Courts, Stories, and the Narrative Policy Framework

ABSTRACT Courts have long played a role in the policy process in the United States. But the Narrative Policy Framework has failed to study courts as sites of policymaking and storytelling. This article attempts to remedy this by showing how the NPF can be applied to legal storytelling, in part by drawing on Applied Legal Storytelling literature. I offer suggestions for a research agenda that brings these scholarly conversations together to enhance the study of policy narratives by bringing the NPF to the courts. Given the role of courts, both state and federal, in policymaking, it is important that NPF scholars examine the stories told in courts to fully understand the role of policy narratives in the policy process.