Law in Film: RESONANCE AND REPRESENTATION

Abstract

The courtroom, like movie theater, is an arena for telling and interpreting of stories. Investigators piece them together, witnesses tell them, advocates retell them, and judges and juries assess their plausibility. These narratives reconstitute absent events through words, and their filming constitutes a double narrative: one important cultural practice rendered in terms of another. Drawing on both film studies and legal scholarship, David A. Black explores implications of representing court procedure, as well as other phases of legal process, in film. His study ranges from an inquiry into common metaphorical ground between film and law, explored through the detective and the witness, to a critical survey of legal writings about cinema, to close analyses of key films about law. In examining multiple aspects of law in film, Black sustains a focus on central importance of narrative while also unearthing influences-pleasure in film, power in law-that lie beyond narrative realm. Black's penetrating study treats questions of narrative authority and structure, social authority, and cultural history, revealing underlying historical, cultural, and cognitive connections between legal and cinematic practices.

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