Henderson on Zorro: Everyperson's Moral Vigilante @UofOklahomaLaw @OSJCrimLaw

Stephen E. Henderson, University of Oklahoma College of Law, is publishing Zorro: Everyperson's Moral Vigilante in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Here is the abstract.

Zorro (Amazon 2024) is hundreds of years in the making -- from medieval ballads of Robin Hood; to the fiction of Alexandre Dumas, Baroness Orczy, and the legend of Mexican bandits; to the Johnston McCulley 1919 original; to comics like Daredevil and Batman; to scores of Zorro derivatives from the minds of McCulley, Walt Disney, and many others. At this point, it would be impossible to identify and duly credit the countless inspirations that together form this early-California vigilante. But such rich heritage might provide something more than literature and entertainment: if there is an everyperson's conception of a moral vigilante, Zorro might have transfigured into it by now. Perhaps it is thus possible to back into a philosophically defensible construct of moral vigilantism from this popular art, or perhaps it is that very genesis that provides its own legitimacy. Whichever the case, this article serves both to celebrate the story -- both the original McCulley work and the most recent television derivative -- and to begin its deconstruction. After centuries of refinement, Zorro as moral vigilante is a construct worthy of literary, philosophic, and legal attention.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.