Law at the Movies

Turning Legal Doctrine into Art

Add to my list

by Stanley Fish

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > United States
Keywords: United States, justice
Publishing date: 2024 (February 29, 2024)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Collection: Law and Literature
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 224 pages
5 ¼ x 8 ½ inches (13.5 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-889872-6

User Ratings

(0 vote)

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Report incorrect or incomplete information

Book Presentation:
• Detailed but accessible discussion of popular American movies that take law as their subject, explaining how legal doctrine is made into the stuff of plot and character
• Interweaves discussion of specific movies with references to the biographies of actors and directors
• Concise, focused chapters, each concentrating on one or two specific movies, and easily read independently of the others

This book asks "How can legal doctrine be turned into filmic art?" By "legal doctrine" Stanley Fish does not mean the sonorous abstractions that usually accompany the self-presentation of law—Justice, Equity, Equality, Liberty, Autonomy, and the like. Rather he has in mind the specific rules and procedures invoked and analyzed by courts on the way to declaring a decision—lawyer/client confidentiality, the distinction between interdicted violence and the violence performed by the legal system, the interplay of positive law and laws rooted in morality, the difference between civilian law and military law, the death penalty, the admissibility of different forms of evidence. In the movies he discusses, these and other points of doctrine and procedure do not serve as a background, occasionally visited, to the substantive issues that drive the plot and provide the characters with choices; they declare the plot, and character is formed and tested in relationship to their demands. Apparently technical matters are pressed until they occupy both foreground and background and become the movie's true subject. If large, abstract concepts emerge, they emerge at the back end of doctrine and are, in effect, produced by doctrine. These are not law-themed movies; they are movies about the unfolding of legal process.

About the Author:
Prof Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law, Florida International University Stanley Fish is Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at Florida International University in Miami, and Dean Emeritus at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of English, Criminal Justice and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to being one of the leading public intellectuals in the US, Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author whose works include over 200 scholarly publications and books, including The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump (2019), Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom (2016), and Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution (2014).

Press Reviews:
"The book is a stimulating read." - James Wilson, The Law Society Gazette

"Fish asks how legal doctrine-the specific rules and procedures invoked andanalyzed by courts on the way to declaring a substantive decision-can be turnedinto filmic art. In the movies he discusses, points of doctrine and procedure do not serve as background to the substantive issues that drive the plot and provide the characters with choices. Rather they declare the plot, and character is formed and tested in relationship to their demands; what seem as technical matters are pressed until they occupy both foreground and background and become the movie's true subject." - Law & Social Inquiry

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

> On a related topic: