Criminal Law Library Blog
Introduction
The search for truth occupies a central place in both the legal system and the literary arts, yet each pursues that goal through fundamentally different means. Courts promise truth through structure, rules of evidence, burdens of proof, and sharply defined issues designed to resolve disputes while safeguarding liberty. Literature, by contrast, seeks truth through expansion, probing motives, identities, and moral consequences that resist neat resolution. This tension between procedural certainty and narrative depth lies at the heart of an illuminating conversation between Professor Rodger Citron and the author and attorney Victor Suthammanont, whose professional life bridges these two worlds: See Citron, Roger. Law Literature, and the Search for Truth, VERDICT (Justia) 11 December 2025.
Drawing on his background in drama, his experience in high-stakes legal enforcement, and his debut novel Hollow Spaces, Suthammanont offers a compelling framework for understanding how law and literature approach truth differently, and why both are necessary. Trials, he observes, are not designed to uncover the totality of what happened, but to adjudicate specific claims within carefully constrained boundaries. Fiction, however, can inhabit the “hollow spaces” left behind: the unspoken contexts, the internal lives of participants, and the broader social forces that shape legal outcomes. Together, these perspectives suggest that truth is not singular but layered, emerging most fully when legal judgment and literary insight are read not in opposition, but in dialogue.