can one do law in the language of economics. In talking about the law, in this interview and elsewhere, White meant to speak not so much from the outside, as say a political scientist might, but from the inside, as a lawyer.