Hollywood on Trials: Courts and Films, 1930–1960

Abstract

As long as legal scholarship focused on traditional sources that were considered“distinctively legal,” a great variety of “legal texts” were consigned to scholars in other disciplines. Thus, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1932) and his classic workThe Common Law(1881) appeared safely inside the categorical “box” identified as distinctively legal, while Louis Calhern's portrayal of Holmes and the filmThe Magnificent Yankee(MGM, 1950) fell outside.In recent years, however, both the inside/outside distinction and the legal box metaphor have become increasingly suspect. Drawing upon post-structuralist theories, which highlight the discursive and representational dimensions of law, a variety of different projects seek to locate the diverse places at which legal rhetoric and imagery are constituted.

Persuasive Visions: Film and Memory

“…They also describe how film forms part of individual memory, which is "a much larger category than the recorded past." 73 This last category of film memories -film myths -may seem different from the other three described above, as these are linked to the influence of film genres in the culture more generally (such as Westerns 74 or film noir 75 ). 76 But to my mind, the breadth and depth of the film myths' penetration throughout American culture, overlapping with other socio-political trends, makes their shaping of expectations for law and justice that much more profound.…”