Advanced Herstory Looks At Female TV Sleuths From the 1970s @TVHerstory

Advanced Herstory on the 1970s female private eye. This podcast episode takes a look at the tv adaptation of Nancy Drew, which starred Pamela Sue Martin and then Janet Louise Johnson, Mrs. Columbo, which featured the wife of Lt. Columbo, of the long-running hit Columbo (featuring Peter Falk, although his wife on that show never appeared), and Charlie's Angels, which launched Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith as three lovelies who fought crime for the unseen (but heard) John Forsythe.

Teaching Law With Television: The Case of Law & Order

ICYMI:

Kenneth D. Agran's Investigative Criminal Procedure: A Law &; Order Casebook (West Academic Publishing (2017). Here's a description of the book's contents.

This innovative and groundbreaking book includes access to 12 complete episodes of the popular television show LAW & ORDER that vividly and accurately depict various aspects of Investigative Criminal Procedure. Instructors may request a complimentary copy of the book that provides access to the companion eBook, which seamlessly incorporates scenes from the show, excerpts from over 200 U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and "black box" summaries of the law to clarify the constitutional rules binding upon law enforcement during the investigation of crimes. In particular, the book comprehensively covers the constitutional rules governing searches and seizures, the limitations on police questioning and interrogation practices, and the doctrines regulating police identification procedures. A Teacher's Manual includes valuable teaching tips, coverage suggestions for courses of various lengths, detailed notes and summaries for each case, and classroom-tested exercises that, along with the LAW & ORDER segments, will improve students' engagement and enhance their understanding of the core concepts in Investigative Criminal Procedure. West Academic is proud to have worked with NBCUniversal to bring this one-of-a-kind textbook to the market.

Professor Agran notes that part of his inspiration comes from his law school experiences in a 1994 course taught by Charles Nesson. Certainly what he describes is new and different. And his own book is both clever and innovative. But I would point out that (ahem) some people have pointed the way, even before 1994. I tried to interest another legal publisher in this same idea back then. I still remember the name of the publisher's rep who failed to respond to my inquiries about a law and television casebook approach to teaching after encouraging me to lay out a detailed plan. Sigh.

Using Breaking Bad In the Law School Classroom

Max Minzner, University of New Mexico School of Law, has published Breaking Bad in the Classroom in volume 45 New Mexico Law Review (2015). Here is the abstract.

Breaking Bad is often described as the transformation of Walter White — Mr. Chips becomes Scarface. Equally significant, though, are the journeys of Hank Schrader, his DEA pursuer, and Hank’s colleagues. The show is a study of law enforcement investigation in action. As a result, Breaking Bad can serve as a tool of pedagogy in criminal procedure.

This Essay seeks to serve two ends. First, it provides a map for the use of the Breaking Bad series in the core constitutional criminal procedure course focusing on the limits on police investigation arising from the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Video is a powerful mechanism for presenting hypotheticals to students. Recent work on other shows such as The Wire has recognized the value of television as an alternative pedagogical technique in the law school curriculum. Breaking Bad deserves to take its place as a teaching aid in a criminal procedure classroom. The first part of this Essay identifies usable scenes for both faculty and students, and provides a preliminary analysis of the doctrine.

The second goal of this Essay is to expand the focus of the traditional course beyond the United States Constitution. Breaking Bad is more than a show about cops and criminals. It is a show about New Mexico. As a result, for those of us training New Mexico’s future prosecutors and defense lawyers, it provides a mechanism to introduce students to state criminal procedure. As is true in many states, the New Mexico Constitution contains parallel protections to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments that have been interpreted more broadly than their restrictive federal counterparts. This Essay is a call to law school faculty to incorporate state constitutions into the criminal procedure class. Because criminal law is fundamentally state law, these are the provisions our students will implement in practice. As a result, they deserve significant time in the criminal procedure course.

As legal education changes, law school faculty members teaching doctrinal classes are increasingly called on to make traditional law school courses more practical. The central goal of these efforts is to make our graduates more practice-ready and to increase the realism of legal education. The constitutional criminal procedure course is perhaps the best place to start. The core of the course is practice-oriented and will be implemented by our graduates as soon as they begin a career in criminal law. Breaking Bad is one mechanism for faculty members to use. In this way, the use of fiction can make criminal procedure more realistic.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

While the idea (pedagogically) has been around for a while (see for example my (very) old piece Columbo Goes To Law School: Or, Some Thoughts On the Uses of Television in the Teaching of Law, 13 Loy. L. A. Ent. L.J. 499 (1993)), Prof. Minzner's piece is interesting because it focuses attention on New Mexico state law and on state constitutions.