Law at the Movies, Yeshiva University (Cardozo)

Movie makers have always been fascinated by the law and have taken advantage of the drama law affords to structure their films. In some movies, references to the law are incidental or perfunctory, but in others the law, and especially court room scenes, are at the core of the filmic project. In this class, we shall examine a number of movies that are centered on the law and pair them with the legal issues and problems they touch on. In each class a movie, often a celebrated one, will be discussed in conjunction with a case that presents the same issues. We shall be playing a double game: assessing the dramatic effectiveness of law-related movies, and discussing whether legal issues are illustrated or simplified or perhaps caricatured by those films. The issues we will encounter will include work place harassment, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, First Amendment Rights, natural vs. positive law, the insanity defense, the psychology of juries, medical malpractice, crimes against humanity, legal corruption, pollution of the environment, interracial marriage, religion in the schools, libel and the press, anti-gay discrimination, and military code of conduct. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.