卡夫卡的名作《审判》中所描述一名被告如何看待法律以及被法律待遇的情况其实比我们想像得还要接近现实。这本书本来应该是一个幻想寓言，但其实非常真实。美国最高法院法官Anthony Kennedy曾经在1993年说过：“所有律师都需要阅读这本书，并了解它。”
虽然卡夫卡在《审判》里面对于法律的视野乍看之下简直是现代美国法律实践的正相反，书中奇怪以及随意的法律系统的特征可以让读者更深入理解并分析自己的法律系统。不止这样，它能够让读者看到自己法律系统是否渐渐变成像书里面的噩梦。
在这本书中，作者告诉我们如何透过卡夫卡的《审判》来考虑美国犯罪司法的各种缺点以及瑕疵。他利用卡夫卡的故事来描述现代法律的问题。现在越来越多案子里，警察审问之后通常就会得到嫌犯的认罪辩诉协议，而法庭最大的角色就是判下早能够预测的刑期。就像卡夫卡故事里一样，美国犯罪法律以及程序非常容易预测、与所不在，以及被官僚控制。它一样开始依赖利用欺骗来控制嫌犯以及陪审团，或者限制被告人。正义不再这么被正式以及正规的程序保护。
但是，作者认为这一切不是不可救的。我们需要回到传统的陪审团审判，需要把美国犯罪司法带回到关于正义以及法律，而不是关于成绩以及速度。
关于作者：
Robert P. Burns是美国西北大学（Northwestern University）的法律学院教授。他另外出版过一本书，The Death of the American Trial。
书评：
Brian Z. Tamanaha, Washington University School of Law
“Fascinating, jarring, powerful, and unique. Burns reframes criticisms of the American criminal justice system, showing the striking parallels between Kafka’s Trial and aspects of our own system. In doing so, he administers a shock of recognition that promises to be highly effective in getting us to see the limitations of our system in a different light.”
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Indiana University Bloomington
“Burns’s distinctive voice—combining that of an experienced practitioner, a legal scholar, and a philosopher—is immensely engaging, deeply serious, and consequential. He has a remarkable, almost kaleidoscopic ability to bring together, while respecting the differences, the very particular nightmare of Kafka’s work, the ideas of the great philosophers, and the daily injustices of American law today, all while insisting that we know, and should do, better.”
Albert W. Alschuler, University of Chicago Law School
"Kafka’s Law enormously increases a reader’s understanding of both Kafka’s writings and the American criminal justice system. The book’s barrage of present-day facts creates the same sense of baffled helplessness and of rule by nobody that the reader has when immersed in Kafka’s fictional world. Although Burns’s masterful study shows that the word Kafkaesque is no idle epithet when applied to our criminal justice system, it offers a way out, one that lies in revitalizing our legal system’s democratic roots."
Darryl K. Brown, University of Virginia School of Law
“Burns has few equals in combining the skills of the political theorist, legal scholar, engaged lawyer, and literary critic, all of which he has brought to bear to great reward in Kafka’s Law. On the one hand, complaints about our criminal justice system as 'Kafkaesque' are longstanding to the point of cliché. On the other, readers of The Trial could easily dismiss its legal system as safely remote from our own. Burns overcomes both hurdles by taking his careful interpretation of Kafka to the specifics of American criminal law and procedure, and to a series of detailed examples of recent American criminal prosecutions. The result is an insightful, disturbing and cautionary portrait of the fragility of formal rules and legal ideals in the face of every variety of bureaucracy and politics.”
目录：
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. A Reading of The Trial
Chapter 2. Institutional Perspectives on The Trial
Chapter 3. Echoes of Kafka Today
Chapter 4. Spaces of Freedom in American Law?
Notes
Index
- 卡夫卡的法规：审判以及美国的犯罪司法
- Kafka's Law: The Trial and American Criminal Justice
- 作者：Robert P. Burns
- 出版社代理人：University of Chicago （美国）
- 出版时间：2014年
- 页数：192页
- 已售版权：
- 版权联系人：tina@peonyliteraryagency.com
内容介绍