Inferring and Explaining

141 eVIdenCe, exPlanatIon, and narratIVe one infers from the premise that a given narrative would make better sense of the reasons than would any other narrative to the conclusion that the given true . Just as with inference to the best explanation, we face the obvious question of what are the criteria for one normative narrative to be better than another. exerCIses 1. Why do the narratives about Hamilton and his partner invite the use of IBE to determine the quality of the evidence each lawyer presents for what happened, but the narratives about Wanda and Earl seem to preclude the use of IBE as a tool for assessing what Mary Ann and Wanda should do? 2. Who is Geneva Crenshaw? How does she ft into the material in this chapter? 3. What is the diference between fabula and sjuzet? Is this distinction helpful to understand the success or failure of an argument? QuIz fourteen Here are two narratives about immigration and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the proposed DACA bill. Use “inference to the best narrative” to deter- mine the quality of evidence each author has for his or her narrative. Which narrative make the most sense of things as you understand them. Feel free to do a little research and inform yourself a little more about the DACA debate and indeed the whole immigration debate. Also feel free to ofer your own rival narrative about all this. Narrative One: “I’m a Dreamer. I’d Have Nothing If It Weren’t for DACA,” http://fortune .com/2017/09/21/daca-dreamer-immigration/. 2 2 Narrative Two: “Paul Ryan to Push DACA Amnesty for Millions of Illegal Aliens before Leaving Congress,” https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/04/13/paul-ryan-to-push-daca-amnesty-for -millions-of-illegal-aliens-before-leaving-congress/. 23 Notes 1 Paul Gewirtz, “Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law,” in Law’s Stories , ed. Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 3. 2 Lief H. Carter, Reason in Law , 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 1988), 4. 3 Gewirtz, “Narrative and Rhetoric,” 5. 4 Michael S. Pardo and Ronald J. Allen, “Juridical Proof and the Best Explanation,” Law and Philosophy 27, no. 3 (2008): 223. 5 Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, “Legal Story- telling and Constitutional Law: Te Medium and the Message,” in Brooks and Gewirtz, Law’s Stories . 6 Paul Tagard, Hot Tought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 136. 7 Tagard, 138–39. 8 Alan M. Dershowitz, “Life Is Not a Dramatic Narra- tive,” in Brooks and Gewirtz, Law’s Stories , 99. 9 Dershowitz, 100.