In The Supreme Court, 1982 Term–Forward: Nomos and Narrative Robert Cover defines the concept of “nomos” as “a normative universe” (p.4) Norms are standards or patterns of behavior typically in a social context. Cover describes nomos as entailing the creation and maintenance of right and wrong in our world. According to this presumption, Cover then asserts the idea that “no set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning” (p.4). Nomos as a normative universe is also seen “as a world of law, [entailing] the application of human will to an extant state of affairs” (p.9). Normative behaviors and jurisprudence are then identified to be deeply embedded in one another and uphold each other’s existence.
Nomos can be seen to an extreme point in Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Josef K. is rapidly immersed into the law of his world when he is arrested. Throughout the novel it is clear that he exists in a world in which their legal system can only be described as an “unknown system of jurisprudence” (45). Everything seems to be entirely inscrutable and he can never fully piece anything together without unearthing new information that leads him astray. Nomos is being perpetuated throughout the entire novel but it can be seen most explicitly when Josef K. starts to adjust his behaviors and routine for his trial. Because he becomes so enraptured in his trial he is allowing it to have meaning and importance and therefore take over him. His interpretation becomes the route of the trial therefore becoming the law– life is law and law is life.
Works Cited
Cover, Robert. “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term — Foreword: Nomos and Narrative.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 97, no. 4, 1983, pp. 4–68, https://doi.org/http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/2047.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by Breon Mitchell, Schocken Books, 1998.
