Abstract
This essay argues for an approach to legal studies that concentrates on law's wider cultural resonances. It examines the genre of the mystery novel, focusing on Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, and analyzes legal writings by such figures as Oliver Wendell Holmes. By centering on the figure of the trifle, it emphasizes issues that are deemed irrelevant by an approach to the law that privileges matters of doctrine and procedure. To engage the trivial requires addressing questions of pleasure – an underexamined aspect of the law that can only be engaged by a cultural approach to its study.
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