Miscellaneous

"Outlaw" Debuts

Posted on October 07, 2010
The Blog of Legal Times takes aim at Outlaw, Jimmy Smits' new legal drama on NBC. Pow! Smash! Bam! Generally, BLT doesn't like the new show. Here's an excerpt. Maybe it was when Jimmy Smits' character, Supreme Court Justice Cyrus Garza, got into an argument with a comely American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who was picketing a public appearance of his -- followed shortly by the two of them sleeping together...

Popular Culture In University Teaching

Posted on October 05, 2010
From the Chronicle of Higher Education's Tweed Blog, professors who use popular culture in their teaching.

Narrative and Truth in the Documentary

Posted on October 05, 2010
Cynthia D. Bond, The John Marshall Law School, has published Documenting Law: Reality & Representation on Trial. Here is the abstract.Documentary films frequently address issues of social and political injustice; thus, however indirectly, implicating law as their subject...

The Nuremberg Trials in Historical and Cultural Context

Posted on October 05, 2010
Christiane Wilke, Carleton University, Department of Law, has published Reconsecrating the Temple of Justice: Invocations of Civilization and Humanity in the Nuremberg Justice Case, at 24 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 181 (2009). Here is the abstract...

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A New Book on Law and the Bible

Posted on October 05, 2010
Recently published by Jonathan Burnside, God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible (Oxford, 2010). Here is the abstract.What is the real meaning of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'? Where did the idea for the 'Jubilee 2000' and 'Drop the Debt' campaigns come from? And what, really, are the 'Ten Commandments'? In God, Justice, and Society , Jonathan Burnside looks at aspects of law and legality in the Bible, from the patriarchal narratives in the Hebrew Bible through to the trials of Jesus in the New Testament...

Why Films About the Wrong Side of the Law Are So Appealing

Posted on October 01, 2010
From the New York Times, an article on the history and evolution of the crime film.

Protecting Intellectual Property "In Progress"

Posted on October 01, 2010
Nathan Murphy, University of Connecticut, has published Thème Et Varaations: Why the Visual Artists Rights Act Should Not Protect Works-in-Progress, at 17 UCLA Entertainment Law Review 110 (2010). Here is the abstract.Many countries recognize "moral rights," which allow artists some level of control of their art after it is sold, for example by guaranteeing that their work?s authorship is acknowledged and that it cannot be modified without their permission...

The History of Fair Use

Posted on October 01, 2010
Matthew Sag, DePaul University College of Law, has published The Pre-History of Fair Use. Here is the abstract.This article reconsiders the history of copyright?s pivotal fair use doctrine. The history of fair use does not in fact begin with early American cases such as Folsom v...

Another Review of David Rabban's Law's History

Posted on October 01, 2010
Roy Kreitner, Harvard University Institute for Global Law and Policy, and Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law, has published Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Villains, at  1 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 96 (2010). Here is the abstract...

A Review of David Rabban's Law's History

Posted on October 01, 2010
Ron Harris, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law, has published The Politics of Historical Narratives: Comment on David Rabban?s Law?s History at 1 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 81 (2010). Here is the abstract.This is Ron Harris's contribution to the symposium on David Rabban's book ?Law?s History: Late Nineteenth-Century American Legal Scholarship and the Transatlantic Turn to History?...

Socrates

Posted on September 30, 2010
Ah, the Socratic Method, pedagogical tool beloved of law students. NOT. Angus Kennedy examines some new books devoted to the life and legacy of Socrates here, who is supposed to have annoyed those around him with that device so much that they told him to begone permanently...

Science and the Criminal Mind

Posted on September 30, 2010
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Evan R. Goldstein reviews Douglas Starr's new book exploring the origins of criminology, The Killer of Little Shepherds.

The Magic of the Courtroom

Posted on September 29, 2010
The Eleventh Judicial Circuit and Miami-Dade County reached back--far back--to re-enact Al Capone's perjury trial. Partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of a sense of the importance of the law, the people involved took on key roles in the decades-old proceeding to bring key figures to life...

Storytelling Across the Curriculum

Posted on September 29, 2010
Carolyn Grose, William Mitchell College of Law, has published Storytelling Across the Curriculum: From Margin to Center, from Clinic to the Classroom, in volume 7 of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (2010). Here is the abstract...

The Trial

Posted on September 28, 2010
From the New York Times, an account of the legal battle over Franz Kafka literary legacy. The parties: the National Library of Israel and the heirs of Max Brod, who handled Mr. Kafka's estate.

Camus' "The Outsider" and Criminal Punishment Theory

Posted on September 23, 2010
Emlyn Walter Cruickshank, Australian National University College of Law, has published Dialogues of Indifference: Albert Camus' 'The Outsider' and Criminal Punishment Theory , as ANU College of Law Research Paper No. 10-29. Here is the abstract.This paper was written as an honours paper under the supervision of Dr Tony Connolly...

Prison, Hip Hop, and Islam

Posted on September 20, 2010
SpearIt, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published Spreading the Faith: Music and Culture, in Muslims in U.S. Prisons (Nawal Ammar, ed.; Lynne Rienner Publications) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.This chapter argues that prison and hip hop culture are major factors in the popularity and growth of Islam in the United States...

New Legal Literary Prize

Posted on September 17, 2010
The University of Alabama School of Law is launching a prize to honor the best book in legal fiction published in the year. It is named after Harper Lee, the author of the iconic To Kill a Mockingbird. The first prize will be given out next year, to the book published in 2010 that "best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society and lawyers' power to effect change...

"Wired" At Harvard

Posted on September 14, 2010
Two instructors at Harvard are using HBO's "The Wire" as fodder for a course in urban inequality. One of them, William Julius Wilson, wrote the book that serves as inspiration for the show's second season. More here, picked up by the Washington Post.

Julien Mezey Dissertation Awards: Submissions for Nominations Open

Posted on September 14, 2010
Julien Mezey Dissertation AwardNEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 1/11/11The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for its 2011 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities...

Call For Papers

Posted on September 13, 2010
Laurent de Sutter, FWO Senior Researcher, Law, Sciences, Technology & Society, Faculty of Law, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, has issued a call for papers for a collection that he is editing for Routledge (with the help of law publisher Colin Perrin) concerning ?Althusser & Law?...

The "Dexter" Defense

Posted on September 13, 2010
Lewis Unglesby, the defense attorney for a seventeen year old Louisiana man accused of murder, says viewings of the Showtime series "Dexter" influenced his client. Police seized DVDs of the show at the defendant's home. Mr. Unglesby entered a "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea for his client in early July...

Call For Papers

Posted on September 13, 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS 11th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law ?Intercultural Awareness in Legal Language? Conference Venue: Public Law Department ? School of Law of Fluminense Federal University ? UFF (Niterói/Rio de Janeiro ? Brazil) Dates: 11-13 November 2011 Hosted by Evandro Carvalho (Brazil)Co-organizer: Anne Wagner (France) The 2011 roundtable will focus on the contribution of legal semiotics to discuss the different ways of thinking the "legal" in a world's cultural diversity...

The Semantics of Vattel's International Law

Posted on September 07, 2010
Vincent Chetail, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, has published Vattel and the Semantics of International Law: A Critical Reconstruction (Vattel et la Sémantique du Droit des Gens: Une Tentative de Reconstruction Critique) in Vattel's International Law in a XXIst Century Perspective (Vincent Chetail & Peter Haggenmacher, eds...

Storytelling in the Law School Curriculum

Posted on September 07, 2010
Carolyn Grose, William Mitchell College of Law, has published Storytelling Across the Curriculum: From Margin to Center, from Clinic to the Classroom in volume 7 of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (2010).Narrative theory and storytelling can be used throughout the law school curriculum, cutting across types of courses and types of lawyering...

Judges and Storytelling

Posted on September 07, 2010
Kenneth D. Chestek, Indiana University, Indianapolis, has published Judging by the Numbers: An Empirical Study of the Power of Story in volume 7 of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (2010). Here is the abstract. This article focuses on the question of whether appellate judges are actually influenced by the stories of the litigants who appear before them...

Bollywood Film

Posted on August 31, 2010
Michael H. Hoffmeier, University of Mississippi, has published Rule of Law in Bollywood Translations of ?Devdas? and ?Parineeta? at Florida Entertainment Law Review 81 (2009). This article discusses transformation of "Devdas" and "Parineeta" narratives in multiple commercial Hindi film adaptations, focusing on changing role of law and lawyers over time...

Legal Typography

Posted on August 31, 2010
Derek H. Keirnan-Johnson, University of Colorado Law School, has published Telling Through Type: Typography and Narrative in Legal Briefs, in the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Here is the abstract.Most legal authors today self-publish, using basic word-processing software and letting the software?s default settings determine what their documents will look like when printed...

Some New Books Of Interest To Law and Humanities Scholars

Posted on August 30, 2010
Laurence Grove, Comics in French: The European Bande Dessinee in Context (Berghan Books).Marlisa Santos, The Dark Mirror: Psychiatry and "Film Noir" (Lexington Books).Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities (State University of New York Press).

Promises, Promises

Posted on August 20, 2010
Wendy Adams, McGill University Faculty of Law, has published ?I Made a Promise to a Lady?: Critical Legal Pluralism as Improvised Law in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in volume 6 of Critical Studies in Improvisation (2010). Here is the abstract.Given traditional understandings of law, one might be skeptical of a claim that improvisation and justice are not mutually-exclusive concepts...

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