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Peasants, Tanners, and Psychiatrists: Using Films to Teach Comparative Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2019
Extract
The last four decades have seen the emergence of the “law and literature” movement. Although numerous stories in the common law world turn on the trial of cases, many studies in the law and literature vein use stories that do not take place in a courtroom, and often do not even involve a lawyer, to illuminate significant features of the law or its practice. The emergence of the law and literature movement seems to have prompted a turn in legal education toward using pop culture to teach about law, or perhaps reflects that turn. Examples of such efforts include legal symposia devoted to the wisdom of Yogi Berra, of Bruce Springsteen, and of Harry Potter. Others have preferred to study lawyers who are poets. Yet others profess to find poetry in the law itself.
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References
1 See, e.g., Kieran Dolin, A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature (2007). The movement emerged as a major force through the work of James Boyd White, most significantly with James Boyd White, The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression (1973). This line of thought about law has evolved in many directions and now has too many permutations to allow summary in a footnote. It has had a major impact on jurisprudence generally through Ronald Dworkin's building his theories of law around law as a multi-generational narrative. See Ronald M. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously 81–149 (1977). There is even a journal denominated Law and Literature.Google Scholar
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16 One need only recall “Rumpole of the Baily” (BBC TV, 1978–1992) to demonstrate this fact.Google Scholar
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22 My impression is that even in Louisiana, which ostensibly follows the civil law tradition, the impact of being embedded in the common-law based United States renders trials there (with a jury, etc.) unrepresentative of the civil law tradition's trials generally. I do not claim that this is a result of any sort of systematic study, however.Google Scholar
23 In my course, I teach units on European (primarily French and German, but with some information on Italian and Spanish) law, on Chinese law, and on Islamic law, with a nod or two in the direction of the legal systems of indigenous peoples following a traditional life style, and hence in the direction of the legal pluralism that generally surrounds such indigenous peoples.Google Scholar
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25 For fine examples of potential civil claims over the legal rights to a spring, one could watch two films, Jean de Florette (France 1986) and its continuation Manon des sources (“Manon of the Spring”) (France 1986). Manon des sources is often described as a “sequel” to Jean de Florette, but given the inferior results characteristic of most “sequels” in film, and given that the two films were made together, the term “continuation” is more accurate.Google Scholar
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27 Consider in this regard my discussion of The Red Corner, infra at notes 53–59.Google Scholar
28 I have personally observed trials similar to those in three of the four films—the fourth is set at the end of the middle ages.Google Scholar
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32 (USA, 1993, PC-13) It starred Richard Gere and Jodie Foster.Google Scholar
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41 Few people seem to notice that the two The Gods Must Be Crazy films also comment pointedly on law or lawyers. In the first film, the hero, a bushman from the Kalahari desert, is arrested and briefly sent to jail; the second film turns on an American lawyer, a young woman, who gets lost in the desert while attending a conference in South Africa.Google Scholar
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43 In some ways, Ms. Prowse's own career mirrored the role she plays in Dingaka. She had a brief career as a film actress, a long career as a nightclub performer, and is perhaps best remembered today as having been briefly engaged to marry Frank Sinatra.Google Scholar
44 Other racial groups, such as Indians (South Asian) and “Colored” (persons of mixed blood) do not appear in the film.Google Scholar
45 Gong Li did win the best actress award at the Venice International Film Festival for this movie.Google Scholar
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47 The dispute leading to the assault occurs because the chief refused to give Qiu Ju and her husband permission to build a shed on their land.Google Scholar
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50 Curiously, there is never student uproar over A Question of Silence. Apparently misandry is more acceptable than misogyny to today's law students.Google Scholar
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57 The fact that they were able to film at all in China, especially in Beijing, for a part of a movie this critical of China itself demonstrates just how far well placed bribes can get you in China.Google Scholar
58 See, e.g., Carrie Rickey, Finding His Humanitarian Path, Phila. Inquirer, Nov. 13, 2007, at D1.Google Scholar
59 Stories of foreign business arrested on trumped up charges continue to leak out of China. While not so dramatic as in The Red Corner, these stories deserve to be more widely known than they are. See, e.g., Chris Buckley, For Entrepreneur, Business Trip Ends in a Chinese Jail, N.Y. Times, Jan. 18, 2005, at C6; Chris Buckley, Spot on China's Image: U.S. CEO “Hostage” in Business Dispute, Int'l Herald Trib., May 18, 2005, at 1; Stephanie Fitch, Held Hostage in China, 176 Forbes no. 10, at 142 (Nov. 14, 2005); Nicholas Keung, China Holds GTA Man in Jail without Charge; Mississauga Electronics Supplier Held for Four Months in Business Dispute, Toronto Star, Feb. 20, 2007, at A1.Google Scholar