Law and Humanities: Symposium on the Image of Law(Yers) in Popular Culture

Abstract

This symposium is a joint project of the Syracuse Law Review and the Law and Humanities Section of the AALS. It seeks to explore the representation and meaning of law and lawyering in a social context. It examines the image of the American Lawyer as an instrument and as a facilitator of socio-legal power, and it addresses the ways in which these images are constituted and conveyed in popular culture. To this end the symposium includes six articles (in addition to the introduction to the symposium) that deal with the representation and meaning of law and lawyering in the mediums of television, film, and literature.

1) Robin Paul Malloy (Syracuse), Introduction to the Symposium 2) John Brigham (U. Mass. Amherst), Representing Lawyers: From Courtrooms to Board rooms and TV Studios 3) Michael M. Epstein (Southwestern University), From Willy to Perry Mason: The Hegemony of the Lawyer Statesman in 1950s Television 4) Christine Alice Corcos, (LSU), "We Don't Want Advantages" The Woman Lawyer Hero and Her Quest for Power in Popular Culture 5) Shubha Ghosh (University at Buffalo, SUNY), Gandhi & The Life of the Law 6) Robert Batey, (Stetson), Hawthorne's "The Custom House, Introductory to The Scarlet Letter," and The Conflict Between Individual Liberty and Social Order 7) Philip N. Meyer (Vermont Law School), The Darkness Visible: Litigation Stories & Lawrence Joseph's Lawyerland.

Keywords: Law, Humanities