Rights Talk in Science Fiction

Christine A. Corcos, Louisiana State University Law Center, has published Visits to a Small Planet: Rights Talk in Some Science Fiction Film and Television Series from the 1950s to the 1990s. It is forthcoming in the Stetson Law Review. Here is the abstract.

As early as the seventeenth century, authors, particularly satirists, used the travel essay as a means to examine and critique societies, including their own. If an artist’s government discouraged or banned political or social critique, he was necessarily forced to disguise his criticism as fiction - the more fanciful, the better. This practice has carried over to the genre of science fiction (SF).

While authors fictionalize many of the elements in SF to make their stories more exciting and bizarre, some elements have made a transition into popular culture because they resonate with the human popular imagination. As a result, many individuals believe that the elements actually exist. Among them are popular methods of alien transportation, such as the rocket (often pictured as the “rocket to Mars”), the flying saucer, and the alien being interested in making contact with a human, either for benign or (more often) nefarious purposes. The idea that an alien means to visit Earth in order to destroy the planet or to cause us harm is one that quickly becomes a theme in novels, films, and television beginning in the mid-twentieth century, fed by actual political and cultural events.

These ideas resonate with human imaginations or they are embraced by spiritual beliefs. Viewers’ familiarity with real life space travel, which increases plausibility as well as the maintenance of traditional SF memes, allow SF writers to use the genre’s conventions to continue to critique society.

SF authors continually use human beings as the yardstick by which to measure aliens. So, while such films and shows may seem to invite us, through the use of the alien lens, to critique human society, they actually invite us to re-examine human society from a different, albeit a human, perspective. As the genre critiques human society from two perspectives, SF is actually well suited to examine the issue of civil and human rights.

This Article examines the critique of human society’s development and use of such rights within a sampling of SF film and television programs from the 1950s to the 1990s. Part II analyzes the treatment of civil rights within the alien invasion and infiltration narratives of the time period. Part III discusses the transition from the foreign alien-invasion narrative to the domestic alien narrative and its effect on the treatment of civil rights. Part IV explores the civil rights issues represented in the friendly alien-visitor narrative of the 1960s television show My Favorite Martian. Part V examines the civil rights questions the late 1980s and early 1990s television series Alien Nation poses. Part VI analyzes the civil rights issues the 1990s television series 3rd Rock from the Sun raises.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Constitutional Law in the Movies

David Ray Papke, Marquette University Law School, has published Oil and Water Do Not Mix: Constitutional Law and American Popular Culture, as Marquette Law School Legal Studies Paper No. 10-09. Here is the abstract.

Why have most fictional films and television series purportedly involving constitutional issues been commercial and artistic failures? Focusing in order on “First Monday in October” (1981); “The Pelican Brief” (1993); and “The Court” and “First Monday,” two short-lived American television series from 2002, this article suggests the works fail not because of a lack of creativity but rather because of the way they were produced. In particular, the article argues the culture industry’s use of stock characters, devotion to familiar conventions, and reliance on established genres virtually preclude anything resembling meaningful constitutional deliberation and discussion. These aspects of pop cultural production are industrial imperatives, but stock characters, familiar conventions, and established genres limit the intellectual range and depth of films and television series. These limitations are especially pronounced when consideration of the Constitution is a possibility.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Eden Narratives and Law

Geoffrey P. Miller, New York University School of Law, has published The Dark Age: How the Biblical Narratives Demonstrate the Necessity for Law and Government as NYU School of Law Public Law Research Paper No. 10-18. Here is the abstract.

In earlier work I argue that the Garden of Eden story in the book of Genesis explores a basic question for political theory: why people have an obligation to obey the law. The narratives that follow describe a “Dark Age” in world history characterized by accelerating violence and ending in a catastrophic flood. These texts expand the analysis of the Eden narratives by asking whether human beings can achieve a good life in the absence of government and law. The narratives describe an experiment in which people interact strategically with one another in an environment where cooperation can generate a surplus but defection from cooperative arrangements is always possible. The message of the Dark Age texts is that, at least under the specified conditions of scarcity, self-interest, and character types, people will not achieve a good life in the absence of government and law.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Call For Proposals: New Series

Vijay K. Bhatia and Anne Wagner, series editors, are very pleased to announce that Ashgate will edit a new Series entitled Law, Language and Communication. The Series welcomes proposals - both edited collections as well as single-authored monographs - emphasizing critical approached to law, language and communication, identifying and discussing issues, proposing solutions to problems, offering analyses in areas such as legal construction, interpretation, translation and de-codification.

Legal Practice and Education in Edinburgh in the Early Twentieth Century

Hector Lewis MacQueen, University of Edinburgh School of Law, has published Lawyers' Edinburgh 1908-2008, at 8 Book of the Old Edinburgh Club (new series) 27 (2010). Here is the abstract.

This paper considers the physical setting of legal practice and education in Edinburgh in 1908 and compares it to the position in 2008. It is a contribution to the centenary celebrations of the Old Edinburgh Club in 2008.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Wire, National Security, and War

Dawinder S. Sidnu has published Wartime America and The Wire: A Response to Posner’s Post-9/11 Constitutional Framework in volume 20 of the George Mason Univesrity Civil Rights Law Journal (2009). Here is the abstract.

Pragmatists subscribe to the view that an individual’s practical experiences shape and inform an individual’s concept of the law. In Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, one of the legal community’s most admired and prolific pragmatists, Judge Richard A. Posner, presents his thoughts on how courts should resolve questions of constitutional law that implicate national security and individual rights.

As the relationship between security and liberty remains largely undefined in the post-9/11 world, Posner offers an important and timely perspective on a critical area of constitutional law. His framework is one in which security interests invariably supercede liberty interests in times of crisis. As such, according to Posner, an executive possesses significant authority to respond to national security needs in wartime and despite established rights, the judiciary should commensurately play a limited checking role on relevant executive action, profiling and discrimination of Muslims may be condoned, torture can be used to elicit information from detainees, and an executive may invoke the “law of necessity” to step outside of the “law of the Constitution.”

This essay uses an element of practical reality -- specifically themes from the acclaimed television series on law enforcement and crime, The Wire -- to challenge each of these conclusions from Not a Suicide Pact. Drawing on those themes, it argues that security and liberty are not locked in a zero sum game, that the judiciary should robustly check executive action especially in these perilous times, that profiling and discrimination of Muslims in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing should be deemed impermissible, that torture is not only inconsistent with American legal obligations but also counterproductive to the war campaign, and finally that the executive is bound by and must not act beyond the Constitution, exigent circumstances and moral positions notwithstanding.

The essay thus suggests that the courts should give pause to the direction of constitutional law urged by Posner. Appealing to both law and practical reason, it admits that the law must be flexible in the post-9/11 era, but posits that the law and traditional constitutional norms still must guide and restrain the executive temptation to defend the nation at all costs.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Note also that some college instructors are using the show in courses. Here's a story from NPR.

More Sports Law in the Humanities

Douglas E. Abrams, University of Missouri School of Law, has published Sports in the Courts: The Role of Sports References in Judicial Opinions, in 15 Villanova Sports and Entertainment Law Journal (2010). Here is the abstract.

In cases with no claims or defenses concerning sports, the Supreme Court and lower federal and state courts frequently publish opinions that draw analogies to the rules or terminology of sports familiar to broad segments of the American people. Sports analogies can help the court explain factual or legal points because today’s generation, including the lawyers and litigants who comprise the prime audience for written opinions, grew into adulthood amid an unprecedented saturation of professional and amateur sports in the broadcast and print media, and more recently on the Internet.

This article surveys the broad array of sports whose references now lace written judicial opinions, and then discusses the use and misuse of these references. Sports references can help courts explain and resolve complexity, but may also implicate Rule 1.3 of the Model Code of Judicial Conduct by detracting unacceptably from the prestige indispensable to the judicial role. A sports reference remains incompatible with judging when a reasonable reader would conclude that the court invoked it primarily for the judge’s personal pleasure and not to facilitate the communication of ideas.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Killing of Oscar Grant

Donald F. Tibbs, Drexel University School of Law, has published Who Killed Oscar Grant?: A Legal-Eulogy of the Cultural Logic of Black Hyper-Policing in the Post-Civil Rights Era as Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law Research Paper No. 1559489. Here is the abstract.

To explain the appalling shooting death of African American Oscar Grant, on January 1, 2009, one must break free of the ‘crime and punishment’ paradigm to reckon the extra-punitive function of American policing as an instrument for the management of dispossessed and dishonored groups. This article places policing in the historical sequence of peculiar institutions that have shouldered the task of defining, confining, and controlling African American’s legal identity alongside slavery, Jim Crow, the American prison system. The recent upsurge in black violence related to policing results from the crisis of the legal system as device for caste control and the correlative need for a substitute apparatus for the containment of lower-class African Americans. In the post-Civil Rights era, the vestiges of policing black bodies alongside the rhetoric of law and order have become linked by a triple relationship of race, policing, and the law spawning a legal continuum that entraps a population of younger black men rejected by the deregulated wage-labor market. The resulting mesh not only perpetuates socioeconomic marginality and symbolically taints the black sub-proletariat, it also feeds the runaway growth of American incarceration. Perhaps more importantly, it plays a pivotal role in the remaking of ‘race’, the redefinition of the citizenry vis-à-vis the U.S. constitution, and the construction of a hyper-policed people in the post-Civil Rights era.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Abraham Lincoln as a Legal Writer

Judith D. Fischer, University of Louisville School of Law, has published Abraham Lincoln as a Legal Writer. Here is the abstract.

This article draws on a recent collection of Abraham Lincoln’s legal papers as well as on secondary sources to show how Lincoln developed his genius as a writer. The article then discusses characteristics that made his writing so eloquent. It concludes that today’s lawyers might profitably emulate Lincoln’s close study of great literature as well as his clear, succinct writing style.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Adrienne Davis on Star Trek and Gran Torino

Adrienne D. Davis has published Film Review: Masculinity & Interracial Intimacy in 'Star Trek' and 'Gran Torino', as Washington University School of Law Working Paper No. 10-03-07. Here is the abstract.

Race has long been a central object of political reflection. The salience of racial difference remains hotly debated, figuring in both “utopian” and “dystopian” visions of America’s political future. If race is a primary configuration of “difference” and inequality in the nation, then intimacy between the races is often construed as either a bellwether of equality and political utopia or a re-inscribing of political dominance, typically represented as sexual predation by men against women. Quite expectedly, these political fantasies and fears are often played out at the multiplex, and we can see them in stark relief in two recent films that seem to have nothing in common, Clint Eastwood’s highly acclaimed but Oscar-snubbed Gran Torino and last summer’s high-octane blockbuster, Star Trek. This film review explores how both films render conventional (white) masculinity as in crisis, threatened by alternative masculine forms. In both films this crisis of masculinity translates into a political one that threatens the values and viability of the community. In both, a carefully negotiated interracial intimacy redeems masculinity, and, in the process, the political future. While interracial intimacy is often configured as heterosexual coupling, in both films, women of color expedite interracial intimacy, but the meaningful and redemptive intimacy is homo-social, between men.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Treme

Some early reviews are in on the new series devoted to post-Katrina New Orleans.

Open Access To Law and Humanities Writings Via WikiSource

Timothy K. Armstrong, University of Cincinnati College of Law, has published "Rich Texts: Wikisource as an Open Access Repository for Law and the Humanities," as University of Cincinnati Public Law Research Paper No. 10-09. Here is the abstract.

Open access to research and scholarship, although well established in the sciences, remains an emerging phenomenon in the legal academy. In recent years, a number of open access repositories have been created to permit self-archiving of legal scholarship (either within or across institutional boundaries), and faculties at some leading research institutions have adopted policies supporting open access to their work. Although existing repositories for legal scholarship represent a clear improvement over proprietary, subscription-based repositories in some ways, their architecture, and the narrowly defined missions they have elected to pursue, limit their ability to illuminate the ongoing dialogue among texts that is a defining characteristic of scholarly discourse in law and the humanities. One of the wiki-based projects operated by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation--the Wikisource digital library - improves upon the shortcomings of existing open access repositories by bringing source texts and commentary together in a single place, with additional contextual materials hosted on other Wikimedia Foundation sites just a click away. These features of Wikisource, if more widely adopted, may improve academic discourse by highlighting conceptual interconnections among works, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and reducing the competitive advantages of proprietary, closed-access legal information services.

Murder On a Train

ABEBOOKS.COM offers a list of "Murder on the Literary Express: Ten Top Train Thrillers." I've rearranged the list alphabetically by author below.

Agatha Christie, 4:50 From Paddington.
Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express.
Dick Francis, The Edge.
John Godey, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Graham Greene, Stamboul Train.
Patricia Highsmith, Strangers On a Train.
Christopher Isherwood, Mr. Norris Changes Trains.
Andrew Martin, Necropolis Railway.
Ethel Lina White, The Wheel Spins.
Emile Zola, La Bete Humaine.

4:50 from Paddington s also known as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw. Murder on the Orient Express has been filmed several times, notably in an all-star version 1974 version with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and Lauren Bacall, Jacqueline Bisset, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud and other luminaries as the usual suspects, and Richard Widmark as the victim. Alfred Hitchcock turned White's The Wheel Turns into The Lady Vanishes in 1938 with a screenplay by Sidney Gilliat; in 1979 Anthony Page filmed it again; the screenplay was by George Axelrod. Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train is also a favorite with filmmakers. Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde wrote the screenplay for the 1951 Hitchcock version; word is 2011 may see a remake. Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal starred in the 1987 film Throw Momma From the Train , a comedy (!)version of the 1951 film.

The Director of the South Coast Railroad Museum, located in the colorful little town of Goleta, California, offers his own page of railroad-themed movies here.

Examining Antigone

Ruthann Robson, City University of New York, CUNY School of Law, has published "Democracy and Antigone," in volume 39 of the Stetson Law Review (2010). Here is the abstract.

This essay explores democracy, sexuality, gender and legal practices using the frameworks of law and literature. Law and Literature as an enterprise is commonly said to have two distinct strands. One strand focuses upon an artistic product and elaborates the legal themes within it. The other strand focuses upon a legal product, such as a notable United States Supreme Court opinion, and examines its artistry, including its rhetorical or cinematic qualities. This essay explores both strands as well as the territory where the two strands meet.

This essay’s artistic focus is the mythical and literary figure of Antigone. In addition to the standard Sophocles’ version, this essay explores Antigone in the works of French playwright Jean Anouilh, Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan, and South African playwright Athol Fugard.

This essay’s legal focus is several cases interpreting the meaning of mythical and Greek words. A court in Athens Greece decided a claim about the permissible usage of the term "lesbian," the United States Supreme Court has interpreted the term “Olympics, ” and trademark litigation has considered the term “dyke.”

The confluence of these two strands of literature and law involve further explorations of Sappho as a poet and historical figure, of Derrida’s work on democracy and brotherhood, and of the meaning of “sisterhood” in feminist and legal texts.

Download the Article from SSRN at the link.

Raising the Bar DVDs

For Raising the Bar fans, DVDs of the first season are out, and the second season DVDs will be available May 11th.

An Originalist Interpretation of the Ninth Amendment

Louis Michael Seidman, Georgetown University Law Center, has published "Our Unsettled Ninth Amendment: An Essay on Unenumerated Rights and the Impossibility of Textualism," as Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 10-11. Here is the abstract.

The Ninth Amendment - our resident anarchic and sarcastic "constitutional jester" - mocks the effort of scholars and judges alike to tame and normalize constitutional law. It is not as if the stern disciplinarians haven't tried. We now have two generations worth of painstaking, erudite, and occasionally brilliant scholarship that attempts to rein it in. Yet the amendment stubbornly resists control. It stands as a paradoxical, textual monument to the impossibility of textualism, an entrenched, settled instantiation of the inevitability of unsettlement. If it did not exist, constitutional skeptics would have had to invent it.

This essay has two parts. In Part I, I present a new and, I hope, persuasive, originalist account of the Ninth Amendment. My claim is that the Amendment deliberately leaves unsettled the status of unenumerated rights. Because of the Ninth Amendment, the Constitution does not "deny" or "disparage" these rights, but neither does it embrace or imply them. The amendment puts off to another day a final reckoning of the extent to which we are bound by constitutional text.

Although I use originalist methodology in Part I, I do not want to be understood as embracing originalism. Instead, this Part is an exercise in internal critique. As Part II explains, the Ninth Amendment states a truth that we would have to deal with whether or not it was part of the original text: No matter how comprehensive, no text can control the force of ideas and commitments that lie outside the text. This simple truth leaves the status of liberal constitutionalism permanently and inevitably unsettled. The day of final reckoning will never arrive.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

USA May Offer New Legal Series Next Season

The USA network is nurturing some new shows for next season, including a new legal drama, A Legal Mind, from Aaron Korsh, whose last attempt, The Deep End, sank fairly quickly. A Legal Mind features a "twenty-something" and a corporate lawyer. Well, USA is the home of Psych, which is clever, and Monk, which I loved, as well as Burn Notice, which is MacGyver with a Kafka-esque twist, so I'm anxious to see what A Legal Mind offers us. Could be great.

Symposium On Copyright In Culture

The University of Maryland is hosting UMUC’s Center for Intellectual Property to Host 2010 Symposium on Sustaining Culture in Copyright

WHAT: University of Maryland University College’s (UMUC) Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) will host a three-day workshop, June 22–24, 2010, entitled, “Sustaining Culture in Copyright.” With an influx of new videos, music and textual works, the 2010 symposium will explore better ways to balance the needs of cultural innovation with the rights of owners of creative works.

Peter Jaszi, professor of law, Washington College of Law, American University; and William Patry, senior copyright counsel, Google, Inc., will serve as keynote speakers. Other panel discussions will cover a variety of topics related to copyright, including social media, P2P filesharing, broadband and net neutrality.

For a full list of sessions, topics and speakers, visit www.umuc.edu/cip2010

UMUC’s CIP provides education, research and resources for the higher education community on copyright, academic integrity, and the emerging digital environment.

WHEN: Tuesday, June 22–Thursday, June 24, 2010

WHERE: Walter E. Washington Convention Center
801 Mount Vernon Place, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001

REGISTRATION: To register, visit www.umuc.edu/cip2010 or call 240-684-2803

COST:
Symposium Registration: (Early Rate) $240 (Member) / $300 (Non-member)
Daily Rate: $200 (Member) / $250 (Non-member)
Pre-Symposium Seminars:
(Choice of one, June 22) $100 (Member) / $135 (Non-member)
About University of Maryland University College
University of Maryland University College, headquartered in Adelphi, Maryland, is the largest public university in the United States, serving 90,000 students and offering 130 undergraduate and graduate programs online and on-site. In addition, UMUC is one of the largest public providers of online higher education in the nation. UMUC boasts a 60-year history of service to the military and currently enrolls an estimated 50,000 military service members, veterans, and their family members each year. The university offers face-to-face instruction at 21 locations throughout Maryland and educational services in 27 countries and more than 150 locations worldwide, including the Middle East. UMUC is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and is a constituent institution of the University System of Maryland, an agency of the State of Maryland.

Screenwriter David Mills Dies

David Mills, screenwriter and blogger, has died of a brain aneurysm. He was co-executive producer of the HBO series Treme, set in New Orleans, and had worked on the series ER and The Wire. Mr. Mills died in New Orleans Tuesday.

Who Wrote Shakespeare?

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, discussion of a new book on William Shakespeare that takes up the "who wrote Shakespeare" debate. The book: Contested Will. The author: James Shapiro.

Biennial Literature and Law Conference at John Jay College

John Jay College is hosting the Second Biennial Literature and Law Conference, April 16, 2010.

JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE’S SECOND BIENNIAL LITERATURE AND LAW CONFERENCE

Friday April 16, 2010

8:30-9:00 AM Check In: Lobby next to Rm. 630
Continental Breakfast

9:00-9:15 AM Welcoming Address: Jeremy Travis, President John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Introduction: Margaret Tabb, Chair of English Department. Rm. 630


FIRST SET OF PANELS: 9:30-10:45

Panel 1: Creativity and the Law, Rm. 636
Panel Chairs: Bettina Carbonell, Veronica Hendrick, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Debra Jackson, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Their Books Will Give Character to Their Laws: Antebellum Literature and Law in the Fight for Civil Equality”
R. B. Bernstein, New York Law School, “Enlightenment And Experiment In American Revolutionary Constitution-Making: The Cases Of John Adams And Thomas Paine”
Carla Spivack, Oklahoma City University School of Law , “‘To Deceive the Deceiver is No Deceit:’ The Legal Creativity of Madam Mary Carleton”
Commentator: Harold Sumner Forsythe, Independent Scholar

Panel 2: Law as Literature, Rm. 630
Panel Chairs: Mucahit Bilici and Anisa Hélie, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Raffaele Ruggiero, University of Bari, “Enlightenment theories about the origin of criminal law in Italy”
Candace Barrington, Central Connecticut State University, “Legal Rhetoric in John Gower’s Trentham Manuscript”
Elliot Visconsi, Yale University. “Islam, Race, and the Limits of Pluralism in Contemporary England”

Panel 3: Literature, Law, and the Middle Ages, Rm. Library Classroom
Panel Chair: Jay Gates, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Daniel O’Gorman, Loyola University of Chicago,
“Memorialization or Ossification? Accumulating Earlier Law Codes in 11th-Century Anglo-Saxon England”
Karl B. Shoemaker, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Sanctuary Law and a Strong Anglo-Saxon State?”
Sara McDougall, New York University School of Law, “Bigamy Stories from Medieval France”

Panel 4: Literature, Law, and Property Rights: Rm. 603
Panel Chair, Eric Lane, Hofstra Law School
Robert Spoo, University of Tulsa College of Law, “Copyright Asymmetries and the Modernist Publishing Scene”
Jamie L. McDaniel, Case Western Reserve University, “‘Her house was no longer hers entirely:’ Legal Classification and the Law of Intestacy in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando”
Katherine Gilbert, Drury University, “‘There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life:’ George Eliot’s Felix Holt (1866)”

10:45-11:00 Break Coffee/Tea

SECOND SET OF PANELS 11:00-12:15

Panel 1: Literature, Law and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: Roundtable, Rm.630
Moderator: Jon-Christian Suggs, Emeritus Professor of English, City University of New York
John V. Orth, William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of Law, School of Law, University of North Carolina
Heather Dubrow, Rev, John Boyd, S.J.Chair in English, Fordham University
Andrew Majeske, John Jay College, CUNY

Panel 2: Literature, Law, and Globalization-Cosmopolitanism, Rm. 636
Panel Chair: Baz Dreisinger, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Stephen L. Bishop, University of New Mexico, “Jean-Marie Teno: The Legal Outsider of Cameroonian Cinema”
M. Neelika Jayawardane, State University of New York-Oswego, “Clash of the Fong-Kong Civilisations: Containing Tricky Bodies in the Age of Mobility in Imraan Coovadia’s Green-eyed Thieves”
Simone Glanert, Kent Law School, UK, “Europeanization of Law and Weltliteratur: A (Strong) Case for Indiscipline”

Panel 3: Literature, Law, and Race, Rm. 603
Panel Chair: Jonathan Gray, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Christopher M. Brown, University of Maryland, “Incommensurable Subjects: Patriots, Traitors, and the African American Literary Tradition”
Courtney Marshall, University of New Hampshire, “Law, Literature, and the Construction of a Black Female Subject: Zora Neale Hurston as Legal Storyteller”
Kevin Maillard, Syracuse University College of Law, “A Preposterous Story: Interracial Pretext in Faulkner and Chesnutt”

Panel 4: Literature, Law, and Genre/Form, Rm. Library Classroom
Panel Chair:Adam McKible, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Noemi Yovel, Yale University, "Autobiography and trial: substitution and exchange"
Karen Petroski, Saint Louis University School of Law, “Statutory Genres”
Christiane Wilke, Carleton University, “Making the Past a Foreign Country (while keeping an eye on the ghosts)”

12:15-1:15 Lunch Multi Purpose Room (Second Floor of North Hall, across from cafeteria)

1:30-2:15 Featured Speaker, Rm 630
Julie Stone Peters, Harvard University “ʽLaw’ and ʽLiterature’ in the Mediasphere.”

2:15-2:30 Break

THIRD SET OF PANELS/ROUNDTABLE 2:30-3:45

Panel 1: Literature, Law, and Gender, Rm 636
Panel Chair: Allison Pease, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Ruthann Robson, City University of New York School of Law, “Who Owns Antigone?: Democracy, Naming, and Sisterhood”
Hilarie Lloyd, University of Rochester, “Subversive Storytelling: Alternative Narrations of Justice in Toni Morrison’s Love”
Barbara Kreps, University of Pisa, “Much Ado About Nothing, Sexual Slander, and the Law of Evidence

Panel 2: Literature, Law and Comedy–A Panel Discussion, Rm. 603
Panel Chair: Jon-Christian Suggs, Emeritus Professor of English, City University of New York
Laura Little, Temple University, “Regulating Funny: Humor and the Law”
William Gleason, Princeton University, “Law, History, and Comedy in Colson Whitehead's Apex Hides the Hurt”
Sascha Auerbach, University of Northern British Columbia, “‘Playing Hamlet in a Barn:’ Comedy, Tragedy, and Drama in the London Police Courts, 1890–1930”

Panel 3: Modern Environmental Law and The Faerie Queene, Rm. Library Classroom
Panel Chair: John Staines, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Charles S. Ross, Purdue University, “Annoying Noises in The Faerie Queene”
Jason Lotz, Purdue University, “The Art of Being Green: Spenser's Case for a More Temperate Union”
Edward Plough, Purdue University, “‘The saluage beast embost in wearie chace:’ Blood-Sport as Dramatic Poetry in The Faerie Queene”
Russell L. Keck, Purdue University, “The Law of Stewardship in Spenser's Fairyland”

Literature, Law, and Islam: Dante’s Inferno and Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. A Roundtable Discussion, Rm 630
Moderator: Andrew Majeske, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Panelists: 1) Hamid Dabashi, Hegop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2) Teodolinda Barolini, Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia University, 3) Noha Radwan, Columbia University, 4) Sadia Ashraf, Central Asia Institute

3:45-4:00 Break

4:00-5:00 Keynote Address, Rm. 630
John Matteson, “‘The Terrible Freedom’: Law, Literature, and the Struggle for the
Soul in the Age of Emerson”


5:00-6:00 Reception in the lobby adjoining Rm 630.

6:00-7:00
SPECIAL POST CONFERENCE EVENT (open to the public): Presentation by Sadia Ashraf on the work of the Central Asia Institute (CAI). The CAI is an NGO founded by Greg Mortenson that constructs and supports schools and other educational and vocational initiatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially for young girls and women. His work is celebrated in the bestselling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. Rm. 630

Law and the Humanities Institute Presents a Symposium

Law & Humanities Institute, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, and the
Louise and Arde Bulova Fund

present

The Risks of Interpretive Flexibility When Basic Traditions Are
Challenged by an “Emergency”

August 11, 2010
at
Prospect House
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey 08544

Registration 8:30am to 9:00am Program 9:00am to 5:30pm

Panelists:


Richard Weisberg
Event Co-Chair,
President, Law & Humanities Institute,
Walter Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law and Founding Director, Program for Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Elaine Scarry
Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Values, Harvard University

Marci Hamilton
Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Peter Brooks
Event Co-Chair,
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholar,
Professor in Comparative Literature and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University



Sanford Levinson
Charles Tilford McCormick Professor Law, University of Texas
Author of Torture the Debate






This program examines why professional communities have yielded their finest traditions to a perceived sense of “emergency.” The results are often disastrous, as in the case of the French legal community during World War II, and perhaps with the equivocal redefinition and application of “torture” in our own country. This program brings the methods, sources, and readings of the Humanities to a focused inquiry into the reasons lawyers, theologians, and many other professional communities have so often lost their way. A panel and public discussion will delve into the inquiry of professional communities in an “emergency.” CLE credit will be available. Please RSVP to stephanie.spangler@gmail.com with intention of attendance and CLE option.

This program was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

Fan Fiction of the Eighteenth Century and IP

Elizabeth F. Judge, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) has published "Kidnapped and Counterfeit Characters: Eighteenth-Century Fan Fiction, Copyright Law and the Custody of Fictional Characters," at Originality and Intellectual Property in the French and English Enlightenment 22-68 (Reginald McGinnis ed.; Routledge, 2009). Here is the abstract.

Analyses of the intellectual history of eighteenth-century copyright typically focus on unauthorized printed editions (that is, the entire copying of another author’s works verbatim) and the associated copyright case law in the literary property debates, such as Millar v. Taylor and Donaldson v. Becket, which tested the status of authors’ common-law rights. This chapter turns to eighteenth-century fan fiction, to import today's term for referring to newly written fiction by fans featuring fictional characters created and made famous by another author, and especially online publication of fan fiction, in order to examine the early relationship of readers and authors to fictional characters, rather than to printed works, and the ongoing custodial interests that both readers and authors felt toward fictional characters in this period. While seemingly an anachronistic pairing to speak of “fan fiction,” which has been so strongly associated with the internet, and the eighteenth century, the characteristics that define internet fan fiction appositely describe the eighteenth-century phenomenon, excepting the medium of dissemination. As with fan fiction today, which has been at the locus of cultural and legal debates around the meanings of authorship, originality, interests, and rights, fan fiction in the eighteenth century was a focal point for unresolved and evolving views on those same issues, especially the nature of authorship, and originality, the integrity of fiction, and the reader’s role. This chapter examines the cultural discourse around fan fiction in the eighteenth century in order to shed light on eighteenth-century interpretations of originality and imitation, and the extent to which copyright law shaped (and was shaped by) cultural perceptions about the ownership and care of fictional characters and how competing interests in fictional characters contributed to the debate on copyright law. It re-considers the role that author’s rights, in the sense of moral rights and the droit d’auteur tradition played in English copyright history. Well-documented examples of extensive reader response to fictional characters that became cultural phenomena, including Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, spawning numerous unauthorized sequels in novels, plays, and short stories, lively correspondences between fans and the author, satires by rival established authors, and character merchandising, illustrate how appealing fictional characters who reach iconic status within a culture are subject to competing claims of ownership as well as competing affections. The chapter focuses especially on when and why popular, creative, and often even affectionate inclusions of these eighteenth-century fictional characters into works by other people were, more often than not, treated by the original authors as akin to legal wrongs against a person - ravishing, counterfeiting, and kidnapping - and treated analogously to the word-for-word copying of entire works that was condemned as “pirating,” despite the lack of legal foundation in eighteenth-century English copyright law to underlie these assertions.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Who Dat Logo?

Sharp-eyed Dr. Who fans perked up when the newly minted UK Space Agency debuted its logo. Did some Dalek infiltrate and supply the logo for the Dr. Who Space Rocket Group, dating from circa 2005? Hmmm. Read more here.

"The Dark Knight," Counterterrorism, and Law

John Ip, University of Auckland Faculty of Law, has published The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism. Here is the abstract.

This article considers Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film, The Dark Knight, as a reflection on legality and security in the post-9/11 era. The article examines how the film depicts three specific counterterrorism policies associated with the war on terrorism (namely rendition, coercive interrogation and warrantless surveillance), and argues that none of the film’s depictions of these actions can properly be seen as endorsement of their Bush Administration-era equivalents.

Accordingly, the film is better viewed as something other than an endorsement of the Bush Administration’s war on terrorism. This article contends that, unusually for a film about a superhero, The Dark Knight is ultimately about the importance of law, legal institutions, and popular courage.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Darkness at Noon

Roger Berkowitz, Bard College, has published "Approaching Infinity: Dignity in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon,"in Philosophy and Literature (October 2009). Here is the abstract.

Human dignity underlies human rights and is a pillar of liberal politics. Yet what is dignity? And what is the place of dignity in politics? Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is a searing inquiry into the conflict between dignity and reason as opposing grounds of politics. Koestler shows how a rationalist politics corrodes dignity. In response, he imagines dignity as a countermeasure to reason. Political action, he suggests, must be informed by a non-rational and non-religious appeal to the infinite that is the one guarantee of a human politics. There is no justice, Koestler argues, divorced from infinite justice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Extreme Views: They're Ready For Prime Time

From the new issue of Newsweek: the new look of prime time. It's white power, as exemplified by series such as FX's Justified, which features a character created by Elmore Leonard. More about Mr. Leonard here.

Play Verified As Shakespeare's (And Fletcher's)

According to experts, that "literary hoax" that Alexander Pope made fun of in The Dunciad is a hoax no more. It really is by Shakespeare--well, partly by the Bard, and partly by John Fletcher, who was no slouch himself when it came to writing works for the stage. Double Falsehood, in which Shakespeare actually meets Miguel de Cervantes, the man who shares his death year (1616) and possibly his death date (April 23), depending on how one calculates it, turns out to be a play in which the Bard of Avon had a hand. The Royal Shakespeare Company will perform it in 2011, the first time in four hundred years that audiences have been able to enjoy it.

History of Spanish Copyright Law

Jhonny Antonio Pabon Cadavid has published "Approximation to the Copyright History: Normative Antecedents (Aproximación a La Historia Del Derecho De Autor: Antecedentes Normativos)," at 13 Revista La Propiedad Inmaterial 59 (2009). Here is the abstract.

The legal protection of literary and artistic works has been institutionalized since the advent of the printing press. Prior to the copyright system we know today, there was a model of administrative privileges, which was set in the public law; so therefore it turned into an institution called literary property, which is in the private law. This study goes over of the legal protection developments that intellectual works have had, considering an important variety of conditions, regarding factors of spread, changing and understanding of the law notion. Above all we study the European models, to display its subsequent move toward America in the post independence period, with emphasis on the Latin American reception inthe first half of the Nineteenth Century, with a different schemes accord to the philosophical and politics projects of the new American republics. Highlighting the participation of the Colombian José María Torres Caicedo in the formation of the Berne Convention, and the English tradition of privileges placed in Colombia, similar to the Statute of the Queen Anne in the 1710th, which remained until the late Nineteenth Century.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jane Austenisms

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, a consideration of all that derivative Jane Austen literature by Amy Leal.

Teaching Storytelling In Law Schools

Nancy B. Rapoport, William S. Boyd School of Law (UNLV), has published "Where Have All the (Legal) Stories Gone?" at M/E Insights 7 (Fall 2009). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Law in "Deadwood"

Michael B. Kent Jr., and Lance McMillian, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, have published "The World of Deadwood: Property Rights and the Search for Human Identity." Here is the abstract.

The year is 1876. Gold has been discovered in the fledgling camp of Deadwood, bringing hordes of new arrivals each day seeking to strike it rich. The allure of wealth is coupled with the allure of complete autonomy. There is no law. Although part of the United States, Deadwood is unaffiliated with any existing territorial government. It is free. Or is it? From this backdrop, HBO’s highly-acclaimed drama Deadwood springs forth. Series creator David Milch is frank about his mission behind the story: to explore how order arises from chaos. The assignment and protection of property rights play central roles in this journey from anarchy to law. In the world of Deadwood, where ownership of land can be worth millions, law’s promise and law’s pitfalls are both on full display. The stakes are high; the lessons are many.

Stories are powerful teaching tools because they marry information and context. Film and television also supply a picture of law in action, marshalling the power of the visual to make law more real, less abstract. Because of its rich complexity and invocation of ancient debates over what property is and who rightly can be deemed to own it, the three-season run of Deadwood provides fertile ground for this type of interdisciplinary study. Deadwood demonstrates that the interrelationship between property and law is complex, with many moving pieces and many valid points and counterpoints. Property has both naturalist and positivist attributes, it both pre-exists and coexists with the state, it is about economic power and personal identity, it supports both an individualist and communitarian mindset. Accounting for all of these strands in a balanced way is a lot to ask of legal institutions, especially inasmuch as the strands often are in competition with one another. Deadwood suggests that, while law is certainly a component piece in the puzzle of human relations, it alone cannot do all that we ask of it. And therein may lie the ultimate lesson: Law can be a blessing, but the human condition requires more.

Summer School--Cultural Study of the Law

*Synergies: Law, Language and Culture*
The Second International Osnabrueck Graduate Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law August 4th-August 18th http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture

*Invitation*

The Second International Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law will be held from this August 4th to August 18th in Osnabrueck, Germany.
Hosted by the Institute of English and American Studies, in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, the Birkbeck School of Law at the University of London, York University, Toronto, and the European Legal Studies Institute at the University of Osnabrueck, the summer school seeks to bring together graduate students from around the world to promote and examine the interdisciplinary study and research of law and culture.

Graduate students pursuing a PhD in the humanities and advanced students of the law who are interested in the interdependence and interaction between law and culture are invited to apply. During the two week program, students will partake in a unique experience of scholarly collaboration and exchange through workshops, public lectures, panel discussions, excursions and a final symposium. Participating faculty in this year's summer school include:

*Rosemary J. Coombe (York University, Toronto) *Helle Porsdam (University of Copenhagen) *Fiona Macmillan (Birkbeck School of Law, University of London)

with more faculty to be announced in the upcoming weeks.

The School will offer a total of four workshops for 20-25 international graduate students over a two-week period. The first workshop will be concerned with basic theories, concepts and perspectives within the emerging field of cultural legal studies, focusing specifically on the range and potential of interdisciplinary studies and approaches. The remaining three workshops will focus on key areas of critical inquiry that have been central to the dynamic development of the field and are of particular importance within an European context:

-->The relation between human rights and cultural rights

-->Historical development and current debates about culture as heritage,
property and as a resource and its legal definition and regulation (including concepts like copyright, intellectual property and authorship)

-->The cultural presence and representation of the law and the possible
emergence of a transnational legal culture


*Participant Eligibility*

Doctoral candidates in literature, the law, the arts, the humanities, and the related social sciences are invited to apply, as are advanced students pursuing a J.D. or its equivalent (such as the L.L.B). Young scholars or junior faculty members who have received a Ph.D. or corresponding degree in the last five years are also eligible. There are openings for approximately 25 students to participate in the summer school.

*Application Process*

Applicants should complete:

-->An application form, indicating preferred workshop that can be found
at: http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture/admission/
-->A statement of purpose no more than two pages long, describing
-->current
scholarly interests, previous research, and plans for how the Summer School would specifically further these interests and plans.

-->An up-to-date curriculum vitae.

Students interested in taking part in the Summer School should submit their applications no later than April 30, 2010. Detailed information about the school, the workshops, international faculty, admission and fees can be found at:

http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture

*Questions*

Questions about the Osnabrueck Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law may be directed to any of the Summer School Coordinators:

*Devin Zuber, Coordinator for the Humanities, Faculty Contact and Institutional Cooperation

*Matt Lemieux, Coordinator for Legal Studies

*Nadja Hekal, Assistant Coordinator

Gender and Reproductive Rights Talk

Lia Alexandra Mandaglio, currently a law student at the George Washington Law School, has posted Speaking Across the Divide: A Functional Grammar Analysis of Feminist and Masculist Reproductive Rights Rhetoric in the United States on SSRN. Here is the abstract.

This paper applies Systemic Functional Grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis to assess the linguistic choices of feminist and masculist reproductive rights rhetoric in the United States. It explains these methodologies and provides a discursive history of the reproductive rights movement. Publications of advocacy groups and the mass media are analyzed as data of current rhetorical trends. These interpretations conclude that female-affirmative rhetoric offsets contemporary feminist efforts by marginalizing men and excluding considerations of paternity. This paper suggests that in solely emphasizing women’s procreative rights, such feminist rhetoric potentially renders women to the role of primary parental agent, reinforces traditional sex-stereotypes, and incites inter-sex antagonism.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. Ms. Mandaglio is also the author of earlier interesting work, including Hannah More, the Conventionalist, and Mary Robinson, the Radical: Differing Feminist Perspectives on 19th Century Women's Progress, Purity and Power, 2 Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal (2007).

And check out this odd "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" sort of connection. I blogged about Hudson Taylor, the wrestler/magician elsewhere a few weeks ago, based on a piece in the Washington Post, without paying any particular attention to the name or occupation of his fiancee. As I did a search on Ms. Mandaglio's name while preparing this post to turn up what else she might have written, what other info should appear but yes--that article about Hudson Taylor, the wrestler/magician, and his fiancee, Lia Mandaglio, GW law student. Ah, magicology!

Summer Seminar Announcement

DAAD Faculty Summer Seminar
"Violence and the Law in German Cultures of Modernity"
Directed by Prof. Isabel V. Hull, Cornell University
June 14-July 23, 2010

The application deadline for this exciting seminar has been extended to March 15 because of an unfortunate oversight in the original announcement! The correct seminar dates are June 14-July 23 (not July 30).

All applications received by March 15 will be given full consideration, and electronic submissions are welcome. Completed applications should be sent directly to Prof. Isabel V. Hull, Dept. of History, 450 McGraw Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853 or by e-mail to .

A seminar description, application instructions, and relevant forms can be found at the DAAD Website .

Conference Announcement

American University Washington College of Law’s
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Women and the Law Program, and Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

present

IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections
Gender and Invention

Friday, April 16, 2010
9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Washington College of Law, Room 100
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20016

Registration: www.wcl.american.edu/secle/registration
Webcast: http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm


Christine Haight Farley
Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Washington College of Law
Welcome
Ann Shalleck
Professor of Law and Director
Women and the Law Program
Washington College of Law & Michael Carroll
Professor of Law and Director
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
Washington College of Law
Opening Remarks

GENDERED HISTORY– 9:30 AM -11:30 AM

Dr. Rayvon Fouché
Associate Professor of History
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign & Sharra Vostral
Associate Professor, Gender Studies and History,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Selling Women: Lillian Gilbreth and Gendered IP
Annette I. Kahler
Director, Center for Law & Innovation, Albany Law School
Examining the Right to Exclude: Historical, Social, and Economic Perspectives on Women and Invention
Dan Burk
Chancellor’s Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine
Comments

GENDERED DOCTRINE – 11:30 AM -12:30 PM

Kara W. Swanson
Associate Professor, Earle Mack School of Law, Drexel University
Merry Widows: Egbert v. Lippman and the Corset as Patented Technology

Ann Bartow
Professor of Law, University of South Carolina School of Law
Gender, Innovation and Inventorship: Every Patent Tells a Story

Shubha Ghosh
Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
Comments

GENDERED GOALS: LUNCHEON & KEYNOTE – 12:30 PM -2:30 PM

Joshua Sarnoff
Professor of the Practice of Law, Washington College of Law
Introduction

Zorina Khan
Associate Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College
What Do Intellectual Property Rights Promote? Innovation Among Women Inventors in the 19th and 20th Centuries

GENDERED PRODUCTION– 2:30 PM -4:30 PM

Bernardita Escobar
Instituto de Políticas Públicas‐ Expansiva UDP, Santiago, Chile
Women and Science Production in Developing Countries: Chile in the 1990‐2008 Period

Dr. Shlomit Yanisky Ravid
Head of the Comparative Legal Research Center, Faculty of Law, Ono Academic College, Israel
Patents and Gender: The Exclusion of Women Inventors from IP Rights

Laurel Smith-Doerr
Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston University
Gendering Science, Gendering Ethics: The Intersecting Production of Knowledge, Gender and Ethics

Mario Biagioli
Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University
Comments

CLOSING & ADJOURNMENT

Victoria Phillips
Professor of the Practice of Law, Washington College of Law
Closing Remarks

Storytelling and Rape Law Reform

Jeannie Suk, Harvard Law School, has published "'The Look in His Eyes': The Story of State v. Rusk and Rape Reform," in Criminal Law Stories (Robert Weisberg and Donna Coker eds.; 2010). Here is the abstract.

This chapter for Criminal Law Stories (Robert Weisberg & Donna Coker eds., 2010), tells the story of State v. Rusk through the lens of rape law reform. Beginning in the 1970s, under the influence of feminism, some prevailing attitudes and expectations about sex between men and women started to change. Edward Rusk, like many guys, didn’t think he just had to stop because a girl who seemed interested said she didn’t want to have sex. He was convicted of rape at the cusp of legal transformation, when sexual behavior that had been socially commonplace was rapidly in the midst of being recast as criminal. Drawing on many interviews with lawyers, judges, and other people involved in the case, I tell the story of when and how a set of social norms of sex and dating became unacceptable. This is a story of the legal role and consequences of that social change.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Influence of Narrative In Judging

Kenworthey Bliz, Northwestern University School of Law, is publishing "We Don't Want to Hear it: Psychology, Literature and the Narrative Model of Judging," in the University of Illinois Law Review. Here is the abstract.

The “narrative” model of legal judging argues that legal decision makers both do and should render judgments by assembling sensible stories out of evidence (as opposed to using Bayesian-type, linear models). This model is usually understood to demand that before one may judge a situation, one must give the parties the opportunity to tell their story in a manner that invites, or at least allows, empathy from the judger. This Article refers to this as the “inclusionary approach” to the narrative model of judging. Using psychological research in emotions and perspective-taking and the more intuitive techniques of literary criticism, this Article challenges the inclusionary narrative approach, arguing that, in practice, the law gives equal weight to an “exclusionary approach.” That is, in order to render sound, legitimate legal judgments, the law deliberately limits the sort of stories parties are allowed to tell – and does so on moral grounds, not, or at least not only, to improve the “accuracy” of the legal judgment. That is, as both a descriptive and normative matter, impoverished narratives can be better than enriched ones in leading decision makers to morally acceptable legal judgments.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Supreme Court and Baseball

Ross E. Davies and Craig D. Rust, George Mason University School of Law, have published "Supreme Court Sluggers: Behind the Numbers," at Green Bag 2d 213 (Winter 2010). Here is the abstract.

Issued last fall, the Chief Justice John G. Roberts “Supreme Court Sluggers” trading card pictured on page 213 above is the first in what should be a very long series of “Sluggers” cards. The first Associate Justice card – of John Paul Stevens – will be out this spring. Others, of the sitting Justices and of their predecessors, will follow in the coming months and years. The Green Bag’s ambitions for this project are simple, if not small: (a) to develop and share comparable measurements of the work of every member of the Supreme Court since 1789; (b) to gradually expand and refine those measurements with an eye to making them as useful and interesting as possible; (c) to create informative, entertaining, and unorthodox yet respectful portraits of the Justices by first-rate artists; and (d) to present all of this material in a way that will be enjoyable for the producers, consumers, and subjects of the “Sluggers” cards. As an introduction to the “Sluggers” project, we offer here short descriptions of what went into the development of the front and back of the Chief Justice Roberts card. The front is a work of art that makes light-hearted connections between its subject and the game of baseball. The back is packed with statistics and sprinkled with quotations drawn from the subject’s judicial work.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Origins Of Critical Race Theory

Richard Delgado, Seattle University School of Law, has published "Liberal McCarthyism and the Origins of Critical Race Theory," at 94 Iowa Law Review 1505 (2009). Here is the abstract.

I wrote this piece exploring some of the intellectual origins of critical race theory for a 20-year anniversary of the movement held at the University of Iowa in April, 2009. In it, I look at the role of certain prominent university officers in purging their ranks of white radicals to prepare the way, in the late sixties and early seventies, for the first large group of post-Brown minority students who were starting to arrive around that time. I show how four promising white professors, two of law, one of history, and one of criminology lost their jobs and what they did afterward. I show that they continued to teach and write about left-wing thought in the hinterlands in ways that contributed to the rise of critical race theory. As they say, it is hard to kill an idea.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers

Call For Papers at the Modern Language Association, 2011

Special Session: "Literature and Rights in the Age of Enlightenment"

This panel seeks to investigate the intertwined histories of literature and rights in the long eighteenth century. How does imaginative writing in this period contribute to the development of the humanitarian sensibility and the emergence of human rights? Conversely, how do changing conceptions of rights shape novels, poems, plays, and essays? Papers on literary, philosophical, and legal formulations of natural and positive rights, and on questions concerning freedom, equality, justice, toleration, torture, cruelty, and pain are all welcome.

Send one-page abstracts to Melissa Ganz (melissa.ganz@stanford.edu) by March 8. Inquiries welcome.

Law and Art Symposium at the Tate

At the Tate, a one day symposium on Law and Art: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Justice on March 23, 2010.

A Reaction To Malcolm Gladwell's Analysis Of Atticus Finch

Lance McMillian, John Marshall Law School (Atlanta) has published "Atticus Finch as Racial Accommodator: Answering Malcolm Gladwell's Critique." Here is the abstract.

Atticus Finch – the fictional hero of Harper Lee’s 'To Kill A Mockingbird' – is a legal icon. The legendary status of Finch is confirmed by his standing in the non-legal world of broader culture. In 2003, the renowned American Film Institute deemed Atticus the greatest movie hero of all-time. That a lawyer would be worthy of this honor is nothing short of remarkable and demonstrates that the stature of Atticus Finch has assumed mythic proportions in American culture. Atticus is not just a lawyer; he is justice in the flesh.

Enter best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. Last year, Gladwell made waves in The New Yorker by arguing that, far from being a bright spot of racial enlightenment in a time of darkness, Atticus Finch instead made an immoral peace with the world of Jim Crow Alabama. While Gladwell is not the first to criticize the Atticus myth, he is the most culturally influential person to do so, which is an important development. The Atticus-As-Racial-Accommodator charge essentially posits that Atticus was all-too-comfortable with the racism (and racists) that surrounded him every day. Gladwell wonders: Where is the moral outrage? In response, I argue that Gladwell misdiagnoses Atticus because he neglects the important role that Finch’s Christian faith plays in who he is as a person. To understand Atticus, one must first understand Jesus and his teaching. Finch is a New Testament-style prophet whose worldview propels him to this truth: Love and understanding open doors; judgment and condemnation close them. Consequently, his quiet and gentlemanly interactions with the racists in his midst suggest neither passivity nor appeasement, as Gladwell contends. Instead, they are a form of character and strength – derived from Finch’s faith in Jesus – that imbue Atticus with moral authority in the eyes of the community. Moreover, while Gladwell rightly stresses the need of legal change in bringing equality to the South, the kind of moral change led by Finch was likewise necessary. Law is only half of the equation.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird. Combined with the cultural significance of Gladwell’s recent revisionist foray, this milestone means that now is a particularly apt time to look at Atticus with fresh eyes and assess his character anew.

Symposium On Food, Culture, and the Law

From Penelope Pether, Villanova University School of Law, an announcement of a symposium on "Food, Culture and the Law," on February 26, sponsored by the University of Iowa and to be held at the Old Capitol Senate Chamber.

Higher Education: The Dumbledore Factor

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, why Dumbledore is a good administrator (but check out the comments--some folks don't agree).

Call For Papers

From Elizabeth Stockton, Southwestern University

CFP: MLA 2011 (Los Angeles, CA)

Law and Literature of the U.S. before 1900

Seeking papers that examine legal and literary discourses in the US
before 1900. Possible topics might include citizenship, ethnicity,
sexuality, imperialism, and the rhetoric of the law. Abstracts and CV
by 2 March 2010 to Elizabeth Stockton (stockton@southwestern.edu).

--

Call For Papers

From Elliott Visconti at Yale

Literary History and Constitutional Culture

For the MLA’s next conference in Los Angeles (January 2011), the Discussion Group on Law and Literature invites paper proposals that address the relationship, broadly understood, between constitutional change and literary history. Some general questions: what influence do constitutional decisions have on the path of literary history, and to what degree can such decisions or events be said to transform or deflect a literary tradition? Papers that take a theoretical approach to the question are welcome (e.g. can the literary be understood as a modality of popular constitutional interpretation?) as are papers addressed to a concrete moment/ event/watershed (e.g. LGBT literature after Lawrence v. Texas; LDS fiction in the wake of Reynolds v. United States, the literary history of slavery after Somersett’s case, African-American poetry after Brown v. Board, Franco-Islamic literature after the 2004 headscarf laws, etc.

Paper proposals from all legal and literary traditions are welcome. Please send abstract and cv to elliott.visconsi@yale.edu, by March 15 2010

Justice! He Demands Justice!

Grant Morris of the University of San Diego Law School argues that in all those lists of great legal movies one great law related movie never rates a mention. It's for that elephant in the room, Dumbo. See Grant A. Morris,

The Greatest Legal Movie of All Time: Proclaiming the Real Winner

, volume 47 of the San Diego Law Review (2010). Here's the abstract.

In August, 2008, the ABA Journal featured an article entitled: “The 25 Greatest Legal Movies.” A panel of experts, described in the article as “12 prominent lawyers who teach film or are connected to the business” selected “the best movies ever made about lawyers and the law.” This distinguished panel ranked its twenty-five top legal movies, choosing To Kill a Mockingbird as its number one legal movie. The panel also selected twenty-five films as “honorable mentions,” which were listed in alphabetical order. In my opinion, however, the real greatest legal movie of all time was not selected as the winner. It was not ranked in the top twenty-five. It was not included in the twenty-five honorable mentions so that it would rank in the top fifty. I would wager that it was not even considered by the panel as a candidate for inclusion as a “legal” movie. In this article, I discuss the movie that should have been ranked first. I compare my choice with the experts’ choice, describing similarities and differences between the two movies. In To Kill a Mockingbird, an African American man is wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. Despite the best efforts of his attorney, he is convicted of that crime. Prejudice prevails over justice. In the movie I have chosen, another victim of prejudice is able to succeed due to the best efforts of his attorney. Justice prevails over prejudice. That difference convinces me that the movie I have selected is truly the greatest legal movie of all time.

Conference Announcement

The Critical Legal Conference

From Bald de Vries and Since 1984, every first weekend in September, the Critical Legal Conference brings together critical and radical legal scholars from all over the world. It has been a phenomenal success despite its modesty. The CLC is also exactly that: a conference. No organisation, presidents and secretaries, members and subscrip­tions.
This conference is a transient community; an inoperative community always to come, lasting for three days every year, without orthodoxies, exclu­sions or stars and gets down to the business of thinking and being together. In doing so, a variety of critical schools, such as postmodernism, phenomenology, decon­struction, feminism, post-colonialism, critical race, queer theory, the ethics of otherness, the ontology of plural singularity, and the critique of bio-politics have been pioneered in these conferences, creating new and stronger links between theory and practice.
Most conferences have taken place in the UK but we have also been to South Africa, India, Ireland and Scandinavia. This is the first time, the CLC is organised in the Netherlands. It hopes to bring together different schools and approaches to critical legal scholarship at a time when collaboration and solidarity across Europe and the world is imperative.

Law in the Wilderness

Shaun Fluker, University of Calgary Faculty of Law, has published "Wilderness Narrative in Law: The View from Canada’s National Parks." Here is the abstract.

In this conference paper presented at the 2009 Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment held in Victoria, BC, I briefly examine the relationship between law and the concept of wilderness. I hope to demonstrate this relationship in two ways. First, that law provides us with a source of wilderness narrative. Although much less prosaic than other forms of literature, legal decisions tell stories about what wilderness is. Second, that ideas of wilderness can influence the enactment and application of legal rules.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.