The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

Legal Studies Forum
Volume 22, Number 1/2/3 (1998)
reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum

LAW AND POPULAR CULTURE IN THE FILM COLLECTION AT THE TARLTON LAW LIBRARY 

ROY M. MERSKY*

     Over the past few years, the study of law and popular culture has achieved academic respectability as a discipline. However in some circles it is still rather a novelty, as its name suggests the unlikely union of two disparate subjects: the serious study of law on one hand, and the supposedly frivolous consideration of popular culture on the other. Similarly, the term “popular culture” suggests something separate and distinct from regular culture, or what some have termed “high culture.” But I would like to suggest to you that the law, popular culture, and high culture, are not separate and distinct entities, and that it is in fact not possible to separate one from the other. Rather, they all exist simultaneously in the same place and time as aspects of each other on a continuum.
     Law and popular culture have been entwined at least as far back as the time of the Romans, when Christians and other undesirables were condemned in public trials, and then faced lions, gladiators, and other unpleasant devices of execution, all for popular entertainment. Crime and punishment have fascinated the masses in our own Western history, from the great social venting of the guillotine in the French Revolution, to the popular spectacle of public executions in England, to our recent fascination with the trials of O.J. Simpson. Case law is narrative, a form of story telling. Crime fiction can be another way of telling the same story. And film can tell the story in yet another way. All are telling us something about ourselves in relation to our society.
     The law permeates our entire culture, as our entire culture permeates the law. It is not the idea of studying them together that is outlandish, but rather the idea that they could ever be adequately studied apart from each other. Suzanne Shale, a British Fellow in Law at New College, Oxford, observes, “[i]t is only through something called culture that law, legal ideas and legal ideals come into existence. It is through the media of popular culture...that many people will have learned much of what they know and believe about law.”1
     More Americans are learning more about law and legal thinking from films, television, and best-sellers than from Supreme Court 

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opinions. Films influence and are influenced by a pervasive force for social change: the law. Law perceived as a profession, when blended with the dramatic and persuasive impact of a film, can be compelling. 
     Now that you have my philosophy of the discipline of Law and Popular Culture, I’d like to tell you about how that philosophy is embodied at the Jamail Center for Legal Research at the University of Texas at Austin. When you walk in the front door of my library, you are immediately aware that this is a very different kind of place from the other libraries at the University of Texas. Works of art and living plants are tastefully displayed not only in the lobby, but throughout the six floors of the library. We are fortunate to house the Elton Hyder, Junior Collection which consists of historical paintings, prints, antique furniture, folk art, pillows, rugs, textile hangings, and other art objects from around the world. The library also owns a great deal of art and memorabilia collected over the years by purchases and donations. Most, but by no means all, of our collection is related to Western culture as it relates to the law. Without being consciously aware of it, the library patron is engaged with legal materials placed in their cultural context throughout the library. But there is one place where this cultural context is brought into sharp focus and made explicit: our Law and Popular Culture Collection (LPOP). 
     The LPOP collection is housed in two rooms on the first floor of the library, just off the lobby. This prominent position reflects the importance we place on the collection. The LPOP collection focuses on literature and film, but also includes movie posters and stills. 
     The University of Texas Tarlton Law Library has undertaken a program to collect works concerning the lawyer and law in the popular context. I wish I could tell you that our LPOP collection was developed according to a master plan, and then detail each of the steps in its execution. However, I can’t do that, because there never was a master plan. It all began with our popular reading room, which was intended as a place where students and faculty could unwind, read current newspapers and magazines, travel books, art books, even cookbooks, and popular law-related books such as mysteries.  We decided to expand our law-related fiction collection by making arrangements with certain suppliers to send us books according to a profile we provided. As we are a state facility, budget is always a prime consideration, so low price was part of the profile. Over time, the collection of law related fiction grew to be the largest part of our popular reading room collection, and eventually it outgrew its original space. 
     At some point I became interested in acquiring some movie posters and stills from films with legal themes for our art collection. (My favorite 

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is still a picture of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy confronting each other over a stack of law books. It is from the film, Adam’s Rib, about two rival lawyers who are married to each other). At a library acquisitions meeting, I threw out the idea that we should collect films related to the law. Everyone at the meeting thought it was a good idea, even though at the time no one could think of any law-related films except Twelve Angry Men and Anatomy of a Murder. So we started buying films within a limited budget whenever a bargain was available. The films were housed in our Media Center, and could only be viewed in the library. At that time most people didn’t have VCR’s at home anyway. But gradually, as the film collection grew and became more popular, we experienced a demand from our students and faculty that the films be available for home and classroom viewing. At approximately the same time, it became obvious that the law-related fiction collection had grown too big for the popular reading room. So out of necessity, we created the Law and Popular Culture Collection in its own space, with a large screen television and VCR for viewing, and comfortable chairs. The Media Center, which we still have, houses videos and other non-book media which are of an instructional or documentary nature. So I suppose you could say that the creation of our collection was due in part to vision and planning, and in part to a response to the interests and needs of our patrons. 
     The Law and Popular Culture collection is one of our most circulated information sources in our entire 900,000 volume research law library. The LPOP collection is primarily focused on the changing view of the lawyer and the legal profession over time. This vision of the profession may only be revealed through a lens, contemporary to the inquiring period. In addition, the study and practice of law impacts the lawyer’s vision of the world as the lawyer develops a distinct legal sensibility. It is the merger of the lawyer’s unique sensibility and the perception of the popular culture lens that intrigues the emerging corps of scholars of law and popular culture. 
     Scholars have been extremely slow to overcome their discomfort concerning law and popular culture. I attribute this to two factors: first, popular culture has only recently become a reputable academic discipline; and second, lawyers and law professors are reluctant to acknowledge the often negative public image of law and lawyers in our society. I have to be honest and tell you that our faculty members are not unanimous in feeling that the LPOP collection makes a valuable contribution to the law school. Law professors as a group are not known to cheerfully embrace innovation. Nevertheless, over the years many faculty members have used the LPOP film collection in classroom 

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instruction and Continuing Legal Education seminars to illustrate points of law and courtroom procedure and tactics, particularly those that are to be avoided. A “what’s wrong with this picture” approach is often useful. 
     Students usually think they are using the collection for recreational purposes. However, as their minds are permeated with law, they can’t help analyzing the films in light of what they are learning in their classes. Many lively discussions overheard in the corridors of the law school and in the LPOP room itself confirm that the collection is serving as a subconscious aid to legal education. And since law students are videotaped and critiqued as part of their training in litigation, one wonders if they are not comparing their own performances with the models they have seen in our films.
     In 1992, my library hosted the first major forum devoted to the perception of the lawyer in popular culture. Almost 100 participants came to Austin and attended presentations on topics from Gilbert & Sullivan to “B” Westerns of the 1930’s. I decided to present this conference after the Yale Law Journal devoted an issue to a symposium on law and popular culture evidencing the topic had taken on the trappings of serious academic pursuit. Also, an ever increasing number of novels, movies, and television programs were dealing with the practice of law and the role of the lawyer in our society.
     Generation X lawyers and law professors have been weaned on episodes of L.A. Law, John Grisham and Scott Turow novels, and the media’s overwhelming fascination with O.J. Simpson and legal pundits. This new generation of legal scholars is inspired to give real consideration to the intersection of the perception of law and lawyers with our popular culture. Today this phenomenon is enhanced by Court TV, television network trial recreations, and CNN’s Burden of Proof. 
     How then is the examination of the intersection of law and popular culture approached at the University of Texas? I think our collection of more than five hundred law and law-related films properly expresses my library’s intellectual pursuit. Our collection of films on video tape may be divided into three broad categories. The first is biography, films that explore the contribution of lawyers to our social fabric. Then, there are social impact films that comment on the contribution our legal system makes to our social fabric. The third category includes films that portray the lawyer in incidental non-legal situations, commenting on the perception of lawyers in our everyday social context. 
     Obviously I cannot comment on all 500 of our films, but would like to give you an overview of the kinds of films we have, and why. Typical films in our collection relating to lawyer biography include:

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  • Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a 1940 classic, starring Raymond Massey, which explores Lincoln’s early legal career. Another take on Lincoln as the back woods country lawyer can be explored in Henry Fonda’s portrayal of Lincoln in the 1939 film Young Mr. Lincoln. 
  • Events surrounding the Watergate break-in are brought to light in the 1976 docudrama, All the President’s Men. As we all know, the case eventually brought down the Presidency of Richard M. Nixon, who was previously a distinguished Wall Street lawyer.
  • The film version of Irving Stone’s Darrow for the Defense is the 1974 film, Clarence Darrow. Henry Fonda stars in this monologue about the career of the famous criminal defense attorney who never lost a client to the death penalty.
  • Gideon’s Trumpet, again starring Henry Fonda, portrays the biography not of a lawyer, but of an individual whose litigation changed the rule book for criminal legal representation in the United States. The 1979 film chronicled the efforts of Clarence Earl Gideon to receive a new criminal trial with the assistance of effective legal counsel. 
  • A fiction-based docudrama also presents an alternative view to the events surrounding the late President Kennedy’s assassination in the controversial 1991 film, J.F.K. Oliver Stone’s film focuses on the legal wrangling concerning an alleged conspiracy theory suggested by the notorious late New Orleans Parish District Attorney, Jim Garrison. 
  • Paul Newman portrays the Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean in the 1972 film about a colorful character in frontier justice in the late 19th century American West. 
  • The thirty year career of the great dissenting United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is explored in the 1950 film Magnificent Yankee. 
  • The life of the infamous late director of the FBI is explored in the 1977 film The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, starring Broderick Crawford as Hoover. 
  • The social significance of Justice Thurgood Marshall’s contribution to the civil rights movement as a young NAACP lawyer is brought to the screen in Separate but Equal, starring Sydney Poitier as the young future United States Supreme Court Justice. 


     From this brief assortment of film portraying lawyers in a biographical context one can observe the portrayal of the respected, the infamous, and the stellar attorney in a variety of contexts of American legal culture. The films set the social tone and historical context in which 

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each portrayed attorney worked and the events which shaped their view of the rule of law in their contemporary society.
     What more powerful means is there to galvanize a young law student to perceive the environment that shaped important events in our nation’s legal history than to represent those events in the medium of film? I know that these films serve as a catalyst for our students to properly observe the historical phenomenon that each film portrays and engage in further research and study using traditional sources of legal and social history. 
     The significance of major legal events are represented in a series of films culled from our extensive filmography. These films assist the student of legal popular culture in focusing on the impact of legal process on our governmental and social institutions. In many instances the events are portrayed in the context of fictional events, speaking the screenplay writer’s voice as he or she believed the events impacted our society. History in this fictional context may not be history at all, but it is social commentary to any independent thinker. 
    Our collection includes many representative films of this genre:
  • The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman stars Cicely Tyson in the title role. This film exposes the subtleties of Southern prejudice in the context of a Rosa Parks-like character. 
  • William Hurt plays a Florida lawyer in the steamy review of one of the most difficult legal theories, the rule against perpetuities, in Body Heat.
  • The activities of the 1950’s House Un-American Activities Committee are revealed in Woody Allen’s The Front, exposing the use of “fronts” as screen writers for blacklisted authors of scripts. 
  • For a moving representation of the American labor movement our students may reflect upon John Steinbeck’s memorable The Grapes of Wrath, as we watch the migration of a dust bowl family from Oklahoma, perhaps part of the social justification for New Deal legislation of the 1930’s.
  • Organized crime is viewed in the 1938 Edward G. Robinson film, I Am the Law. Robinson, as law professor John Lindsay, is drafted by community leaders to bring an end to organized crime. 
  • Stanley Kramer’s brilliant Judgment at Nuremberg, details the fictional trial of four eminent Nazi judges following World War II. Issues of freedom of choice, loyalty to country, and human rights are explored. 
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  • Issues of inter-racial adoption and drug dependent children are featured in Losing Isaiah, when a crack baby abandoned in a garbage dumpster is adopted by a white middle-class couple. 
  • The ravages of the AIDS epidemic and its impact of a variety of professional young men, including lawyers, are examined in Longtime Companion. The film is a social commentary on the inappropriate attribution of AIDS to the fringe of our society, the gay community.
  • Frustration over homophobia and the fear of AIDS in the legal community is commented upon in Tom Hank’s academy award winning portrayal of Andrew Beckett, an up and coming lawyer and AIDS victim in Philadelphia. 
  • The work of the civil rights movement and white college youth’s participation in 1950’s Mississippi are portrayed in the now classic 1988 film, Mississippi Burning. The efforts of the Department of Justice to bring the murderers of the young people to justice are explored. 
  • Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, is brought to the screen in the 1950 film in which a Black chauffeur sees socialism as a way to escape American segregation. 
  • Insanity and its role as a defense in our criminal justice system is revealed in Barbara Streisand’s Nuts, where her character’s mental competency to stand trial for a murder is explored.
  • The 1954 classic On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando parallels the director Elia Kazan’s testimony before the House Un-American Affairs Committee in an attempt to explain Kazan’s activities.
  • The frustration of modern landlord-tenant law is explored in Pacific Heights, a 1990 film written by David Phine, re-telling his own experience as a landlord in his charming San Francisco neighborhood. 
  • A profound exploration of the search for truth and the credibility of witnesses is undertaken in the Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon. Four witnesses recount conflicting stories of events involving the murder of a nobleman and the rape of his wife. Students of the law of evidence find this particular film a compelling commentary on witness perception of reality. 
  •  A docu-drama surveys the actual events in the 1982 film Skokie. The plot is based on a 1977 incident when neo-Nazis’ attempted to demonstrate in the streets of a Chicago suburb.  The social and legal questions involve first amendment rights of the demonstrators versus the extreme distress of the many holocaust survivors living in Skokie.
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  • Racial bigotry and the right of legal representation is explored in the powerful portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch by Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. The plot involves the trial of a black man accused of the rape of a white woman. In this case the lawyer must defend his client despite a social context of racism and bigotry. 
  • The bigotry inherent in 1942 Los Angeles is revealed in Zoot Suit, depicting the prosecution of over 600 Chicano youth, with 22 being sentenced to prison for the murder of a young boy. 


     Persecution of communists, African-Americans, Chicanos, Gays, the right of freedom of expression, and appropriate legal representation are all commented upon by the group of representative films from our popular culture collection. 
     The American culture’s perception of the lawyer is sometimes uncannily revealed in only incidental portrayals of the lawyers’ common everyday life. To appreciate the lawyer’s status in our society our popular culture collection has actively collected films portraying lawyers in circumstances indirectly or not directed at all to the practice of law or some legal issue. 
  • Barefoot in the Park portrays the circa 1967 young lawyer in the person of Robert Redford and his quirky wife. We observe the young successful lawyer’s lifestyle in the late 1960’s and that generation’s expectations of the lawyer’s spouse, played by Jane Fonda. 
  • ·Even Bedtime for Bonzo provides insight into the world of District Attorney Jesse White, when Ronald Reagan must arrange a plea bargain for a chimpanzee he raises as a human being after the chimp is charged with a burglary.
  • The hilarious Blazing Saddles written by and starring Mel Brooks introduces us to the wicked attorney general Hedley Lamar, who believes the townspeople will move rather than accept an African-American sheriff. 
  • And who can forget the marvelous portrayal of Spencer Tracy as the Father of the Bride dealing with the pre-marital social rituals of a father-lawyer and his beautiful daughter Elizabeth Taylor. 
  •  Robin Williams plays a merger and acquisitions lawyer who relives his experiences as Peter Pan in NeverNeverland in Hook. Williams must fight to save his children from the clutches of his long-time nemesis, Captain Hook. While all is in fun, the film is a mythologized comment on the clash in values between the career demands of modern business versus family values and the 
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  • playful imagination of childhood. The threat of losing one’s children to the forces of evil is a challenge with which many parents can identify.
  • An attorney represents the interests of the investors in the final inspection of Jurassic Park prior to its opening when the dinosaurs go out of control. The lawyer has the dubious distinction of being the first character to be eaten by the T-Rex, another interesting comment on the popular attitude toward lawyers. 
  • The personal tragedy of divorce and child custody is played out in the heart of attorney Kramer in Dustin Hoffman’s role as the father in Kramer v. Kramer. Hoffman struggles to be both parents for his child and copes with the return of his estranged wife, culminating in a heart wrenching custody battle. 
  • Love means never having to say you’re sorry in Love Story where law student and then attorney Oliver Barrett struggles with the premature death of his young wife while on the partner track in a Wall Street law firm. 
  • Deal making sports attorney Woody Allen dissects his marriage to pop-psychologist Bette Midler in Scenes from the Mall while they shop for their own sixteenth wedding anniversary presents. 
  • And finally, the lawyer’s life outside of his practice is brought to the absurd level in Where’s Poppa? in which a repressed New York lawyer played by George Segal is dominated by his senile, mother Ruth Gordon, leading to an outlandish series of events. 


     From the social problems of racism, homophobia, blacklisting, and freedom of expression to the biography of our greatest jurists, practitioners and political figures, to the incidental portrait of the lawyer in everyday social and nonsensical circumstances, my library opens the minds of our patrons to consider such circumstances and recognize the enormous impact and social responsibility placed upon the legal profession.
     So why then popular culture? I think Ray B. Browne, Director of the Popular Culture collection at Bowling Green University put it best in the conference we sponsored at the Tarlton Law Library in 1993: 
 Popular culture is not only entertainment, not only the media. It covers [nearly 99 percent] of American society today in one way or the other. It is the life-scene, the life action, the way of existence of nearly all Americans, and it creates the culture in which all must live, even the few among us who claim to hate and be unaffected by it. Popular culture is the way we live while we’re awake, how we sleep and what we dream. It controls what we can and cannot do. It is our political and legal lifestyle and content. The legal profession, whether it looks upon 
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itself as belonging to the Humanities or Social Sciences, needs to understand the interplay it has with the forces shaping and animating society [as evidenced in the popular culture].2
     I hope you will come to Austin and join us on the law profession’s journey. If you prefer to travel by the information superhighway click on our Law and Popular Culture web site.3

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ENDNOTES

* Morris & Rita Atlas Family Centennial Professor, Librarian & Director, University of Texas Tarlton Law Library. 

1. Suzanne Shale, Listening to the Law: Famous Trials on BBC Radio, 1934-1969, 59 Mod. L. Rev. 813 (1996). 

2. Ray B. Browne, Why Should Lawyers Study Popular Culture? in David L. Gunn (ed.), THE LAWYER AND POPULAR CULTURE: PROCEEDINGS OF A CONFERENCE 7-21 (Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1993). 

3. Tarlton Law Library: Law in Popular Culture Collection, <http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/>. 

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