Law, Zombies, and Legal Education

Thomas E. Simmons, University of South Dakota School of Law, has published What Zombies Can Teach Law Students: Popular Text Inclusion in Law and Literature at 66 Mercer Law Review 729 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Although law and literature studies scholars have typically restricted themselves to the study of great (or at least greater) works of traditional literature, the inclusion of lesser texts has distinct advantages to recommend it. Comic books and television series can be subjected to a law and literature approach and zombie texts are particularly rich narratives for the exploration of legal tensions, competing values, and institutions. The Walking Dead as a television and comic book series provides a finely textured setting within which property law, euthanasia, civil commitments, contrasting decision-making paradigms and the value of procedural formalities are assessed and illuminated. This article suggests several opportunities which utilize zombie texts to advance an understanding of the law within the law school curricula including but not limited to law and literature courses.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.