Miscellaneous

Legal and Political Themes in Battlestar Galactica

Posted on February 27, 2008
Over at Concurring Opinions, Dave Hoffman, Deven Desai, and I interview Ron Moore and David Eick, creators, producers, and writers of the hit television show Battlestar Galactica.Battlestar Galactica chronicles the struggle for survival of a small band of humans who escaped a devastating genocidal attack by intelligent robots called cylons...

Looking Back at Silkwood

Posted on February 25, 2008
Kelly Lynn Anders, Washburn University School of Law, has published "Reviewing Silkwood at Twenty-Five: The Reel Impact on Environmental Policy," in volume 49 of South Texas Law Review (2007). Here is the abstract.The year 2008 will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of the film Silkwood, which depicted the events surrounding the apparent plutonium contamination and mysterious death of Kerr-McGee employee Karen Silkwood...

Daniel Defoe and the Written Constitution

Posted on February 21, 2008
Bernadette A. Meyler, Cornell University School of Law, has published "Daniel Defoe and the Written Constitution." Here is the abstract.Today, as constitutionalism spreads around the globe, it is embodied de rigueur in written documents. Even places that sustained polities for centuries without a written constitution have begun to succumb to the lure of writtenness...

Bezanson on Performance Art

Posted on February 21, 2008
Randall P. Bezanson, University of Iowa College of Law, has published "Performing Art,", in a modified version in the forthcoming Art and Freedom of Speech (University of Illinois Press, 2008), in the Federal Communications Law Journal (April 2008), and as University of Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper 05-08...

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NBC To Offer Full Episodes Of Old Favorites

Posted on February 20, 2008
NBC will begin offering full episodes of favorite old dramas, including Kojak, Miami Vice, and the Alfred Hitchcock Hour (on NBC.com), the original Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers (on SciFi.com), the Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Night Gallery on ChillerTV...

Now I Am the Master! (And the Little League Coach) Darth Vader as Everyman

Posted on February 19, 2008
NPR's Andrea Shea seeks to deconstruct Star Wars's Darth Vader and discovers there's a touchy-feeley side to everybody's favorite tough guy. Read (and hear) more here.

Upcoming Conference at the University of Chicago Law School

Posted on February 19, 2008
Announcement of an Upcoming ConferenceEmotion in Context Exploring the Interaction between Emotions and Legal Institutions May 9-10, 2008 The University of Chicago Law School1111 East 60th Street, Chicago The design of legal institutions is based on implicit and explicit assumptions about human behavior, for example assumptions about how people individually or collectively respond to new information, assess risks, or decide whom to trust or fear, about what motivates people to forgive or to seek vengeance, or about how to promote or discourage empathy...

Some New Publications on Law and the Humanties

Posted on February 14, 2008
Here is a very selected list of recently published law review articles on law and the humanties.Cavallaro, Rosanna, Chester Himes?s Cotton Comes to Harlem: A Reparations Parable, 19 Cardozo Stud. L. & Lit. 103 (2007).Dinunzio, Peter, Elimor Kim, and Robert Whitman, Karl N...

Justice Alito On "The Sopranos"

Posted on February 14, 2008
Debra Cassens Weiss notes that Justice Alito doesn't like those Italian stereotypes revived through The Sopranos, at least, so the Trenton Times reports. Ms. Weiss says in her piece in the ABA Journal that the Associate Justice finds that a "trifecta" (Italian-Americans, New Jersey and gangsters) come together in shows like the popular HBO series...

Symbols and the Law

Posted on February 14, 2008
Caspar van Woensel, University of Leiden, Faculty of Law, and member of the Restitutiecommissie (Dutch Spoliation Advisory Panel), has published "Symbols and the Law", in BRAND, GOD, AND BAN: IMPROPER USE AND MONOPOLIZATION OF SIGNS WITH A HIGH SYMBOLIC VALUE, Amstelveen, Netherlands: deLex, 2007...

Sherwin on Law and Film

Posted on February 14, 2008
Richard K. Sherwin, New York Law School, has published "What Screen Do You Have In Mind? Contesting the Visual Context of Law and Film Studies," in STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Austin Sarat, ed., Elsevier, 2008. Here is the abstract.Law on the screen gives rise to a distinct way of doing jurisprudence...

Talking Trash About Thrillers

Posted on February 03, 2008
In today's New York Times, Charles McGrath has a piece about writer Joan Brady, the effects of glue-sniffing on her literary career, and why so many people think detective and mystery fiction isn't "real literature." Indeed, Ms. Brady won 115,000 pounds in a settlement after a ruling that glue in the environment around her home had affected her...

A Novel Interpretation of the Second Amendment

Posted on January 31, 2008
The late Peter B. Junger, long a professor at Case Western Reserve Law School, offered this unusual interpretation of the Second Amendment. Here is the abstract of "The Original Plain Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms," as Case Legal Research Studies Paper 08-01...

Eli Stone, a New Lawyer Drama, Premieres Tonight on ABC

Posted on January 31, 2008
The New York Times's Gina Bellafonte reviews the new ABC lawyer drama Eli Stone here. I'll be posting my own review after I catch the premiere episode. It airs tonight at 10 p.m. EST, 9 p.m. Central time.

New Works on Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes

Posted on January 29, 2008
The Times Literary Supplement has a review of two new works about Arthur Conan Doyle. Dinah Birch comments on both Andrew Lycett's biography Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes, and Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley's edition of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters...

Is Interdisciplinary Legal Study a Luxury?

Posted on January 17, 2008
Over at Balkinization, Professor Brian Tamanaha (St. John's School of Law) argues that most law schools should abandon their vigorous pursuit of interdisciplinary studies in law: [P]erhaps detailed knowledge of the social sciences?anything beyond rudimentary information every educated person should possess?is irrelevant to the practice of law...

Book Review: Harold Schechter's The Devil's Gentleman

Posted on January 15, 2008
Harold Schechter, The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth CenturyBallantine Books (October 2007) Harold Schechter, an American literature professor at CUNY, has written a gripping account of the criminal trial and appeal of Roland Molineux, a case that grabbed headlines throughout the late 1890s...

Images of Justice

Posted on January 14, 2008
Judith Resnick, Yale University Law School, has published "Representing Justice: From Renaissance Iconography to Twenty-First Century Courthouses," as 151 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139 (2007).All over the globe, nations rely on a statue of a large hulking woman (sometimes named Justice, sometimes Justicia, sometimes Themis, and usually holding scales and sword) to symbolize that their justice systems have aspirations of fairness and impartiality and also to lay a claim to power...

Submission Deadline Extended for Law and Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop

Posted on January 11, 2008
UCLA School of Law, Columbia Law School, University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, and Georgetown University Law Center invite submissions for the sixth meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at UCLA Law School in Los Angeles, CA on June 8 & 9, 2008...

The Hossack Case, Law and Literature

Posted on January 10, 2008
Margaret Raymond reviews Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf, Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America's Heartland, published by Algonquin Books (2005), at 57 J. Legal Educ. 293 (2007). In it she compares the book, which is legal history, and which details the real life murder of John Hossack, and the subsequent trial of his wife Margaret, and the fictionalization of the case by Susan Glaspell in her works Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers...

Law and Lit in the Journal of Legal Education

Posted on January 08, 2008
The current issue of the Journal of Legal Education includes two articles of interest: Amnon Reichman, "Law, Literature, and Empathy: Between Withholding and Reserving Judgment," 56 J. Legal Educ. 296 (June 2006) and Martha Nussbaum, "Reply to Amnon Reichman," 56 J...

Call For Papers/Abstracts/Submissions

Posted on January 04, 2008
Call for Papers/Abstracts/Submissions7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences May 29 - June 1, 2008 Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, Honolulu Hawaii, USASubmission Deadline: February 14, 2008Co-Sponsored by:University of Louisville - Center for Sustainable Urban NeighborhoodsWeb address: Email address: social@hicsocial...

Henning Mankell's New Novel

Posted on December 28, 2007
The Globe and Mail's Carl Wilson discusses Henning Mankell's new crime novel Kennedy's Brain, and his commitment to social causes. Mr. Mankell is the author of the police procedurals featuring Swedish inspector Kurt Wallander.[Cross posted to the Seamless Web].

Rights for the Creators of Fan-Fiction and Others Involved in the Creation of Transformative Works

Posted on December 18, 2007
The new Organization for Transformative Works intends to protect "the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms."Here's its mission statement:We envision a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity...

Professor Dave Hoffman Interviews Author Pat Rothfuss

Posted on December 12, 2007
Over at Concurring Opinions, where I blog a lot, my co-blogger Dave Hoffman has an interesting interview with fantasy fiction writer Pat Rothfuss. Dave questions Rothfuss about the legal issues in his book, The Name of the Wind.

It's Coming From Inside the House

Posted on December 10, 2007
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor F. Miguel Valenti, on the faculty at Arizona State University, believes 1) that students should see films as a whole, not in little snippets, and 2) that the film Friday the 13th has a great deal to answer for, stylistically speaking...

Books Published in Law and Literature, 2007

Posted on December 10, 2007
Here's a roundup of some titles published in law and literature in the past year. This list is by no means comprehensive.Cantarella, Eva, and Lorenzo Gagliardi, eds., Diritto e teatro in Grecia e a Roma (Milano: LED, 2007).Chaplin, Susan, The Gothic and the Rule of Law, 1764-1820 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)...

Left-Wing Ideology and the U.S. Novel

Posted on December 10, 2007
Walter J. Kendall, John Marshall Law School, has published "Law and Norms in Left-Wing Novels of the U. S. Mid-Twentieth Century." Here is the abstract.Each of the major law-based structuring or ordering systems of society - markets, regulation, litigation, and democracy - should work as a path to a good and just society...

Call for Papers: Writing the Midwest

Posted on December 06, 2007
Call for papers for panels on law and literature in the Midwest at ?Writing the Midwest: A Symposium of Scholars, Creative Writers, and Filmmakers,? the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, May 8-10, 2008 at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan...

Law in the Plays of Elmer Rice

Posted on December 06, 2007
Randolph Jonakait, New York Law School, has published "Law in the Plays of Elmer Rice," at 19 Law and Literature 401 (2007). Here is the abstract.While novels, short stories, television shows, movies, and classic dramas are often analyzed for insights into the law, modern plays are seldom similarly examined...

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