 Learning About the Law, Hollywood Style
Watch the television show Ally McBeal, and you’d think the law works in absurd ways, based more on emotion than logic, more on people than rules. Then switch the channel to Law and Order, and it appears the law consistently moves forward, with the bad guys always caught and justice reliably served.
“Ally McBeal makes no sense and there is no justice, while Law and Order portrays the law as a perfect machine moving toward justice,” said John Denvir, professor in the USF School of Law. “These are two extreme views of the law.”
Putting Hollywood’s portrayal of the law into perspective is what inspired Denvir to establish Picturing Justice: The Online Journal of Law and Popular Culture (www.usfca.edu/pj) . The site publishes critiques by judges, lawyers, professors, and law students from USF and other universities who analyze the legal content of television shows and movies, from The West Wing to Minority Report.
UCLA law professor Paul Bergman, an editor of the journal, wrote about the criminal law questions raised by Minority Report, a futuristic thriller in which people are arrested for crimes they are predicted to commit in the future. While audiences may leave the theater thinking the scenario is pure science fiction, Bergman argued in an essay posted July 5 that the story isn’t so far-fetched.
“In California and other states, sex offenders can be kept in prison indefinitely, even after their sentences expire, based on expert opinions that the offenders remain a threat to repeat their acts,” he wrote. “In the months following the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy at the World Trade Center, a number of Muslims have been detained based on evidence that they planned to do evil. And in garden-variety personal conflicts, judges often issue "restraining orders" to try to prevent one person from harming another.”
Denvir founded the online journal in 1997, after he wrote film reviews for a variety of print publications and edited the book Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts. At first, Denvir was the only contributor to the site, but now there are dozens of regulars. The site has received awards from Yahoo and LegalEngine.com, among other Web sites.
“It’s exploding,” Denvir said.
Even Austin Powers movies are fair game for legal analysis on Picturing Justice. Sheila Simon, a law professor at Southern Illinois University, wrote about how she ignited her students’ interest in family law by exploring the ways in which it could resolve many questions presented by the movie.
“Is it creepy, illegal, or both for Austin Powers to love Mrs. Kensington and later fall for her daughter Vanessa?” Simon wrote in an essay posted Jan. 16. “And when Austin marries Vanessa and she turns out to be an exploding femme-bot, what is left of the marriage? Was the marriage void or voidable? Who could inherit from Dr. Evil—his son, Scott Evil, or Dr. Evil's clone, Mini-Me, or both?”
While Denvir enjoys analyzing the legal sub-texts of Hollywood productions, he isn’t just a movie buff or couch potato. He also is a constitutional law expert who just published Democracy’s Constitution: Claiming the Privileges of American Citizenship.
“(Picturing Justice) has helped my teaching of constitutional law,” he said. “I think the traditional study of law gets a little dry. People always want new ways to look at law.”
The site is aimed at more people than just legal scholars. Denvir hopes it provides a dose of reality for the average movie-goer and television viewer. He encourages non-lawyers to contribute reviews and commentaries to the site, as well. 
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