AALS Annual Meeting: The 2017 AALS Law and Film Series Selections Are...

Information via @rockandrollprof: 

As in prior years, AALS is sponsoring the showing of two wonderful films at the Annual Meeting. Below is a short description of each movie. If you plan to attend the Annual Meeting, please consider also attending these events. You'll have a great time! (--Ed.)

Tuesday, January 3, 2017 at 7:00 pm 

AALS Law and Film Series - The Feature Film Selection: Anatomy of a Murder 

“Anatomy of a Murder” is a 1959 directed by Otto Preminger, and is widely considered a classic film. (It was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, and three of the actors were also Oscar-nominated.) It features James Stewart, Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick, and George C. Scott in a small town murder mystery, and is framed by an exquisite Duke Ellington musical score, which won a Grammy for best soundtrack. The film turns on a fascinating series of trial tactics, evidence, mental states, and professional ethics. The discussion will be led by Professor Christine Corcos (LSU). 

Thursday, January 5, 2017 at 6:30 pm 

AALS Law and Film Series – The Documentary Film Selection - La Jaula de Oro/The Golden Dream  

La jaula de oro ("The Cage of Gold"/ “The Golden Dream” (2013) is a Mexican feature film directed by Diego Quemada-Díez. The film features an ensemble cast of Central American younger undocumented immigrants fleeing Guatemala, and who make their way to the United States in a harrowing fashion by foot and by “la bestia,” the train that snakes its way to the border, with immigrants clinging to it at great peril. This is a timely film, made with great skill and narrative power. It has begun to be shown on college campuses, and it will be discussed by immigration law professor Michael A. Olivas (Houston) and Jaula producer Luis Salinas, an award-winning filmmaker.

Call for Papers: AALS Sections on Law & the Humanities and Evidence, 2017 AALS Annual Meeting

Call for Papers for Joint Program with the Sections on Law & the Humanities and Evidence at the 2017 AALS Annual Meeting

The Section on Law & the Humanities is pleased to announce a Call for Papers from which presenters will be selected for the Section’s joint program with Evidence to be held during the AALS 2017 Annual Meeting in San Francisco on Friday, January 6, 2017 from 10.30 am – 12.15 pm.

The topic for this year’s joint program is Narrating Evidence. In the past year, crime documentaries like Serial and Making a Murderer have been spectacularly successful. These programs and others like them have pushed many boundaries, including the boundaries between truth and justice, advocacy and art, and law and fiction. In so doing the diverse programs have suggested a role for critical interventions that interrogate where boundaries collapse and offer analyses of the interrelation between domains. One particularly rich area of inquiry in this context concerns witnessing, confession, and narrative. How do these legal and personal stories get translated from law into media? And how do humanistic devices help us better understand the complications of these narratives as they exist within the legal system. This panel will address the question of evidence, as it exists between the worlds of law and cultural representation, and in particular the ways in which questions about evidence are embedded in related questions about narrative design.

Submissions should be abstracts between 250 and 1000 words; please send full papers if available. Scholarship may be at any stage of the publication process from work-in-progress to completed article. Each potential speaker may submit only one abstract for consideration. Paper proposals should be submitted electronically to Allison Tait (Allison.tait@richmond.edu) by June 1.

The papers selected for the panel will be announced in late June. Presenters will be responsible for paying the AALS meeting registration fee and hotel and travel expenses. If you have any questions about the panel of paper submissions, please contact Allison Tait (Allison.tait@richmond.edu).

Call For Papers: Association of American Law Schools, Section of Law and the Humanities, 2016 Meeting

The AALS Section of Law and the Humanities has issued the following CFP for the 2016 Meeting.

The following is a Call for Papers issued by the Section of Law and the Humanities:

"In the past three decades, significant research links assumptions based on race, ethnicity, and gender to views of individuals and their capacities.

“One example of such research is through use of the Implicit Association Test, available at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html,

and discussed in, Anthony G. Greenwald, Debbie E. McGhee, and Jordan L. K. Schwartz, “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 74, p. 1464 (1998); Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (Delacorte, 2013).

“Another example is through the use of “blind” and “double-blind” testing.  See, e.g., Corinne A Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoli, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Andelsman, “Science Faculty’s Suble Gender Biases Favor Male Students,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, no. 109, no. 41, pp. 16474-16479 (2012)

“More generally, the relationships among perception, sight, knowledge, and judgment have spawned a debate about how to develop wise judgment.

“At the Annual Meeting of the AALS, the Section on Law and the Humanities wishes to explore how implicit bias operates in courtrooms and how its operation has an impact on the participation of and outcomes for women and minorities as litigants.  Among other possible topics, we are interested in how partiality or impartiality in the courtroom is represented; how judicial impartiality is performed; and how bias is visible not only in judicial decisionmaking but in ways such as court composition.  Areas of interest include anti-discrimination, in which the protected class status of women and minorities plays a role, and also criminal law, family law, and immigration, among others.

“At this stage, the Section invites abstracts of proposed papers that address one of the described topics. The Section's Executive Committee will select among the abstracts and request that the proponents make a twenty-minute presentation at the Section’s meeting during the AALS Annual Meeting, January 7-9, 2016, in New York.  We request also that those who make presentations commit to publication of papers summarized at the Meeting.  We, in turn, commit to seek publication in an appropriate journal.

"Please submit an abstract of a proposed paper by April 15 to Dr. Neil H. Cogan, ncogan@law.whittier.edu."

The Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting, 2015

From AALS:

Humanities, History and Social Science Programs at the AALS Annual Meeting, January 2-5, 2015 Washington, D.C. The AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. will include sessions on intersection of law with the humanities, history and social sciences. Renowned legal scholars will lead discussions on the latest scholarship in these areas.   The 2015 AALS Annual Meeting will be held in Washington, D.C, from Friday, January 2 through Monday, January 5, 2015. Here is a sampling of programs being presented:  Law and the Heroic After the Monuments Men:  Nazi-Era Art, Modern Legal Problems Legislating Belonging Socio-Economics: Doing Good Research That Does Good Extreme Empirical Methods Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Workshop The Role of History in the Federal Courts Canon How (Not to) Provide Statutory Accommodations for Religion The Role Morality of the Legal Scholar Transgender Equality: Prisons, Workplace, and Academic Institutions The Future of Marriage Working But Poor: Understanding and Confronting the Working Poor Phenomenon Dead Upon Birth: The Inter-Generational Cycle of Thwarted Lives in America's Poorest Neighborhoods The meeting will also feature screenings of films chosen for their cinematic and legal value. This year's selections are Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Hot Coffee (2011) and Anita (2013). Professor Anita Hill (Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management) will participate in a discussion of Anita and there will be commentary and discussion of all three films. This year's Annual Meeting will feature a space for quiet contemplation.  The AALS Section on Balance in Legal Education plans on scheduling designated times for mindful movement. There will also be materials available on incorporating mindfulness into the classroom and other professional settings. For more information on these new programs or to register for the Annual Meeting, please click here.

Special Law and Humanities/Film Events At AALS, January 2015

I'd like to alert those of you planning to attend the AALS Annual Meeting in January 2015 to three interesting events taking place during that time. The AALS Film Committee is sponsoring two law and film nights during the meeting. The first, on January 2, at 7:30 p.m. (the first night of the conference), will be a screening of the classic Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer, written by Abby Mann, and starring a whole host of great actors, including Spencer Tracy as the thoughtful Chief Judge Dan Haywood, Marlene Dietrich as widowed Mrs. Bertholt, lost in denial, a young William Shatner (in his pre Captain Kirk days), Richard Widmark as the passionate prosecutor Colonel Lawson, Burt Lancaster as Dr. Ernst Janning and Werner Klemperer, two of the German judges accused of war crimes, Judy Garland as Irene Hoffman, a witness nearly overcome by the story she has to tell, and Maximilian Schell as Hans Rolfe, the defense attorney for the judges, who challenges both the prosecutors and the system of justice at every turn. Rolfe poses the ultimate question: in such a high profile trial, in which the stakes include the future of a nation, can these defendants ever get justice? The film dramatizes some of the famous "Nuremberg Trials" held after World War II, in particular those in which judges rather than political and military figures were defendants.

To introduce our film, we are honored to have Professor Harold Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. Professor Koh served as Legal Adviser for the Department of State from 2009 to 2013, service for which he received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award. Professor Koh is an expert in the area of national security, international human rights, and foreign relations, areas in which he has written extensively. I will be moderating a discussion afterward of the film for those interested.

On Sunday, January 4th, at 8 p.m. the Committee will sponsor a showing of the 2011 film Hot Coffee, directed by Susan Saladoff. The film recounts the famous lawsuit Stella Liebeck brought against McDonald's when she accidentally spilled some of its excessively hot beverage on herself. Hot Coffee is not just a movie about the torts regime. It's also a film about public relations and the rhetoric that lawyers use in telling stories. Dennis Greene, Professor of Law, University of Dayton School of Law, will moderate the discussion about this provocative and interesting film.

Finally, on Monday, January 5th at 2 p.m. AALS will present a very special event, a Cross-Cutting program, due in great part to the efforts of members of the Law and Film Committee. Professor Michael Olivas, former President of AALS, and current Chair of the Committee, will moderate a panel on the topic Anita F. Hill,  Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, and a Screening of the Film Anita. Speakers include Professors Taunya Lovell Banks of the University of Maryland School of Law, Jessica Silbey, Suffolk University Law School, and special guest Anita Hill, Senior Advisor to the Provost and Professor Social Policy, Law, and Women's Studies, Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management. This program also includes a special screening of the film Anita: Speaking Truth To Power (2014).

Professor Hill will also be a special guest at the Section on Minority Groups Luncheon, January 5, 2015, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.

I will be posting more information about these events as it becomes available.

Call For Papers: AALS Section on Law and the Humanities, January 2015 AALS Annual Meeting

From Charlton Copeland, University of Miami:

Call for Panelists

AALS Section on Law and Humanities

“Law and the Hero”

2015 AALS Annual Meeting

January 2-5, 2015, Washington, D.C.

Law and the Hero.  No, this is not an apt example of an “oxymoron” in the dictionary.  The law has had, and still has, many heroes.  For example, the federal judges in the South who implemented the desegregation mandate of Brown v. Board of Education were, as Jack Bass has written, unlikely heroes who maintained a steadfast commitment to the rule of law despite facing constant political opposition and personal attacks.  Ronald Dworkin argued that judges should aim to be heroes – specifically, like Hercules, acting with superhuman wisdom and patience to, in the words of Eric Posner, “bring order to the Augean stables of our law.”  (Posner did not agree with this view of the judge, arguing that judges should avoid making controversial constitutional decisions in order to allow such decisions to be worked out in the political process.)  Atticus Finch has long been hailed as heroic lawyer, albeit a fictional one, although Malcolm Gladwell has asked whether we should rethink Finch’s heroism.

What qualities define a hero in the law?  What role do heroes play in the law?  How is our thinking about heroism and the law influenced by other disciplines, such as history, literature, and philosophy?  And who are your heroes in the law?  This program will explore these issues with both invited panelists and panelists accepted through this call. 

The AALS Section on Law and Humanities invites your submissions on these questions and any others that touch upon the subject of “Law and the Hero.”  The Section will then select a number of submissions to be presented at the annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in January 2015.

To be considered as a panelist, please submit a statement of interest by Friday, May 9, 2014.  The statement should include a description – two to three paragraphs are sufficient – of your presentation that will address one or more of the themes highlighted in the above description and the methodology through which you will advance such themes. Please also submit a current curriculum vitae. Submit all materials to Professor Rodger Citron, Touro Law Center, via electronic mail at rcitron@tourolaw.edu.

Panelists will be selected by Friday, May 16, 2014. The Section hopes to have these papers published as part of an online mini-symposium sponsored by a law review, either in print or online.  All panelists will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses. Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (and not full-time on a different faculty) and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, and fellows are not eligible to submit.