The National Constitution Center hosted Notorious RBG in Song last night. Here's a link to the website, where you can hear the performance, which features Patrice Michaels, Kuang-Hao Huang, Andrew Harley, members of the Inscape Chamber Orchester, and Capital Hearings.
Showing posts with label Supreme Court in Popular Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Court in Popular Culture. Show all posts
February 5, 2019
June 5, 2016
The Supreme Court In Fiction, Film, and on TV
To distract us from politics in this election year, Anthony Franze offers a list of ten Supreme Court novels in this post for the ABA Journal. I'll list them here, to spare you the trouble of clicking through the ABAJ's "gallery" setup. I don't know about you, but I'm not overly fond of the "click to see the next item" format.
Below: Mr. Franze's choices.
Margaret Truman, Murder in the Supreme Court (1982).
John Grisham, The Pelican Brief (1982).
Brad Meltzer, The Tenth Justice (1997).
Paul Levine, Nine Scorpions (1998).
Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship (2008).
Phillip Margolin, Supreme Justice (2010).
Max Allan Collins, Supreme Justice (2014).
David Lat, Supreme Ambitions (2014).
Kermit Roosevelt, Allegiance (2015).
Jay Wexler, Tuttle in the Balance (2015).
What are your selections?
Mr. Franze doesn't cover movies and tv episodes, but here are some to choose from.
The Talk of the Town (1942). A law professor, nominated to a Supreme Court seat, finds himself in a delicate situation when an escaped prisoner turns up in the house he is staying in. Stars Jean Arthur, Cary Grant (he's not the law professor), and Ronald Colman.
Separate But Equal (TVM 1991). Powerful retelling of the Brown vs. Board of Education litigation. With Sidney Poitier as the young Thurgood Marshall.
The Magnificent Yankee (1950). Film biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., starring Louis Calhern, based on the Francis Biddle book.
The Pelican Brief (1993). Film adaptation of the Grisham novel, starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington.
Gideon's Trumpet (1980). A dramatization of Clarence Gideon's historic fight for the right for representation for criminal defendants. With the wonderful Henry Fonda as Gideon, and John Houseman (he of The Paper Chase) as the Chief Justice.
Mr. and Mrs. Loving (TVM 1996). Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon in a dramatization of the 1967 case that put an end to state laws forbidding interracial marriage.
The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996). A dramatization of adult magazine publisher Flynt's legal battles. The Supreme Court scene isn't long, but it's powerful.
First Monday in October (1981). Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh in the film version of a Jerome Lawrence play about the first woman nominated to a Supreme Court seat.
Confirmation (TVM 2016). A dramatization of the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas. Kerry Washington plays Professor Anita Hill and and Wendell Pierce plays Judge (later Justice) Thomas.
Roe v. Wade (1989). Holly Hunter plays the central figure in this drama that brings the famous Texas abortion case to the Court.
Television episodes:
Picket Fences. Episode: May It Please the Court (1994)
The West Wing. Episode: The Short List (1999).
Below: Mr. Franze's choices.
Margaret Truman, Murder in the Supreme Court (1982).
John Grisham, The Pelican Brief (1982).
Brad Meltzer, The Tenth Justice (1997).
Paul Levine, Nine Scorpions (1998).
Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship (2008).
Phillip Margolin, Supreme Justice (2010).
Max Allan Collins, Supreme Justice (2014).
David Lat, Supreme Ambitions (2014).
Kermit Roosevelt, Allegiance (2015).
Jay Wexler, Tuttle in the Balance (2015).
What are your selections?
Mr. Franze doesn't cover movies and tv episodes, but here are some to choose from.
The Talk of the Town (1942). A law professor, nominated to a Supreme Court seat, finds himself in a delicate situation when an escaped prisoner turns up in the house he is staying in. Stars Jean Arthur, Cary Grant (he's not the law professor), and Ronald Colman.
Separate But Equal (TVM 1991). Powerful retelling of the Brown vs. Board of Education litigation. With Sidney Poitier as the young Thurgood Marshall.
The Magnificent Yankee (1950). Film biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., starring Louis Calhern, based on the Francis Biddle book.
The Pelican Brief (1993). Film adaptation of the Grisham novel, starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington.
Gideon's Trumpet (1980). A dramatization of Clarence Gideon's historic fight for the right for representation for criminal defendants. With the wonderful Henry Fonda as Gideon, and John Houseman (he of The Paper Chase) as the Chief Justice.
Mr. and Mrs. Loving (TVM 1996). Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon in a dramatization of the 1967 case that put an end to state laws forbidding interracial marriage.
The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996). A dramatization of adult magazine publisher Flynt's legal battles. The Supreme Court scene isn't long, but it's powerful.
First Monday in October (1981). Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh in the film version of a Jerome Lawrence play about the first woman nominated to a Supreme Court seat.
Confirmation (TVM 2016). A dramatization of the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas. Kerry Washington plays Professor Anita Hill and and Wendell Pierce plays Judge (later Justice) Thomas.
Roe v. Wade (1989). Holly Hunter plays the central figure in this drama that brings the famous Texas abortion case to the Court.
Television episodes:
Picket Fences. Episode: May It Please the Court (1994)
The West Wing. Episode: The Short List (1999).
August 12, 2015
A New Thriller From Kermit Roosevelt
Kermit Roosevelt, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is publishing his second novel, Allegiance (ReganArts). Here is a description from the publisher's website.
The book will be released August 25, 2015.
When the news broke about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Caswell “Cash” Harrison was all set to drop out of law school and join the army… until he flunked the physical. Instead, he’s given the opportunity to serve as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. He and another clerk stumble onto a potentially huge conspiracy aimed at guiding the court’s interests, and the cases dealing with the constitutionality of the prison camps created to detain Japanese-Americans seem to play a key part. Then Cash’s colleague dies under mysterious circumstances, and the young, idealistic lawyer is determined to get at the truth. His investigation will take him from the office of J. Edgar Hoover to an internment camp in California, where he directly confronts the consequences of America’s wartime policies. Kermit Roosevelt combines the momentum of a top-notch legal thriller with a thoughtful examination of one of the worst civil rights violations in US history in this long-awaited follow-up to In the Shadow of the Law.
The book will be released August 25, 2015.
May 28, 2015
Supreme Court Justices In Pop Culture
Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick and her guests discuss the suddenly expanding cottage industry of biopics and other entertainment focusing on Supreme Court Justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, on episode 18 of Slate's podcast Amicus. More here.
But interest in the Justices, or in the Supreme Court generally, as fodder for pop images, isn't new. Consider John Grisham's thriller The Pelican Brief (1992; filmed 1993 with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington). The Justices turn up in scenes from The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Recount (2008), and Gideon's Trumpet (1980), as well as any number of other films. At least two scholars, Maxwell Bloomfield, and Laura Ray, have examined the image of the Justices in pop culture; their work is quite instructive. Cites below.
Maxwell Bloomfield, The Supreme Court in American Popular Culture, 4 Journal of American Culture 1 (Winter 1981).
Laura Ray, Judicial Fictions: Images of Supreme Court Justices in the Novel, Drama, and Film, 39 Arizona Law Review 151 (1997).
But interest in the Justices, or in the Supreme Court generally, as fodder for pop images, isn't new. Consider John Grisham's thriller The Pelican Brief (1992; filmed 1993 with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington). The Justices turn up in scenes from The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Recount (2008), and Gideon's Trumpet (1980), as well as any number of other films. At least two scholars, Maxwell Bloomfield, and Laura Ray, have examined the image of the Justices in pop culture; their work is quite instructive. Cites below.
Maxwell Bloomfield, The Supreme Court in American Popular Culture, 4 Journal of American Culture 1 (Winter 1981).
Laura Ray, Judicial Fictions: Images of Supreme Court Justices in the Novel, Drama, and Film, 39 Arizona Law Review 151 (1997).
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