First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This collection brings together contemporary work from Britain, Germany and the United States on how law and lawyers have been represented in film, particularly in the past 40 years. The collection recognises the major influence of Hollywood and the American legal system and seeks to explore the nature and significance of this dominance. A historical dimension to the portrayal of law and film. The nature and actual impact of the dominant Anglo-American portrayal is include. A European dimension is provided.

The courtroom, like the movie theater, is an arena for the telling and interpreting of stories. Investigators piece them together, witnesses tell them, advocates retell them, and judges and juries assess their plausibility. These narratives reconstitute absent events through words, and their filming constitutes a double narrative: one important cultural practice rendered in the terms of another. Drawing on both film studies and legal scholarship, David A. Black explores the implications of representing court procedure, as well as other phases of legal process, in film. His study ranges from an inquiry into the common metaphorical ground between film and law, explored through "the detective" and "the witness," to a critical survey of legal writings about the cinema, to close analyses of key films about law. In examining multiple aspects of law in film, Black sustains a focus on the central importance of narrative while also unearthing the influences--pleasure in film, power in law--that lie beyond the narrative realm. Black's penetrating study treats questions of narrative authority and structure, social authority, and cultural history, revealing the underlying historical, cultural, and cognitive connections between legal and cinematic practices.

Some women attack and harm men who abuse them. Social norms, law, and films all participate in framing these occurrences, guiding us in understanding and judging them. How do social, legal, and cinematic conventions and mechanisms combine to lead us to condemn these women or exonerate them? What is it, exactly, that they teach us to find such women guilty or innocent of, and how do they do so? Through innovative readings of a dozen movies made between 1928 and 2001 in Europe, Japan, and the United States, Orit Kamir shows that in representing “gender crimes,” feature films have constructed a cinematic jurisprudence, training audiences worldwide in patterns of judgment of women (and men) in such situations. Offering a novel formulation of the emerging field of law and film, Kamir combines basic legal concepts—murder, rape, provocation, insanity, and self-defense—with narratology, social science methodologies, and film studies. Framed not only offers a unique study of law and film but also points toward new directions in feminist thought. Shedding light on central feminist themes such as victimization and agency, multiculturalism, and postmodernism, Kamir outlines a feminist cinematic legal critique, a perspective from which to evaluate the “cinematic legalism” that indoctrinates and disciplines audiences around the world. Bringing an original perspective to feminist analysis, she demonstrates that the distinction between honor and dignity has crucial implications for how societies construct women, their social status, and their legal rights. In Framed, she outlines a dignity-oriented, honor-sensitive feminist approach to law and film.

"An analysis based on the two major iterations of copyright law, the 1909 Act and the 1976 Act"--

This book explores the interface between law and popular culture, two subjects of enormous current importance and influence. Exploring how they affect each other, each chapter discusses a legally themed film or television show, such as Philadelphia or Dead Man Walking, and treats it as both a cultural and a legal text, illustrating how popular culture both constructs our perceptions of law, and changes the way that players in the legal system behave. Written without theoretical jargon, Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book is intended for use in undergraduate or graduate courses and can be taught by anyone who enjoys pop culture and is interested in law.

Described by Richard Sherwin of New York Law School as the law and film movement's 'founding text', this text is a second, heavily revised and improved edition of the original Film and the Law (Cavendish Publishing, 2001). The book is distinctive in a number of ways: it is unique as a sustained book-length exposition on law and film by law scholars; it is distinctive within law and film scholarship in its attempt to plot the parameters of a distinctive genre of law films; its examination of law in film as place and space offers a new way out of the law film genre problem, and also offers an examination of representations of an aspect of legal practice, and legal institutions, that have not been addressed by other scholars. It is original in its contribution to work within the wider parameters of law and popular culture and offers a sustained challenge to traditional legal scholarship, amply demonstrating the practical and the pedagogic, as well as the moral and political significance of popular cultural representations of law. The book is a valuable teaching and learning resource, and is the first in the field to serve as a basic guidebook for students of law and film.

This book explores how law can be understood through film by engaging creatively with the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of both fields. Challenged to go beyond an instrumental analysis of a law "and" film, the contributors to this book instead consider instead the need to turn to film and what this means for how we come to understand law and its absences. The chapters explore a variety of narratives, aesthetics, cinematic epistemologies and legal phenomena; from assessing law in social debates to film as legal critique, from notions of justice to contemplations on evil, and from masculine vigilantism to radical feminism. Taken together, they constitute an inspiring body of work that embodies an urgency for diverse and subversive ways to challenge law’s formalism and authority; and to think about and respond variously to law’s impotence, its disappointment, or its boredom. This book will appeal to legal scholars and students in law and the humanities, especially those with interests in aesthetics, law and literature, law and culture, law and society, and critical legal theory.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Since the earliest days of cinema the law has influenced the conditions in which Hollywood films are made, sold, circulated or presented – from the talent contracts that enable a film to go into production, to the copyright laws that govern its distribution and the censorship laws that may block exhibition. Equally, Hollywood has left its own impression on the American legal system by lobbying to expand the duration of copyright, providing a highly visible stage for contract disputes and representing the legal system on screen. In this comprehensive collection, international experts offer chapters on key topics, including copyright, trademark, piracy, antitrust, censorship, international exhibition, contracts, labour and tax. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, Hollywood and the Law provides readers with a wide range of perspectives on how legal frameworks shape the culture and commerce of popular film.