Call For Papers: Conference on Law, Authorship, and Appropriation, LSU, October 28-29, 2016

Call for Papers

By Any Other’s Name: A Conference on Law, Authorship, and Appropriation

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA

October 28-29, 2016

On October 28-29, 2016, the LSU College of Music and Dramatic Arts, LSU School of Theatre, the LSU Law Center, LSU's ORED (Office of Research and Economic Development) and the Law and Humanities Institute will co-sponsor a conference on law, authorship, and appropriation on the LSU A and M campus in Baton Rouge, LA. This conference will bring together scholars, performers, and students to discuss law and authorship in the face of challenges issued by artists who engage in appropriation—the practice of taking the works of others to rethink or recreate new works.

Some artists who engage in appropriation may describe their activities as parody, sampling, or remixing. Some artists whose work is appropriated may describe the result as misappropriation. Writers might describe the use or reuse of words variously as hommage or plagiarism. Lawyers weigh in both sides of the issue, interpreting such reuse as fair use or infringement, depending on the circumstances.

Digital technology creates a host of new considerations, from the opportunity for a creator to license rights up-front (or not at all) to opportunities for users to create content cooperatively, either on the Web or in face-to-face settings. 

What do such changes, in law and in aesthetics and art, mean for our understandings of authorship and the relationship between creator and audience? Do words like “author” and “creator” even continue to have meaning?

General areas for possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:

Appropriation, theft, or something else

Cultural appropriation

Defenses to copyright infringement

Digital sampling and the law

Fair use and specific forms of artistic expression (parody, fan fiction, other)

History and concept of authorship

Plagiarism and originality in creation

Wearable technology and IP

We encourage proposals that engage all geographic areas and historical periods.

Together scholars and performers in the areas of free speech, copyright, and the arts to examine conflicts that arise between traditional creators of content and artists who use and/or re-use existing content to remake, remix and develop new works. In addition, the event will begin to examine some ways that the academy and the professions can educate young artists, attorneys, and students to understand these issues.  

The conference will provide opportunities for discussion, student engagement, and active learning with leading scholars and professionals in the industry in the areas of freedom of expression, intellectual property law, and the creative and performing arts. We also envision opportunities for performances that demonstrate some of the ways artists work proactively and thoughtfully in these areas.

To that end participants should be willing to engage with attendees in break-out and discussion sessions.

Performers are encouraged to submit proposals. If your proposal includes a performance, please indicate what kind in the abstract.

Paper Submission Information

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words in PDF or Word format to Christine Corcos at christine.corcos@law.lsu.edu or Kristin Sosnowsky at ksosno1@lsu.edu by June 8, 2016. We will make decisions by June 20^th, 2016.

Some funding is available for successful applicants. Panelists will have the option to offer completed papers for inclusion in a peer-reviewed conference volume.

Waugh on The Judges and Their Court 1852-1900 (Victoria, Australia)

John Waugh, Melbourne Law School, has published The Judges and Their Court 1852–1900 in Judging For the People: A Social History of the Supreme Court in Victoria 1841-2016) (Simon Smith, ed., Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2016). Here is the abstract.

The Supreme Court of the new colony of Victoria was born in the midst of the gold rush. As population soared, cases poured into the court at a rate the judges could barely handle. Compared with the labour of clearing that avalanche, the court’s history for the rest of the century was a long anti-climax, as social and economic changes that are yet to be fully explored reduced its work to a smaller number of longer cases. On the bench, migrants from England and Ireland began to make way for judges born and educated in Australia.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

A New Book on Juridical Space From Leif Dahlberg

Via Daniela Carpi of AIDEL:

Leif Dahlberg, Professor in Communication at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and Associate Professor in Comparative Literature, Stockholm University, Sweden, has published Spacing Law and Politics (Routledge, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

Examining the inherent spatiality of law, both theoretically and as social practice, this book presents a genealogical account of the emergence and the development of the juridical. In an analysis that stretches from ancient Greece, through late antiquity and early modern and modern Europe, and on to the contemporary courtroom, it considers legal and philosophical texts, artistic and literary works, as well as judicial practices, in order to elicit and document a series of critical moments in the history of juridical space. Offering a more nuanced understanding of law than that found in traditional philosophical, political or social accounts of legal history, Dahlberg forges a critical account of the intimate relations between law and politics that shows how juridical space is determined and conditioned in ways that are integral to the very functioning – and malfunctioning – of law.

 

For a 20% discount, enter the code FLR40 at checkout.

Per the publisher: Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount and only applies to books purchased via the website. For more details, or to request a copy for review, please contact: Soundus Zahir, Marketing Assistant, Soundus.Zahir@tandf.co.uk

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New Series Dramatizing Shakespeare's Early Years To Air On TNT

TNT has ordered the original series Will based on the early life of William Shakespeare. It will star Laurie Davidson, who is still relatively unknown as the playwright arriving in 16th century London as a young man fresh from the provinces, finding the big city theater scene full of violence and excitement. The tagline seems to include "punk rock" (seems somewhat anacronistic to me, but let's go with it). No Bacon, Donne, or Earl of Oxford on the horizon so far. More here from Deadline.

Sanders on Baby Ninth Amendments and Unenumerated Individual Rights in State Constitutions Before the Civil War

Anthony B. Sanders, Institute for Justice, is publishing Baby Ninth Amendments and Unenumerated Individual Rights in State Constitutions Before the Civil War in the Mercer Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Although there is controversy on the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment, there should be no controversy on the original meaning of Ninth Amendment analogs in state constitutions, otherwise known as the “Baby Ninths.” This Article examines the history of the states’ adoption of Baby Ninths before the Civil War. It includes an analysis of the parallel history of what I call “Baby Tenths,” state constitutional provisions exempting state bills of rights out of the power of government. From these, and other, sources I demonstrate that Baby Ninths only make sense as judicially enforceable provisions that protect unenumerated individual rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

AMC Orders Six-Episode Series on Comic Books From "Walking Dead" Creator; Shows Will Air In 2017

From Lesley Goldberg at the Hollywood Reporter: AMC has ordered a documentary series on the history of comic books from Robert Kirkman, who created the series The Walking Dead. Slated for airing in 2017, six hours of "Heroes and Villains" will focus on famous comic book characters and their identities.  More here from The Futon Critic.

Weinstein on Learning and Lawyering Across Personality Types

Ian Weinstein, Fordham University School of Law, has published Learning and Lawyering across Personality Types at 21 Clinical Law Review 427 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Personality theory illuminates recurring problems in law school teaching. While the roots of modern personality theory extend back to Hippocrates and the theory of the four humors, contemporary ideas owe much to Carl Jung’s magisterial book, Psychological Types. Jung’s work gave us the categories of introvert and extrovert, as it explored what has come to be understood as the cognitive bases for our habits of mind. These are powerful ideas but also complex and sometimes obscure. Applying them to law school teaching and learning (and law practice) can be very fruitful, if we pay careful attention to ourselves and colleagues, the structure of the ideas we convey, the complexity of the skills we aim to sharpen and the settings in which we teach and learn. While the theory has something to say about teaching and learning in large groups, the most widely cited pedagogic notion that flows from personality type theory — the claim that teachers should match their mode of presentation to the learning styles of the students — is not among them. In the large classroom, we might better match our modes of presentation to the structure of the ideas we are conveying than varying our presentations to appeal to a heterogeneous group of personality types. But when we work with individual students and small groups to build problem solving, interpersonal and collaborative skills, personality type theory can be a powerful guide to how we teach as well as a useful set of ideas for our students. This paper discusses Jungian Personality Theory and the lessons it offers in a variety of teaching and learning settings in law school.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Brown on the "The Breakfast Club" and the Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor

Heidi K. Brown, Brooklyn Law School, is publishing The Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor: A Lesson from the Breakfast Club in volume 36 of the University of Arkansas (Little Rock) Law Review. Here is the abstract.

While some law review articles emphasize the importance of teaching Emotional Intelligence (EI) as part of the students' law school curriculum as a component of “professionalism,” fewer articles thus far have illuminated how professors can cultivate their own EI to become better educators. The present article aspires to provide law professors with a workable explanation of EI, and practical guidance to make EI accessible and useful in the classroom. Part I of this article explains the basic concept and components of Emotional Intelligence, and how understanding and cultivating one's own EI in a classroom dynamic can enhance teaching. This section also urges law professors to embrace a “growth mindset,” a term advanced by Dr. Carol Dweck, to describe our fundamental ability to change qualities about ourselves that we once might have thought were “fixed.” Part II describes some of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation of law students; in fact, we also need to start studying the characteristics of the post-Millennial “Generation Z.” Understanding the underlying societal drivers behind the current and next generation's classroom demeanor and approach to learning will help professors overcome kneejerk “Breakfast Club”-style behavioral stereotypes based on past assumptions which may no longer be valid. Part III draws from Dr. Ken Bain's study of exemplary college-level teachers, as well as the 2013 book, What the Best Law Teachers Do, to identify specific qualities for improving effectiveness as an El-savvy law teacher. Finally, Part IV suggests practical techniques for applying EI in the law school classroom so that professors can adjust more readily to a constantly evolving classroom dynamic and the needs of the inimitable mosaic of individual learners within each student group.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law, Tech, and Star Trek

The ABA For Law Students Blog has posted Searching for the Mr. Spock in You, a piece about the importance of being knowledgeable both about technology and the ethics of its use. A nice mind meld among law, tech, and pop culture (can one mind meld three things at once?)

Twitter thanks to Rick Peltz-Steele @RJPeltzSteele.

The Case of Loving v. Virginia Hits the Big Screen

The Hollywood Review reviews the new film Loving, which dramatizes the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967). Richard and Mildred Loving challenged the Virginia statute which forbade interracial marriage, a case which eventually ended up in the U. S. Supreme Court and led to a landmark ruling that invalidated such laws. The new film stars Joel Egerton and Ruth Negga. The Loving case has been brought to the screen before--as a made for television movie, Mr. and Mrs. Loving (1996), starring Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon (a wonderful film, but hard to find on DVD--it may be embargoed), and as a 2011 documentary, The Loving Story, featuring Jane Alexander and directed by Nancy Buirski.

Kadens on the Medieval Law Merchant

Emily Kadens, Northwestern University School of Law, has published The Medieval Law Merchant: The Tyranny of a Construct at 7 Journal of Legal Analysis 251 (2015). Here is the abstract.

The story of a medieval law merchant has a strong hold on scholars interested in private ordering. Despite numerous historical works demonstrating the falsity of the myth, it continues to be discussed regularly in scholarship as if it were an accurate portrayal of the past. This article tests the law merchant story against evidence about the mechanisms of medieval trade. It suggests that medieval commerce had little space for a specialized law, and that merchants had little need for it because of both the well-developed trading infrastructure and the actions of local governments to ensure the protection of legal rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

"The Night Stalker" To Air On LMN June 12

On June 12 Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) will air made-for-tv movie The Night Stalker about an attorney seeking a confession from Richard Ramirez (the convicted serial killer known as "the Night Stalker"), whom she suspects to be the actual killer of a number of people, murders for which her client is going to be executed. Bellamy Young plays the attorney, Lou Diamond Phillips is Richard Ramirez, and others in the cast include Louis Herthum, Mark Kelly, and Annalisa Cochrane.

Another TV movie about Ramirez, Manhunt, starring A Martinez as a detective on the case, aired in 1989, and a film, Nightstalker, was released in 2002.

More here about the 2016 film from the Lifetime Movie Network website, IMDB, and moviepilot.com.

A New Book on Law, Sex, Gender, and the Workplace

Joanna L. Grossman, Professor of Law, Hofstra University School of Law, has published Nine to Five: How Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Continue to Define the American Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Here is the table of contents from the publisher's website.


Foreword Barbara Babcock
Preface
Part I. What Is Sex Discrimination?:
1. Sexual jealousy
2. Too hot to be a dental hygienist?
3. A twist on the problem of sex inequality in coaching
4. Mixed motives
5. Sex stereotyping and dress codes
6. A victory for transgender employees
7. How fast must female transit officers run?
8. Who is protected by anti-discrimination laws?
9. Punishing the coach who stood up for his female athletes
10. Broader protection against workplace retaliation
11. The Supreme Court protects retaliation victims, but still leaves gaps in the law
Part II. Sexual Harassment:
12. Workplace affairs and sexual favoritism
13. Lolita at the office
14. Sex talk in the writers' room
15. Sex behind bars
16. When the supervisor bullies only women
17. The equal opportunity harasser
18. Periodontal perils
19. Punishing effeminacy
20. Late night affairs with David Letterman
21. Why Herman Cain has not been able to talk his way out of his exploding sexual harassment scandal
22. Why hostile environment harassment is a 'continuing violation'
23. When sexual extortion is successful
24. The consequences of failing to complain about harassment
25. Who is responsible for sudden, severe harassment?
26. Chinks in the harassment law armor
27. Do employer efforts prevent harassment or just prevent liability?
28. Who's the boss?
29. Costly mistakes
30. Hands off the merchandise
Part III. Pregnant Women and Mothers at Work:
31. Pregnant truckers and the problem of light-duty assignments
32. A big win for pregnant police officers
33. Undue burden
34. Hard labor: new pregnancy discrimination guidance from the EEOC
35. Forceps delivery: the Supreme Court narrowly saves the pregnancy discrimination act in Young vs UPS
36. The Pregnant Workers' Fairness Act: a time for change?
37. The Supreme Court deals a blow to once-pregnant retirees
38. If she don't win it's a shame
39. Must employers who cover prescriptions cover contraception?
40. Fertile ground for discrimination
41. Can a woman be fired for absenteeism related to fertility treatments?
42. Is lactation related to pregnancy?
43. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act reaches advanced maternal age
44. A victory for families, but hardly a panacea
45. A small step in the right direction: the Family and Medical Leave Act at twenty
46. 'Best practices' to promote work/family balance
Part IV. Female Breadwinners and the Glass Ceiling:
47. The Supreme Court slams the door on pay discrimination claims
48. A call for congressional action to remedy pay inequality
49. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
50. Taking stock: is the Ledbetter Act working?
51. The lady in red
52. Unfinished business
53. Will ABA's proposed solutions for gender inequity work?
54. Equality still elusive for women in the federal workforce
55. 'Girlie men'
56. Playing 'too womany' and the problem of masculinity in sport
57. Binders for women, blinders for Romney
Conclusion.

Save twenty percent off the list price by entering the discount code NINETOFIVE at checkout.

Yes, Even More New Legal Shows For Fall 2016

ABC has ordered up the new drama Notorious, based on the the career of high profile attorney Mark Geragos, for the fall season. It has also scheduled the new legal drama Conviction, staring Hayley Atwell, about a former First Daughter in charge of investigating cases in which persons have been wrongly convicted.

Note that "Conviction" is a popular title for law-related tv series and films. A 2005 movie with that name starred Lisa Gay Hamilton and Jenni Baird,  Conviction (2010) starred Hilary Swank in the docudrama about a woman who went to law school to exonerate her brother who was jailed for murder, and a 2006 Dick Wolf series with the name lasted one season; it was vaguely related to the Law & Order franchise.

Thirteenth Symposium on Law and Psychoanalysis, May 18-20, 2016

From our friend Jose Calvo Gonzalez, news of the 13th Symposium on Law and Psychoanalysis, to be held at the Universidade Federal do Parana, Curitiba, Brazil, from May 18 to the 20, 2016. Here's a link to the website.

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).

Desautels-Stein on the Structural Approach to Legal Historiography

Justin Desautels-Stein, University of Colorado Law School, has published A Context for Legal History, or, This Is Not Your Father's Contextualism at 56 American Journal of Legal History 29 (2016). Here is the abstract.

This short essay attempts a systematic rehearsal of the structuralist approach to legal historiography.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

More Lawyer Shows To Make Debuts This Fall

Come fall 2016, Dick Wolf will have another series on air. This one will be called Chicago Justice, yet another one of the "Chicago" franchise, and will focus on the attorneys that criss-cross the hospital and police department scenes of Chicago Med and Chicago P.D.

The series will star Philip Winchester, Nazneen Contractor, Joelle Carter, Carl Weathers, and Ryan-James Hatanaka.

Meanwhile, CBS is headed toward putting a Good Wife spinoff in production, with Christine Baranski (Diane Lockhart) again in a starring role, but this show, title as yet unannounced, will air first on the network and then move on to CBS' All-Access streaming service (right now priced at $5.99 per month). Interesting proposition.

Women Detectives In Fact and Fiction: A New Book by Erika Janik

Erika Janik has published Pistols and Petticoats: 175 Years of Lady Detectives, in Fact and Fiction (Beacon Press, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

In 1910, Alice Wells took the oath to join the all-male Los Angeles Police Department. She wore no uniform, carried no weapon, and kept her badge stuffed in her pocketbook. She wasn’t the first or only policewoman, but she became the movement’s most visible voice. Police work from its very beginning was considered a male domain, far too dangerous and rough for a respectable woman to even contemplate doing, much less take on as a profession. A policewoman worked outside the home, walking dangerous city streets late at night to confront burglars, drunks, scam artists, and prostitutes. To solve crimes, she observed, collected evidence, and used reason and logic—traits typically associated with men. And most controversially of all, she had a purpose separate from her husband, children, and home. Women who donned the badge faced harassment and discrimination. It would take more than seventy years for women to enter the force as full-fledged officers. Yet within the covers of popular fiction, women not only wrote mysteries but also created female characters that handily solved crimes. Smart, independent, and courageous, these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century female sleuths (including a healthy number created by male writers) set the stage for Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, as well as TV detectives such as Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison and Law and Order’s Olivia Benson. The authors were not amateurs dabbling in detection but professional writers who helped define the genre and competed with men, often to greater success. Pistols and Petticoats tells the story of women’s very early place in crime fiction and their public crusade to transform policing. Whether real or fictional, investigating women were nearly always at odds with society. Most women refused to let that stop them, paving the way to a modern professional life for women on the force and in popular culture.

More about Alice (Stebbins) Wells (1873-1957) here.

Some Early Entries In the Legal Series Summer/Fall Sweepstakes: Northern Lawyers, Southern Poets, and New York Murders

As expected, a new crop of law-related shows is on tap for summer and fall. Some early entries:

NBC has green-lit the legal comedy Trial and Error.   In this "fish out of water" comedy, Nick D'Agosto (Josh Segal) is a Yankee lawyer who goes South to defend a professor of poetry (!) played by John Lithgow, accused of killing his wife. (What? There are no high profile enough criminal lawyers in the South? No, I get it--we're looking for opposites here to spark the comedy).  This will be the attorney's "first big case." Hmmm. Again I ask, no lawyers in the South available to take this case?  Never mind; I'll watch. Mr. Lithgow is always great, and I'm up for anything depicting suspected homicidal poets. (Incidentally, this is why I think he's probably not guilty. All the male poets I know are brilliant, charming, quirky, and often highly annoying. But homicidal? It's counterproductive).

HBO will begin airing The Night Of, a miniseries based on the British series Criminal Justice, that begins after a New York woman's murder on July 10th. 

Meanwhile, Fox's The Grinder (starring Rob Lowe as an actor who made his mark playing a lawyer on TV and Fred Savage playing his brother, an actual lawyer in Boise, Idaho) might be cancelled--it's on the bubble. Too bad, as it's a funny show--a satire on Hollywood, lawyers, family life, just about anything it turns its eye on. Catch it while you can and catch up on already aired episodes online.

Update: Fox has cancelled The Grinder.

How "The Good Wife" Is Like the Real-Life Practice of Criminal Law. Not.

Anne-Marie McElroy (McElroy Law) discusses how The Good Wife and real life criminal law practice part ways here at her wonderful blog, which won a 2015 Clawbie Award.   Yup, critique a little like a poke in the ribs. But not like a malevolent hockey stick to the head. After all, she's Canadian.

Dodek, Woolley, and Wells on Ethical Lawyering: Stories From the Canadian Legal Profession

Adam M. Dodek, University of Ottawa, Common Law Section, Alice Woolley, University of Calgary, and Paul Wells, Maclean's, have published Front Matter for In Search of the Ethical Lawyer: Stories from the Canadian Legal Profession, in In Search of the Ethical Lawyer: Stories from the Canadian Legal Profession (UBC Press, 2016). Here is the abstract.

This paper contains the front matter - Table of Contents, Foreword by Paul Wells of Maclean's and the Introduction - to this book. We wrote this book in order to attempt to tell the stories about some important cases and people in Canadian legal ethics. All too often appellate cases and texts strip out the facts from cases. However, as any good lawyer will attest, the facts matter. Our goal in writing this book was to put the people back into the conversation about law, at least when it comes to Canadian legal ethics. In Search of the Ethical Lawyer contains stories about important cases, issues and people in Canadian legal ethics. It includes chapters by David Asper, Constance Backhouse, Janine Benedet, Brent Cotter, Richard Devlin, Adam Dodek, Trevor Farrow, Allan Hutchinson, Micah Rankin, Lorne Sossin and Alice Woolley. Here is the Table of Contents: Foreword / Paul Wells Introduction / Adam Dodek and Alice Woolley 1 Keeping Secrets or Saving Lives: What Is a Lawyer to Do? / Adam Dodek 2 Putting Up a Defence: Sex, Murder, and Videotapes / Allan C. Hutchinson 3 "No One’s Interested in Something You Didn’t Do": Freeing David Milgaard the Ugly Way / David Asper 4 "Begun in Faith, Continued in Determination": Burnley Allan (Rocky) Jones and the Egalitarian Practice of Law / Richard F. Devlin 5 Feminist Lawyering: Insiders and Outsiders / Janine Benedet 6 Gender and Race in the Construction of "Legal Professionalism": Historical Perspectives / Constance Backhouse 7 The Helping Profession: Can Pro Bono Lawyers Make Sick Children Well? / Lorne Sossin 8 A New Wave of Access to Justice Reform in Canada / Trevor C.W. Farrow 9 Michelle’s Story: Creativity and Meaning in Legal Practice / Alice Woolley 10 Ian Scott: Renaissance Man, Consummate Advocate, Attorney General Extraordinaire / W. Brent Cotter 11 Gerry Laarakker: From Rustic Rambo to Rebel with a Cause / Micah Rankin

Download a sample from SSRN at the link.



 

Adams on Crossing Borders and Searching for Purpose in North American Legal Education, 1930-1950

Eric M. Adams, University of Alberta Faculty of Law, is publishing The Dean Who Went to Law School: Crossing Borders and Searching for Purpose in North American Legal Education, 1930-1950 in the Alberta Law Review. Here is the abstract.

This article is about the making of modern legal education in North America. It does so with a case study of the lives of two law schools, the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law and the University of Minnesota Law School, and their respective deans, Wilbur Bowker and Everett Fraser, in the decades surrounding the Second World War. The article follows Bowker’s unorthodox route to Alberta’s deanship via his graduate training under the experimental “Minnesota Plan” – Fraser’s long forgotten effort to place public service at the centre of American legal education. In detailing an overlooked moment of transition and soul searching in North American legal education, this article underlines the personalities, ideologies, circumstances, and practices that combined to forge the still dominant model of university-based legal education across the continent. Highlighting the movement of people and ideas, this study corrects a tendency to understand the history of law schools as the story of single institutions and isolated visionaries. It also reveals the dynamic ways in which law schools absorbed and refracted the period’s ideological and political concerns into teaching practices and institutional arrangements. In bold experiment and innate conservatism, personal ambition and institutional constraints, and, above all else, faith in the power of law and lawyers, the postwar law school was born.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Lacey on Images of Money, Law, and Status in Trollope

Nicola Lacey, London School of Economics Law Department, has published Gamblers and Gentlefolk: Money, Law and Status in Trollope's England, as LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 03/2016. Here is the abstract.

This paper examines the range of very different conceptions of money and its legal and social significance in the novels of Anthony Trollope, considering what they can tell us about the rapidly changing economic, political and social world of mid Victorian England. It concentrates in particular on Orley Farm (1862) — the novel most directly concerned with law among Trollope’s formidable output — and The Way We Live Now (1875) — the novel most directly concerned with the use and abuse of money in the early world of financial capitalism. The paper sets the scene by sketching the main critiques of money in the history of the novel. Drawing on a range of literary examples, it notes that these critiques significantly predate the development of industrial let alone financial capitalism. Probably the deepest source of ambivalence about money in the novel has to do with ‘commodification’. As this concern unfolds in Trollope, it tells us a great deal about changing conceptions of property in a world in which industrial capitalism sat alongside practices of speculative investment geared simply to the multiplication of money. Trollope’s nostalgia for the world of land sits alongside an increasingly sharp critique of the power of money, and these novels illuminate the rapidly changing economic, political and social world of mid Victorian England. They also speak, as it were, volumes on the relative effectiveness of the different regulatory resources which can be brought to bear upon each form of wealth. And they open some fascinating windows on the gendering of both money and law as concepts in the later Victorian imagination.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Judging "The Good Wife"

The popular CBS legal drama "The Good Wife" ended last night (May 8), and commentaries on its final episode, and its seven year run, are coming in. Below, some appraisals.

From the Atlantic: The Good Wife: Florrick Vs. the Sisterhood

From E Online: Farewell to The Good Wife: Thank You for This Journey 

From The Hollywood Reporter: Critic's Notebook: 'Good Wife' Series Finale Brings Alicia Florrick Full Circle


From The New York Times:  Julianna Margulies, in Closing Arguments for ‘The Good Wife’
 
From TV Guide:  The Good Wife Series Finale: Alicia Gets the Ending She Deserves

From Variety: ‘The Good Wife’ Finale Review: Alicia Revisits Her Past, Faces Ambiguous Future and ‘The Good Wife’ Finale Surprises as Alicia Florrick’s Emotional Saga Ends 

From Vulture: Let's Discuss How The Good Wife Ended


And some explanations:

The Good Wife Creators Explain That Striking Final Scene: 'The Victim Becomes the Victimizer'

‘The Good Wife’ Creators and Cast Say Goodbye After 7 Seasons

Grading the (TV) Lawyers

Tired of grading? Take a look at this discussion of "grading" TV lawyers, posted by Jayne Reardon for 2Civility at the Illinois Supreme Court Commision on Professionalism Website. Here's a link to the full infographic (click on each mini-page for the grade for each TV lawyer; unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an overall guide to the list). Do you agree with the spread? Criteria seem somewhat undefined, but include "ethics," "professionalism," and attitudes toward work and justice.

 And how would you score folks like Patty Hewes (Damages), Sebastian Shark (Shark), Ben Matlock (Matlock), Perry Mason (Perry Mason), Harvey Birdman (Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law), Christine Sullivan (Night Court), Ken Preston (The Defenders), Bobby O'Donnell (The Practice), and Kevin Hill (Kevin Hill).

More about tv lawyers here in this article from the New Republic. 

Cass Sunstein and Star Wars

Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal has published this interview with Harvard Law's Cass Sunstein on the subject of law and Star Wars, and his new book, The World According to Star Wars.
Among the revelations: Professor Sunstein's favorite Star Wars character is Darth Vader.May the Fourth, etc. etc.

 

Wagemans on a Periodic Table of Arguments

Jean H. M. Wagemans, University of Amsterdam, has published Constructing a Periodic Table of Arguments. Here is the abstract.

The existing classifications of arguments are unsatisfying in a number of ways. This paper proposes an alternative in the form of a Periodic Table of Arguments. The newly developed table can be used as a systematic and comprehensive point of reference for the analysis, evaluation and production of argumentative discourse as well as for various kinds of empirical and computational research in the field of argumentation theory.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Zwart on Transplantation Medicine, Organ-Theft Films, and Bodily Integrity

Hub Zwart, Radbout University Nijmegen, Faculty of Science, ISIS, has published Transplantation Medicine, Organ-Theft Cinema and Bodily Integrity. Subjectivity at DOI:10.1057/sub.2016.1. Here is the abstract.

Transplantation medicine affects the way we experience ourselves as embodied subjects. Human bodies become aggregates of replaceable and exploitable parts, and potential resources for craving others. Our intimate interior contains items which others subjects lack, so that organs are transformed into (commodifiable) ‘objects of desire’. Clandestine organ markets and the popularity of organ theft cinema are symptoms of this development. What does it means for human subjectivity when organs become market commodities? This contemporary issue emerges against the backdrop of a metaphysical struggle of long standing between the traditional Christian view (concerning the inviolable body) and the bio-scientific view (concerning the body as a collection of replaceable parts). I will analyse the ontological repercussions of transplantation medicine from Lacanian perspective, using organ theft cinema as a stage on which conflicting and unsettling views of embodiment are enacted, probed and questioned. Three organ theft movies (Jésus de Montréal, L’Intrus and Crank 2: high voltage) will be subjected to a Lacanian analysis. The intrusive, dehumanising dimension to organ procurement, which tends to be obfuscated (repressed) in standard bioethical discourse about voluntary donation and human dignity, resurge quite emphatically in organ transplant cinema.

The full text is not available for download.

SpearIt on Muslim Hip Hop in the Age of Mass Incarceration

SpearIt, Texas Southern University School of Law, has published Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop in the Age of Mass Incarceration at 11 Florida International Law Review 201 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and revenge, painted within a cosmic worldview that likens present conditions to the slave system that first brought African Muslims to America as slaves. The discursive war challenges the notion that the most radical voices in Muslim America are to be found in mosques or other Muslim gatherings. Such a position must contend with this sonic jihad and its aural assault against prisons. These artists arguably represent the most radical Islamic discourse in America today that undoubtedly ranks Muslim rappers among the most cutting-edge critics of mass incarceration.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Rapping on Atticus Finch as Legal Hero After "Go Set a Watchman"

Jonathan Rapping, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, is publishing It's a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird: The Need for Idealism in the Legal Profession in volume 114 of the Michigan Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch has served as a role model and inspiration for law students and lawyers for over fifty years. When Go Set a Watchmen was published last year, Finch's status as legal hero was threatened. In this essay I argue that Finch is a uniquely important role model to lawyers committed to social justice and that he has the ability to inspire attorneys seeking to live lives of purpose. We desperately need this inspiration in our profession. I conclude that in a profession that has lost its way we should continue to view Finch in this light and resist the temptation to destroy this fictional hero.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

No Gaveling Allowed

The blog Inappropriate Gavels is on a mission. Its aim? To call out, appropriately enough, the mistaken uses of images, references, or mentions of gavels "in the media to depict the law in the UK."  Tagline:  "Gavels are small wooden hammers. English judges have never used them. But some people are wrong about that."  Great posts, done with humo(u)r.  More here from Full Fact, here from Marcel Berlins, for the Guardian.

These folks should get a Gavel Award.

Carry on.

Star Wars and Law

Adam Music (writing for the ABA) notes a number of ways that Star Wars has been used in law and pop culture and legal education. Among them: mock trials--Luke Skywalker for blowing up the Death Star and Anakin Skywalker for murdering Count Dooku. More here.

May the Fourth be with you in deed.  ;)

Ho on a Confucian Theory of Property

Norman P. Ho, Peking University School of Transnational Law, is publishing A Confucian Theory of Property in the Tsinghua China Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Based on an analysis of the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, this article sets forth a Confucian justificatory theory of private property. I argue that such a theory is a pluralist theory, simultaneously based on numerous theoretical bases or strands. First, it justifies property based on a theory with utilitarian overtones – namely, that people will be better off in a private property regime as it will lead to a more stable, harmonious, and orderly society. Second, a Confucian theory of property justifies a private property regime as essential in allowing individuals to fulfill, express, and/or practice key, specific Confucian virtues, which in turn allows for full moral development (we might understand this conceptually as a Confucian version of a personhood/human flourishing theory of property). Third, it justifies property based on an economy efficiency theory – that is, private property is key to the smooth functioning of a trade-based economy. All three strands are linked together by a common concern for the moral development of the individual. This article is important for two major reasons: first, it serves as a corrective to the often heard stereotype that Confucianism is not supportive of property rights; and second, it can contribute to the field of property theory as a whole by offering a coherent and integrated theory which weaves different justificatory property theories together.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Wright and Puppe on Linguistic, Philosophical, Legal, and Economic Causal Language

Richard W. Wright, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Ingeborg Puppe, University of Bonn Department of Law, are publishing Causation: Linguistic, Philosophical, Legal and Economic in volume 91 of the Chicago-Kent Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

Causation plays an essential role in attributions of legal responsibility. However, considerable confusion has been generated in philosophy, law and economics by the use of causal language to refer not merely to causation in its basic (actual/factual/natural) sense, which refers to the operation of the laws of nature, but also to the quite different normative issue of appropriate legal responsibility. To reduce such confusion, we argue that causal language in these disciplines should be used to refer solely to causation in its basic sense. While it is often said that the law need not and should not concern itself with philosophical analyses of causation, we demonstrate that this is incorrect with respect to causation in its basic sense. After surveying the philosophical foundations of the modern analyses of causation, we discuss the inadequacy of the counterfactual strong necessity (sine qua non, but-for) criterion for a condition to be a cause in a specific instance, which is dominant in modern philosophy, law and economics. We argue instead for the need to employ the more comprehensive, factual, weak-necessity/strong-sufficiency criterion, which is based on the “covering law” account elaborated by John Stuart Mill and has been developed in the modern legal literature as the “NESS” (necessary element of a sufficient set) criterion. We discuss the importance of understanding the required standards of persuasion for proving causation (or any other required fact) as generally requiring a warranted belief rather than a mere statistical probability. We note the confusion and paradoxes that result from some courts’ employing the statistical probability interpretation of the standards of persuasion in certain situations involving inherent uncertainty regarding causation, rather than acknowledging the inherent uncertainty and explicitly addressing the normative responsibility issue. Finally, we criticize the efficiency theorists’ attempt to explain the causation requirement for legal responsibility, despite causation’s being irrelevant under their theories.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.