ICYMI: Babcock and Sassoubre on Deliberation in "12 Angry Men"

ICYMI: Barbara Allen Babcock and Ticien Marie Sassoubre, both of Stanford Law School, have revised Deliberation in 12 Angry Men, first published at 82 Chicago-Kent Law Review 633 (2007). Here is the abstract.

Talking with law students about 12 Angry Men is a lot like talking with law students about juries generally. The trained certainties drain away as they wonder whether they will be able to convince twelve diverse and unpredictable people of anything. Their responses remind us that this film is not just about juries, but also about lawyering, which helps make it both relevant-and teachable-fifty years after its release. Alexis de Tocqueville, who was a great fan of the American jury, observed that juries are "the most efficacious means of teaching [the people] how to rule well."' 12 Angry Men dramatizes the relationship between the deliberative process in which juries engage and the larger cultural work of law and democratic institutions. In the following pages, we will explore this dramatization, bringing to bear our own experiences: Babcock as trial lawyer and teacher of procedure, Sassoubre as a teacher of cultural studies of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Damodaran on Resistance to Power as Depicted in the Hacker Wars

Saigopal AP Damodaran, Christ College, has published Resistance To Power as Depicted in the Hacker Wars at 7 IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Literature 51 (June 2019). Here is the abstract.

The Hacker Wars(2014) is a documentary film directed by Vivien Lesnik Weisman. This documentary film focuses on hackers, specifically hacktivists and their battles against the US government over surveillance, privacy and who should hold information. The film tells the story of three prominent faces in the hacktivist movement. They are Andrew Aurenheimer, known by his hacker handle Weev, Barrett Brown, a journalist and propagandist for the hacker group, Anonymous and Jeremy Hammond who was known by his hacker handle, Anarchaos. There is the fourth character Sabu, a hacker who turned informant to the FBI and help nab these hackers. This paper will look at this documentary film and try to understand the way resistance to power is carried out in the cyberspace and what is the discourse these dissenters subscribe to and also briefly look at how these resistances are confronted. To do so, this paper will employ the ideas of Michel Foucault on power, discourse and resistance.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Sassoubre on Realism and Melodrama in American Film Since "Birth of a Nation"

Ticien Marie Sassoubre, Stanford Law School, is publishing Knowing It When We See It: Realism and Melodrama in American Film Since 'Birth of a Nation' in Trial Films on Trial: Law, Justice, and Popular Culture, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press (Austin Sarat, Jessica Silbey & Martha Umphrey, Eds., Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, (2019).

In American film, official law tends to be indifferent, bureaucratic, and corruptible, constantly threatening to produce injustice. In contrast, “justice” is individual, unambiguous and readily accessible. As a result, seeing justice done often requires extralegal intervention. Films offer alternate trials in which apparently realistic but emotionally charged representations of personal experience, rather than legal procedure and evidentiary standards, determine guilt or innocence. The fairness of the verdict in the filmic alternate trial is measured not by the standard of due process, but by the viewer’s moral sense. Nevertheless, as Carol Clover has observed, the narrative substructure of both the Anglo-American trial and mainstream film bear a striking resemblance. I argue that this resemblance arises from a common set of assumptions about narrative plausibility and the social world: the conventions that govern mainstream film are also the (largely unspoken) conventions of credibility and verifiability in legal discourse. Filmic alternate trials follow realist rules of evidence but articulates an underlying epistemology that is fundamentally melodramatic. They have done so at least since D. W. Griffith’s deeply influential “Birth of a Nation” (1915), and they continue to do so today. And these melodramatic trials of our social realities inform our perception in legal and non-legal settings in ways that are so familiar they have become invisible to us.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Corcos on What We Talk About When We Talk About Law Schools @LpcProf @HedgehogsFoxes

Christine A. Corcos, Louisiana State University Law Center, has published What We Talk About When We Talk About Law Schools: Deconstructing Meaning In Popular Culture Images of Legal Education at Hedgehogs and Foxes. Here is the abstract.

Films, television, and novels often send us very specific messages about law schools and legal education that tend to replicate and reinforce both general notions about the ways in which we educate our lawyers, and in turn sustain our legal system. Most movies, tv shows, and novels mention the Ivy League law schools because they represent the first step toward guaranteed achievement in a legal career. Such mentions serve as proxies for several things, including that the character who attended the school is intelligent, ambitious, and possibly from a privileged background. Even viewers who know little about law schools are familiar with U.S. News Rankings and what those rankings mean. Viewers understand that Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Stanford lead the list. They know that these schools are the most selective and prestigious. If popular culture characters attend, graduate from, or teach at these schools, then they are likely to be smart, or wealthy, or ambitious.

Download the article from SSRN or from the website at the links.

Newly Published: Trial Films On Trial (University of Alabama Press) @ljstprof @JSilbey @UnivofALPress

Newly published: Trial Films on Trial: Law, Justice, and Popular Culture (Austin Sarat, Jessica Silbey, and Martha Merrill Umphrey, eds., University of Alabama Press, 2019). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Historically, the emergence of the trial film genre coincided with the development of motion pictures. In fact, one of the very first feature-length films, Falsely Accused!, released in 1908, was a courtroom drama. Since then, this niche genre has produced such critically acclaimed films as Twelve Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Anatomy of a Murder. The popularity and success of these films can be attributed to the fundamental similarities of filmic narratives and trial proceedings. Both seek to construct a “reality” through storytelling and representation and in so doing persuade the audience or jury to believe what they see. Trial Films on Trial: Law, Justice, and Popular Culture is the first book to focus exclusively on the special significance of trial films for both film and legal studies. The contributors to this volume offer a contemporary approach to the trial film genre. Despite the fact that the medium of film is one of the most pervasive means by which many citizens receive come to know the justice system, these trial films are rarely analyzed and critiqued. The chapters cover a variety of topics, such as how and why film audiences adopt the role of the jury, the narrative and visual conventions employed by directors, and the ways mid-to-late-twentieth-century trial films offered insights into the events of that period.

 

Want To Review a New Law-Related Film, TV Series, Or Book? Hedgehogs and Foxes Wants To See Your Work!

The online site Hedgehogs and Foxes (https://hedgehogsandfoxes.org/) is seeking essays, book reviews, articles, teaching materials, and original works (including works of fiction, poetry, and other materials related to law and the humanities. Would you like to review a law related film or television series, such as For the People, Proven Innocent, Goliath, Bosch, Les Miserables, The Red Line, or Sneaky Pete? What about a law-related novel or non-fiction book? Let one of the Board of Editors know of your interest.

ICYMI: Boray on the Depiction of Disabilities in Movies

ICYMI:

Sameer Boray, NALSAR University of Law, has published Depiction of Disabilities in Movies: Disability Portrayal in the Media Through the Eyes of Bollywood and Hollywood. Here is the abstract.

This paper will journey through the stages of which the media through film has depicted people with disabilities. While every movie-maker has the creative freedom of making a film, certain aspects such as media portrayal of disabilities of movies cannot and should not go unchecked. The author has highlighted how this can be tackled by the intervention of law through censor boards. The Indian Censor Board with this respect has been analyzed and the author has provided how this responsible body can play a larger role, whilst remembering the creative freedoms movie-makers are endowed with. Few popular movies in both Hollywood and Bollywood have been discussed to throw more light on the kind of depictions and a basic study has been mentioned on how there is a change in studying disabilities as a subject.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Tourists as Post-Witnesses in Documentary Film: Sergei Loznitsa's Austerlitz and Rex Bloomstein's KZ @cardiffuni

David Clarke, Cardiff University, is publishing Tourists As Post-Witnesses in Documentary Film: Sergei Loznitsa's Austerlitz (2016) and Rex Bloomstein's KZ (2006) in the Oñati Socio-Legal Series, Forthcoming. Here is the abstract in English and Spanish.

English abstract: This article compares two documentary films that address an apparent crisis of post-witnessing at memorials that commemorate the victims of National Socialism. In the context of contemporary debates about appropriate behaviour for tourists at sites of “dark” or “difficult” heritage, Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz (2016) and Rex Bloomstein’s KZ (2006) take very different approaches to observing the act of visiting concentration camp memorials. Whereas Loznitsa adopts an observational documentary mode, constructing a cultural hierarchy between the touristic observer and the cinematic observer at memorials in Germany, Bloomstein’s film uses a participatory mode to prompt the viewer to consider the complexities of the affective-discursive practice of tourists engaging with the suffering of victims at the Mauthausen memorial in Austria. The article argues that Bloomstein’s decision to adopt a participatory approach is more productive in allowing us to think about the significance of responses to victims’ suffering at such sites.

Spanish abstract: Este artículo compara dos documentales que giran en torno a una aparente crisis del post-testimonio en monumentos a las víctimas del nacionalsocialismo. En el contexto del debate actual sobre cómo deben comportarse los turistas en lugares de herencia “oscura” o “difícil”, Austerlitz (2016), de Sergei Loznitsa, y KZ (2006), de Rex Bloomstein, observan de forma muy diferente el acto de visitar antiguos campos de concentración. Mientras Loznitsa adopta un modo de observación documental, construyendo una jerarquía cultural entre el observador turístico y el cinemático, Bloomstein opta por un modo participativo para exhortar al espectador a considerar las complejidades de las prácticas afectivo-discursivas de los turistas que se comprometen con el sufrimiento de las víctimas. El artículo argumenta que la decisión de Bloomstein de adoptar un enfoque participativo es más productivo a la hora de propiciar nuestra reflexión sobre el significado de las respuestas al sufrimiento de las víctimas en esos lugares.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: Liverpool Law Review's Special Issue on Reimagining Justice: Aesthetics and Law @LivUni_Law

Volume 38, issue 1 (April 2017) is devoted to the topic "Reimagining Justice: Aesthetics and Law." It includes a number of fascinating articles. Below is the table of contents, with links to the full text of the articles.

Julia J. A. Shaw, Introduction

William P. MacNeil, His Dark Legalities: Intellectual Property's Psychomachia in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy

Honni van Rijswijk, The Continuing Problem of the Universal to Questions of Justice: A Feminist Reading of Lars von Trier's Dogville

Sarah Sargent, Truth and Consequences: Law, Myth and Metaphor in American Indian Contested Adoption

Patricia Branco, Exploring Justitia Through Éowyn and Niobe: On Gender, Race and the Legal

Julia J. A. Shaw, Aesthetics of Law and Literary License: An Anatomy of the Legal Imagination

Lazar and Hirsch on Human Rights Movies Through the Prism of Movie Advisory Boards

Alon Lazar, Center for Academic Studies, and Tal Litvak Hirsch, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, have published Human Rights Movies Through the Prism of Movie Advisory Boards. Here is the abstract.

Human rights is a topic of high importance in Western societies, and discrimination has been noted as a determining force in their violations. Films depicting human rights issues have been discussed as instrumental in bringing these matters to the attention of the general public and students. Their exposure is dependent largely on their age-classifications by movie advisory boards which determine who can watch them. Two studies were conducted to assess how films depicting human rights issues and held exemplary by the Political Film Society (PFS) are evaluated by movie advisory boards, providing justifications for their age-classifications. Study 1 found that the boards in the US and the UK identify these movies as suitable mainly for adults, while in Australia, in most cases, moviegoers are to decide their appropriateness. Each board stresses different contents as their main concerns, yet none mention discrimination. Study 2, assessing Netherland's NICAM evaluations, revealed that these movies are considered suitable mainly for adults, primarily because they are heavy with violence and fear arousing contents, with only some noted to include discriminatory contents. Thus, in these liberal-democratic societies, human rights movies considered of high value, in most cases are removed from the educational arena.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Black Panther and Postcolonial Critique @CambridgeUP @theblackpanther

Call for papers

Call for Papers Black Panther and Postcolonial Critique Submission deadline: 1 March, 2019

The smashing success of Ryan Coogler’s 2018 blockbuster Black Panther has stimulated countless interpretations built on terms orbiting around developments in the US, but there is another interpretative frame hiding in plain view that needs to be explored: the film's heavy reliance on dominant tropes of postcolonial critique, particularly its Black Atlantic/Black Studies inflections. Adeleke Adeeko is guest editing a special issue on Black Panther for The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry that proposes to examine this important film’s entanglements in the global histories that center on the Indian and Atlantic oceans and move from slave trading through Afropolitanism and négritude, to migritude and afro-futurism. Especially welcome are contributions that explore the film’s intertextual affiliations to discourses of diaspora and homelands. We invite explorations of the ethics of insularity and the reliance on Pan-Africanist ideals of liberation that pervade the film. We seek as well re-evaluations of the function of reflexive rituals of power and consciously artful sacralization as modes of governmentality, as well as the status of women in the construction and maintenance of utopias. Connections between the film and the history of Marvel's Black Panther comic books is also welcome.

8,000-word essays should be sent to the Editorial Assistant, Adwoa Opoku-Agyemang (pli@cambridge.org), to reach her no later than 1 March, 2019.

Call For Papers: Vertigo: Fake news/real theory: A Seminar at ANU College of Law

The Australian National University College of Law Centre for Law, Arts, and the Humanities presents a Seminar on Vertigo: Fake news/real theory.

The event takes place on December 12, 2018.

The ANU contemporary critical theory group is hosting a one-day seminar exploring law, art, politics, and society in the 21st century.

This event will feature short papers of no more than 15 minutes that make an intervention or articulate an argument with succinct vigour, leaving plenty of room for lively and even contentious discussion.

We particularly encourage the attendance and participation of HDR students from a wide range of disciplines, as well as from early career and established scholars working on critical theory and critical legal theory.

The call for papers closes November 10.



More here.

The Watergate Grand Jury Report Is Now Available

The Watergate Grand Jury report is now available. It has been under seal for nearly 45 years. Here's a link to the material.

A short bibliography about the Watergate scandal.


Books

John Dean, Blind Ambition: The White House Years (1976).

Elizabeth Drew, Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall (2015).

Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990).

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men  (1974). The first book about the Watergate break-in by the reporters who broke the story about the cover-up. Made into a 1976 film that starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (2005).


Films and Television

Dick Cavett's Watergate (2014).

Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews (1977).

Our Nixon (2013).

Websites

Watergate at 40 (Washington Post)

Watergate.info

A Special Issue of the London Review of International Law Devoted to International Criminal Justice on/and Film @immi_tallgren

Volume 6, issue 1, March 2018 of the London Review of International Law is devoted to issues of international law and justice on film. 

The issue includes Ainley, Humphreys, and Tallgren, International Criminal Justice on/and film; Rush and Elander, Working Through the Cinematography of International Criminal Justice: Procedure of Law and Images of Atrocity; Weckel, Watching the Accused Watch the Nazi Crimes: Observers' Reports on the Atrocity Film Screenings in the Belsen, Nuremberg, and Eichmann Trials; McNamee and Andrews, "Judgment at Nuremberg:" Hollywood Takes the International Criminal Law Stand; and Rigney, "You Start To Feel Really Alone": Defence Lawyers and Narratives of International Criminal Law in Film.

Via @immi_tallgren.

ABA Journal's 25 Greatest Legal Movies @ABAJournal

From the ABA Journal: The 25 Greatest Legal Movies: Expanding the Boundaries. This story follows on 2008's The 25 Greatest Legal Movies (disclosure: I was one of the judges for that story). 

"The Music Man" and the Law @LawLibCongress

Jim Martin of the Law Library of Congress investigates legal issues raised in the iconic film The Music Man here in a post for the blog In Custodia Legis. Mr. Martin points out, for example,

One law that appears very early in the movie is when the train that Harold Hill is riding enters Iowa. At that point the conductor announces that “cigarettes illegal in this state,” and removes a cigarette from the hand of one of the passengers. I figured that was just part of the script but the movie is partially correct. 

At the time the movie is set, sometime shortly before World War I, Iowa did indeed ban the sale of cigarettes. Title 33, Chapter 47 of the Iowa Code of 1913 governed the sale and possession of tobacco products in the state. Section 8867 specifically prohibits the sale of cigarettes and papers used to make cigarettes. This provision was adopted in 1896. 

Very entertaining reading.

Stalk Her Until She Loves You: Abduction As Romance @PopDetective

Via Pop Culture Detective (@PopDetective), a video essay discussing the way pop culture (often film) depicts the relentless way that a man pursues a woman in order to transform her initial dislike into attraction, desire, and ultimately love. Link here to Abduction As Romance. Pop Culture Detective has also posted a related video essay, Stalking For Love, which covers the ways in which pop culture seems to show society seeming to reward a man who won't take a woman's initial "no" for an answer. He continues to follow her and repeat his question, "Will you go out with me?" (or something similar) until he gets the answer he wants. Of course, because he's the "hero" in the situation, society usually excuses such behavior. In addition, the woman who finally (and charmingly) agrees to be wooed can give up responsibility for her actions and her choices. It's an all too comfortable position for many women, even today. It allows men to continue to be aggressive and seductive at the same time, and for women to play the victim and the prize. "Win, win," as they say. Or "second verse, same as the first."

Pop Culture Detective isn't the first pop culture observer to comment on this aberrant message, but these videos are very effective. For more on the "hero male as stalker," see these links.

Julie Beck, Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending (The Atlantic)

Radhiga Sanghani, Ten Times Pop Culture Romanticised Sexual Harassment (BBC)

Stalking Is Love (TV Tropes)

Why Is Stalking Romantic In Our Favorite Movies? (AAUW)

But for a contrasting opinion, see Cathy Young, Romantic Comedies Produce Stalkers? That's Laughable (The Observer)

Hill on Cheap Sentiment and "Dances With Wolves"

Claire A. Hill, University of Minnesota Law School, is publishing Cheap Sentiment in volume 81 of Law and Contemporary Problems (2018). Here is the abstract.

The Oscar-winning 1990 movie Dances With Wolves tells the story of Lieutenant John Dunbar, a Union officer who adopts a Sioux identity and name. The New York Times explained the movie’s appeal: “[A]n appealing hybrid, a western without guilt,” it enabled viewers to “enjoy a rousing old adventure and still feel they can save the planet.” A (white) person watching the movie could feel a virtuous identification with the Indians, and imagine that had he existed at the time, he too would have fought the good fight, and espoused pro-Indian laws and policies without having to do anything perilous, or really, anything at all. This article, in a symposium issue on Altruism, Community and Markets, labels this phenomenon “cheap sentiment.” Cheap sentiment is like cognitive dissonance and various forms of hypocrisy, but focuses on societal, external effects. A person gets the benefit of holding a particular ‘virtuous’ belief without incurring the cost; if the person acts, or presses for action to be taken, in furtherance of the belief, the cost may even be externalized—society bears the cost. Consider a person who objects to payment for organs as ‘commercializing what should be given freely’ when neither she nor anyone close to her is in need of organs. The same person, if she or a loved one needed organs, might (or might not) have a different view. Consider also people who object to low wages and unsafe working conditions in emerging economies, but who nevertheless buy the resultant products-- products whose (low) prices reflect how little was spent on labor and safer working conditions. Other examples discussed include differential pricing and NIMBY. The article argues that cheap sentiment adversely affects policy-making, especially insofar as it short-circuits (and sometimes even demonizes) due consideration of market-oriented solutions. My hope is that by characterizing the phenomenon of cheap sentiment as a pathology, and accommodation to it as problematic and not inevitable, my framing can serve as a needed counterweight, enabling such solutions to be given due consideration.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Maillard on Hollywood Loving @noblemaillard

Kevin Noble Maillard, Syracuse University College of Law, is publishing Hollywood Loving in volume 86 of the Fordham Law Review (2018). Here is the abstract.

In this Essay, I highlight how nongovernmental entities establish political, moral, and sexual standards through visual media, which powerfully underscores and expresses human behavior. Through the Motion Picture Production Code (the “Hays Code”) and the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters (the “TV Code”), Americans viewed entertainment as a pre-mediated, engineered world that existed outside of claims of censorship and propaganda. This Essay critically examines the role of film and television as persuasive and integral legal actors and it considers how these sectors operate to maintain, and sometimes challenge, racial order.

Download the Essay from SSRN at the link.

Corcos on Some Popular Culture Images of AI In Humanity's Courtroom @LSULawCenter @SavLawRev

Christine A. Corcos, Louisiana State University Law Center, is publishing ‘I Am the Master’: Some Popular Culture Images of AI in Humanity’s Courtroom in the Savannah Law Review (2018), as part of the symposium Rise of the Automatons. Here is the abstract.

Both serious literature and popular culture are flooding us with discussions of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). As we note the rise of the subject of robot law and particularly the question of whether AI could possibly become sentient we begin to take seriously concerns about the regulation of the use of robots and the possibility that AI might pose a threat to the physical safety and privacy of human beings. In particular, we are beginning to wonder how we might control this new technology, which seems both more intelligent and more powerful than human beings. Suppose unethical or negligent programmers create situations in which AI escapes human controls and thus contravenes human norms or rules? Can we bring that AI to account? Ought we to do so, particularly if that AI is sentient or approaches sentience? At first, we might think that the answer should be “yes,” because after all we have created the AI and we should continue to control it. But the question is, I would submit, more complicated. We have created computers and robots as useful tools, but we have continued to develop them as far more — as devices that far outstrip our own capacities to decipher the mysteries of the Universe. If we deliberately endow them with characteristics that mimic our own, if they develop those independently, or develop others by analogy allowing them to function in ways that mirror human activities, can we continue to insist that we should treat them as property and that they should do our bidding? If at some point, they make some demand for the right not to follow commands that we issue, for whatever reason, ought we to ignore that demand? Novelists, filmmakers, and other artists who create popular culture have already considered this question for decades, if not centuries. In this Article, I discuss some of the ways in which some of them have thought about these issues and the insights they have had, which could guide us as we move through this important area.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

See other articles in this symposium:  Brian L. Frye, The Lion, the Bat, & the Thermostat,  Philip Segal, Legal Jobs in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Moving From Today's Limited Universe of Data Toward the Great Beyond.