GAY-LEGAL NARRATIVES

Storytelling, a form of narrative legal scholarship describing events of legal significance from the perspective of ''outsider'' writers, is fast becoming a fixture in the pages of law reviews and on the shelve s of law libraries. The rapid rise in the popularity of narrative scho larship has led some critics to question its value, while prompting ot hers, most notably Professors Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry in last April's Stanford Law Review, to call for objective standards to evalu ate the merit of narrative works. Intended in part as a response to Pr ofessors Farber and Sherry, this essay asserts that storytelling's val ue is in expanding legal debate and driving social transformation by i lluminating legal issues from the perspectives of nomic groups frequen tly excluded from political and academic debate, particularly gays and lesbians. To illustrate his thesis, Professor Eskridge draws heavily on stories culled from the controversy surrounding the armed forces' p olicy of excluding gays and lesbians from their ranks, arguing that st ories recounting travails encountered by lesbians, gays, and women ser vice members can advance political debate and ameliorate unfounded pre judice and discrimination. The tenets of social constructionism would accord storytelling even greater value, Professor Eskridge contends: B y recounting episodes of social transformation produced by the defiant resistance of oppressed individuals or groups to continued sub-ordina tion or exclusion, storytelling can provide a catalyst for the destruc tion of repressive policies such as the military's gaylesbian exclusio n.