Law On The Screen

The proliferation of images of law, legal processes, and officials on television and in film is a phenomenon of enormous significance. Mass-mediated images are as powerful, pervasive, and important as are other early twenty-first-century social forcese.g. globalization, neo-colonialism, and human rightsin shaping and transforming legal life. Yet scholars have only recently begun to examine how law works in this new arena and to explore the consequences of the representation of law in the moving image. Law on the Screen advances our understanding of the connection between law and film by analyzing them as narrative forms, examining film for its jurisprudential contentthat is, its ways of critiquing the present legal world and imagining an alternative oneand expanding studies of the representation of law in film to include questions of reception.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. Lawrence Douglas is Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College. Martha Merrill Umphrey is Associate Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College.