In the monography Law is »The Trial«. On Kafka’s Legal Philosophy, Janko Ferk deals with a topic not yet scientifically worked out in details; he contemplates about legal-philosophical and legal-theoretical contents of The Trial, along with other novels by the Austrian author Franz Kafka.
The author had to transcribe legal connotations of a work of literature into the language and jargon of the theory of law, simultaneously following the logic of a literary work given by Kafka’s Trial, which he excelled at as he mastered both sciences in their particular methodologies; he also connected both fields in a very creditable way in his monography. Janko Ferk debates about the creation of the novel, biographical and historical backgrounds and the reception that has gone worldwide by now. In that context Ferk speaks of Kafka’s “academic industry”. In the main part of the book Janko Ferk deals with legal terminology of The Trial and author’s other prose works, and pays a special attention to the concepts of the “right” and “wrong” (“guilt”) and “justice”, “judiciary” and “court”. Thus for the first time in the history of literature we encounter legal-lingual analysis of Kafka’s works. A special chapter is dedicated to the roles of judges and lawyers. This chapter is particularly interesting as the author himself is a judge, with a background of a practicing lawyer. In this book the author successfully contemplates about the essential questions of Kafka’s writing and interconnects great scientific topics of the “philosophy of law” and the “theory of law”. Law is “The Trial” is the first detailed study into Kafka’s works from a legal perspective.