| A rhetorical approach to U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions informed by Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of textual dialogism yields revealing testimony related to the ways in which constructed voices convey ideologically coded images of individual litigants, the governing communities in which those litigants reside, and the legal structures that regulate and judge their behavior. Comparative examination of voice construction in Scott v. Sandford and Bowers v. Hardwick demonstrates ways in which dialogic representation in opinions can serve to silence or parody litigants' arguments when those arguments appear antithetical to the justices' conception of the country's dominant ideology. Chronological examination of a series of opinions responding to civil rights issues elicits evidence that the Court's sense of the security of its authority determines the "speaking" styles of both written laws and living justices. The rhetorical richness of Supreme Court opinions makes the genre ideal for critical analysis in composition classrooms. |
