Abstract

Chapter 89 of Moby-Dick, famous as a commentary on the law of whaling—particularly how to settle disputes over the ownership of a captured whale that breaks free—is notably structured like a legal opinion, with a [hypothetical, in Herman Melville’s text] set of facts that portend a dispute, a restatement of the law of possession to be applied, a citation to precedential authority (and summary of that similar case), and a conclusion that the precedent is not objectionable and thus can be applied. I argue that Melville is here engaged in irony, since the point is that the precedent-based outcome is no more objectionable than the possessory rights of a slaveholder, a rapacious landlord, a lender who bankrupts a borrower, or a cleric who seizes an outrageous income from the poor laborers in his parish—in other words, completely objectionable! To demonstrate that Chapter 89 is not simply a legal exposition but also a moral inquiry, I briefly revisit three analytical frameworks: ethical criticism, the law and literature movement, and Richard Weisberg’s “poethics.” In Weisberg’s poethical method, legal narratives like judicial opinions are inevitably literary, and novels about law end up as legal narratives. Because Chapter 89 is both a literary text and a legal narrative, it serves as a proving ground for several of Weisberg’s arguments, namely that (i) only a well-written judicial opinion can achieve justice, and (ii) racism and sexism in great books, far from refuting ethical criticism, tend to self-implode and offer ethical insights to contemporary readers.

ISSN

1541-2601

Publisher

The Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2026.2707758

Keywords

ethical criticism, law and literature, whaling law, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Disciplines

American Literature | Law

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