Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

     In more than a century of filmmaking, thousands of movies have featured lawyers and law themes across the gamut of genre and character study. Yet in the spectrum of lawyer representations that shines somewhere between the lawyer superhero of  I Am the Law¹ or Mr. District Attorney² and the unethical or arrogant agents of injustice depicted in movies such as Indecent Proposal³ and The Firm,⁴ very few films feature the lawyer interacting with the supernatural. The few films that place lawyers in a supernaturally charged professional environment generally tend to use the supernatural conceit to amplify the Faustian bargain inherent in the lawyer who takes on cases that promote injustice or self-interest. Films such as The Devil and Daniel Webster⁵ and Devil's Advocate⁶ use the supernatural to critique the power of the lawyer in American culture. In both of these films, the supernatural elements are not benign to the protagonist lawyer; if the lawyer is redeemed, it is only because the supernatural force is defeated or neutralized. Indeed, with the possible exception of Miracle on 34th Street,⁷ I can only think of one film in the vast catalog of American cinema that represents the supernatural as the catalyst of positive change for the lawyer: Tom Shadyac's Liar, Liar.⁸
     Liar, Liar, a 1997 comedy released by Universal Pictures, is likely not on a film buff's list of top ten courtroom movies.⁹ A blockbuster at the box 

office,¹⁰ the movie stars Jim Carrey as Fletcher Reede, a lawyer and a compulsive liar whose untruths have helped him advance at work at the expense of his relationship with his ex-wife, Audrey (Maura Tierney), and their son, Max (Justin Cooper).¹¹ The plot thickens when Max, saddened that the father he loves routinely breaks his promises, makes a birthday wish that magically removes Fletcher's ability to lie for a single day. As a result of this wish, Fletcher is transformed from an unethical litigator to a principled moralizer and discovers that the truth can lead him to satisfaction in his personal and professional lives.
     Comedy offers people the possibility of catharsis.¹² The film uses Jim Carrey's talent for physical comedy to its full advantage. At different points in the film, Fletcher's new-found compulsion for telling the truth has him writhing on floors, contorting his face, and speaking gibberish as he attempts to lie. The film tries to portray Fletcher's journey to a meaningful existence in a funny and poignant manner. Often using an excessive silliness that climaxes near the film's end as Fletcher attempts to board a moving jet to explain his epiphany to Max and Audrey, the film actually ends with a very positive and important message.
     Liar, Liar, is a culturally significant story precisely because, in its depiction of Fletcher's epiphany, it brings the audience to catharsis. To understand its effectiveness requires the film critic to look beyond the farce and slapstick. The film is unique in its ability to use truth compulsion conceit, in order, to exploit tensions between the lawyer's public and private spheres. While many films and television shows about lawyers play with the dichotomy of public and private lives, none do so as auspiciously as Liar, Liar.
     One must look at how Liar, Liar fits into a rich tradition of lawyer representation in American popular culture. In America, lawyers have historically been depicted as exemplars of reason and expositors of public debate, what Chief Justice Rehnquist, Anthony Kronman, and others have referred to as the lawyer-statesman ideal.¹³ Examples of this ideal are 

numerous: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, or Daniel Webster.¹⁴ Undoubtedly the most celebrated example of a fictive lawyer created in the image of the lawyer-statesman is Perry Mason.¹⁵ Characteristics of this lawyer-statesman ideal include a strict separation of public image from personal lifestyle, an emphasis on scientific inquiry that favors reason over emotion or intuition, and a belief that justice is a function of the Enlightenment concept of universal truth.¹⁶ Efforts have been made to revise the traditional representations portrayed by Jefferson, Lincoln, and even Perry Mason to include aspects of their personal-and sexual-lives. However, it is important to remember that lawyer- statesmanship is still the ideal from which they, as well as many professionals today, are still measured-a tradition of representation as opposed to a template for reality. As Michael Asimow has pointed out, the lawyer-statesman is no longer fashionable in film;¹⁷ nor, as I have argued elsewhere, is it dominant as a strategy of representation on contemporary television.¹⁸
     Much of this threat to the lawyer-statesman ideal comes from what social theorist Jurgen Habermas has termed a legitimation crisis.¹⁹ With industrialization came the advent of separate work and home environments and a shift away from the family economy of pre-modern times. Where legal proceedings had earlier been conducted in the private confines of the church or royal court, trials became public endeavors, open to spectators. Habermas argues that it is a breakdown between the public and private spheres that cause people, in this case, lawyers, to experience this legitimation crisis.²⁰
     As a result, an alternative strategy of representation has developed that scrutinizes and criticizes the lawyer-statesman through dramatic conflict or comedy. In this strategy, lawyers struggle to mediate tensions between public-sphere issues and private-sphere intimacy, and work to threaten or 

break down meaningful distinctions between the two spheres.²¹ This reflection of our society's evolution toward a post-modern community conflates public and private issues.²² The spirited debate over how to characterize the political import of President Clinton's extramarital affair in 1999 is an especially salient example of how the conflation of public duty and personal intimacy can lead to a legitimation crisis.
     As the term implies, the lawyer-statesman ideal historically excluded women. As sociologist Susan Bordo points out, the notions of reason and science were viewed during the Enlightenment as exclusively and inherently masculine.²³ In a similar vein, historian Evelyn Fox Keller suggests that the modern concept of the "scientific mind" has its origins in what Cartesian thinkers understood to be the masculine characteristics of "autonomy, separation, and distance.”²⁴ Who better to criticize the legitimacy of lawyer-statesmen than the women who would be considered inherently illegitimate? In the legal profession, attacks on the credibility of Marcia Clark, Rose Bird, and the nineteenth century women who first integrated the all-male law schools of the "legal scientists" are consistent with this gender-based legitimation crisis. On television, there have been a variety of women who are shown as oppositional to the lawyer-statesmen ideal, including Rosie O'Neill,²⁵ Kate McShane,²⁶ and, perhaps most notably, Ally McBeal.²⁷ In recent times, however, male characters are also being depicted as oppositional to the lawyer-statesman ideal. Liar, Liar reflects on Fletcher's private sphere by telling a positive story about his reunion with his family in the end.
     The lawyer-statesman image is no longer dominant because its cultural saliency is in decline. As lawyers become more wealthy and numerous, and litigation becomes more of a spectacle, people are not buying into the notion of lawyers as advocates of truth and justice.²⁸ Much of the litigation that the public follows, including the criminal prosecutions of Scott Peterson, O.J. Simpson, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jackson, requires lawyers to make public the most intimate, private matters of both men and women alike. Even the news media, in the recent surge of business 

litigation, has placed its focus more on the personalities and private lives of the participants than the elements of the legal causes of action or legal issues in the case. For example, the recent coverage of Rosie O'Donnell's court dispute with Gruner & Jahr,²⁹ the Ovitz-Eisner debacle,³⁰ and the now- completed proceedings against Martha Stewart³¹ highlight the personal transgressions and excesses of their private lives. Few people can describe the legal intricacies of each case, but many feel free to judge the character and behavior of these individuals, often referred to by first names, as if they knew them personally. The same is true for lawyers themselves. The attorneys for high-profile clients, like Johnnie Cochran and Mark Geragos, have become public figures in the own right, all of which has helped to conflate the public lives of lawyers with the private.
     Similarly, on film and on television, male lawyers are involved in cases that center on divorce, domestic discord, or sexual misconduct. Sometimes, as is the case in William Dean Howell's Victorian novel A Modern Instance, a traditional lawyer- statesman is ruined by his inability to litigate a divorce.³² Other times, the lawyer endures a struggle that results in an epiphany that changes his life. L.A. Law's divorce guru, Arnie Becker, is a prime example of this type of anti-lawyer statesman.³³ Spencer Tracy's role opposite Katherine Hepburn in the film Adam's Rib also fits the epiphany trope.³⁴ Fletcher Reede, the protagonist of Liar, Liar follows this same tradition by making fun of lawyer-statesmanship, although, as we will see, not without complication.
     Liar, Liar by virtue of its truth compulsion conceit, unmasks distinctions between public discourse and private intimacy in both the person of the lawyer and the function of lawyering. The film begins with traditional modern distinctions of public work and private home life intact. As the opening credits roll, Fletcher is established as a successful attorney who is a failure as a father and husband.
     The dichotomy between his public and private life is evident in the credit sequence's quick cut from courthouse to Max's house. Fletcher is shown descending the steps of the courthouse with the swagger of a 

litigator who has just won a big case. Other lawyers congratulate him, and he beams at all the attention. Asked to appear before the press, he offers an excuse that he has an appointment with his son, but he cannot resist the moment of professional validation.
     The scene then cuts to Max, sitting on the front steps of his house with his mom, waiting and looking dejected because Fletcher has not arrived on time. As cars pass by, Max looks up in anticipation and bows his head in disappointment when he sees that it is not his dad. When Fletcher finally arrives, Audrey chastises her ex-husband for making promises to Max that he cannot keep. Fletcher makes up an excuse, but both he and Audrey know that it does not ring true. Max, on the other hand, overcomes his disappointment. Father and son clearly love to be together. The problem is that Fletcher uses his lies to evade responsibility for the promises he cannot keep-a problem of which Max and Audrey both are aware. Audrey even reminds Fletcher that it was a similar breach of a promise of fidelity that led to the breakup of their marriage.
     While Fletcher's lies are the key to failure in his personal life, they are the ingredients of success and advancement in his life as a lawyer. On the job, Fletcher's compulsion to be dishonest - both before the court and with his colleagues - has allowed him to reach the gates of partnership at his law firm. The power of his ability to prevaricate is underscored during the scene in which Miranda, the partner who supervises Fletcher, makes her first appearance. A sexy woman who seems unencumbered by legal ethics, Miranda (Amanda Donohue) seductively asks a young associate to take on a wealthy client's case that would require him to lie in order to win the case for the client. When the associate balks at the suggestion that he participate in a deception before the court, Miranda dismisses him from the case. Instead, she decides to appoint Fletcher, explaining to the ethical associate that the case requires someone who is a real good liar.
     Miranda's power in the firm is sexual and money-driven, the antithesis of the principles of a lawyer-statesman like Perry Mason. She reminds Fletcher that winning the big case will assure him partnership, regardless of the tactics used. As a result, Fletcher is forced to break yet another promise to play ball with Max that evening. As before, Fletcher seems genuinely conflicted; he wants to spend time with his son but the combination of Miranda's allure and his own ambition is too much for him to resist. Fletcher ends up spending the evening working at his computer. Instead of playing ball, Max sits in his father's office, unable to hide his disappointment. As Fletcher works into the night, Max falls asleep in his chair.
     The significance of this conflict between workplace advancement and 

personal responsibility plays out even more strongly in Miranda's second appearance. Having stayed up all night working, Fletcher is about to leave so he can attend Max's fifth birthday party, a promise that he solemnized after disappointing his son the night before. Once again, Miranda shows up at his office door. This time, however, she is not offering a big case. As she closes the office door, Miranda makes it clear that having sex in the office with her will truly make Fletcher a partner, a double entendre that in itself is emblematic of the conflation of sex and power at the law firm.
     Fletcher cannot, or will not, resist Miranda's advances. The scene then cuts to Audrey's house, where a sullen Max is refusing to blow out his birthday candles until his dad arrives. When Audrey calls Fletcher at the office, Miranda and he are in the throes of love-making. Out of breath, Fletcher lies by saying he was forced to work late on a very important legal matter. Like all the lies that he tells to the people he truly loves, the excuse is unconvincing. Miranda, purposely making noise in the background, forces Fletcher to end the call when she pulls the phone cord from the wall. It is this lie that sets the rest of the plot in motion.
     Max, disconsolate over this latest breach of promise, makes a wish that his father be unable to tell a lie for one day. As he finally blows out the candles on his birthday cake, a special effect animates the smoke into a swirl that transcends location and lands upon Fletcher, just as he completes his sexual activity with Miranda. The magical effect of Max's heart-felt wish is immediately evident in Fletcher's conversation with his boss. Apparently satisfied that Fletcher is partnership material, Miranda asks whether their sex was good for him. Fletcher nonchalantly replies that he's had better, a truthful response that enrages Miranda and bewilders Fletcher. As Miranda kicks him out of the office half-dressed, both audience and Fletcher understand that his honest comment is just the beginning of his downfall at the firm.
     Fletcher arrives in court the next day convinced that his lapse into honesty the night before was only momentary. As it turns out, the case that his future rides upon is a divorce, the type of public proceeding that places the lawyer in the role of making public the intimate private lives of litigants. Fletcher's client is Samantha Cole (Jennifer Tilly), a greedy nymphomaniac whose numerous adulterous affairs have made a mockery of her role as wife and mother. At their initial meeting the day before, Fletcher convinces Samantha, who had been skittish about lying, that defrauding the system was the only way she could win. Inspired by Fletcher's audacity, she thanks him with an aggressive squeeze to his rear that leaves Fletcher wide-eyed. Samantha draws power from Fletcher's duplicity, which, like Miranda, she expresses sexually through seductive 

touching.
     Because Fletcher knows that Samantha is a philandering gold-digger whose case in truth has no merit, the opportunity for comedy is high. Fletcher, for example, contorts his tongue and loses his ability to speak as he attempts to lie about the strength of his case to opposing counsel (Swoosie Kurtz). Addressed by the judge with a perfunctory "How are you today, counsel?" Fletcher is stunned when he truthfully replies that he is recovering from an uncomfortable sexual experience the night before. Fletcher recognizes immediately that, without lies, he cannot function, even minimally, as an attorney and desperately pleads for a continuance.
     When asked if he is ill, Fletcher is compelled to say no to the judge, bleating "I can't lie!" Judge Marshall Stevens (Jason Bernard), a stern black man who functions as the straight man throughout the scene, is unsympathetic. Fletcher leans over to his client and suggests that she settle the case rather than lie before the court. Samantha adamantly refuses. She reminds Fletcher, after all, that it was he who convinced her that lying would give her the means to beat her husband in court. The judge orders the litigants to return to court after lunch to commence the case. Fletcher, in just a few minutes before the judge, uses the courtroom to express his intimate thoughts and personal frustration. This conflation of public responsibility and private intimacy is typical of lawyer representations that critically engage the statesman ideal.
     The characters on David E. Kelley's Ally McBeal³⁵ essentially do the same thing when they enter the courtroom. Ally and her colleagues use the law and the courtroom to air their sexual fantasies, emotional anxieties, and petty, personal squabbles. Although the truth-telling compulsion gimmick is absent, Ally McBeal merely substitutes it with special effects that graphically depict fantasy and emotion. For example, the tongue of a sexually aroused Ally will magically wrap itself around the body of a nineteen year-old charged with assault.³⁶
     While Liar, Liar cannot match the level of intimacy that Ally McBeal brings into the courtroom, the distinction between the two is just a matter of degree. Fletcher, for example, expresses dismay when he learns that Samantha required her young children to be present in court in order to generate sympathy. He makes it clear that the children should be shielded from a divorce trial. Fletcher was right to be concerned. The primary evidence is extremely intimate; the judge permits an audio tape of Samantha and her lover achieving sexual climax to play unedited. 

      Although a nanny tries to shield the children's ears, the damage that Samantha's sympathy ploy has inflicted is evident to both Fletcher and the audience. The public space of the courtroom is used essentially as a means for making public the intimacies of the bedroom. The interesting difference between this scene and Ally McBeal is that Samantha's private intimacy is not a product of honest emotion. We gain no insight into the depth of Samantha's feelings. With respect to Samantha, the trial functions as a voyeur that places public scrutiny on private transgression.
     Yet, as a show like Ally McBeal will attest, the use of courtroom space and trial strategy in anti-statesman representation is not only about making private conduct public; it is about arriving at a personal epiphany. The connection of the litigation to personal problems allows the characters to become emotionally vested in the outcome of the case. It also changes them personally, although not always for the better. In Liar, Liar, the trial of Cole versus Cole leads Fletcher Reede to two epiphanies, one public and one private, that ultimately change his life forever. Although both epiphanies relate to the power of truth, they affect Fletcher very differently.
     Fletcher's first (public) epiphany occurs at the moment the judge is preparing to rule against him. Up until that moment, Fletcher, because he cannot lie, had been helping the other side win its case. At one point, he even turns the direct examination of Samantha's perjurious lover into a hostile exchange that results, a la Perry Mason, in a damning confession of adultery. Fletcher, however, snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. After Samantha reveals to him that she is younger than she had claimed, he puts her on the stand and announces to the court that "the truth will set you free." Fletcher evidently has discovered that, because Samantha was actually only seventeen-years-old when she married, the prenuptial agreement is void for infancy.³⁷
     Fletcher's use of the truth provides Samantha with a windfall, since under California Community Property law, she is entitled to half the eleven million dollar estate and not the lower amount stated in the pre-nuptial agreement.³⁸ Fletcher basks in the glow of victory. Courtroom spectators applaud him loudly. Samantha straddles him in his seat and forces a prolonged kiss on him. Fletcher seems to have learned that, as a lawyer, using the truth is even more powerful - and lucrative - than lies. He does not have to lie to be professionally successful.
     While the effects of this epiphany on Fletcher are initially positive, his professional satisfaction plunges him into personal self-loathing when he 

learns that Samantha plans to use the kids as leverage for a larger settlement. Samantha, as it turns out, does not care about her children, but only about the potential child support money that they represent. Fletcher displays genuine remorse when Samantha yanks the two kids from the arms of her husband and defiantly exits the courtroom. This remorse leads to Fletcher's second epiphany: truth and justice are not the same.
     It is this second epiphany that puts Fletcher's professional life on a collision course with his personal life. The turmoil is evident on his face when the epiphany hits him. The point of realization occurs just at the moment when Fletcher achieves his professional objective. Delighted at the big award, the firm's managing partner shakes his hand and proudly welcomes Fletcher into the partnership. Fletcher recoils in horror. Just as he reaches the pinnacle of success, he realizes that the cost is too great to his self-esteem. In a moment of truth more poignant than funny, Fletcher approaches the bench and demands that the judge reopen the case and award custody to Mr. Cole (Eric Pierpoint). When the judge refuses the request, Fletcher insists on being heard, arguing that he and the judge have caused an injustice by using a technicality to keep the Cole children away from their loving father. Announcing before the entire court that Mr. Cole is a good father who has been wronged by the court, Fletcher expressly indicts the legal process, ironically, as unable or unwilling to recognize the truth of the Coles' domestic strife. Angered, the judge orders Fletcher to be silent under threat of contempt. Fletcher responds by screaming that he already holds himself in contempt. Fletcher is then dragged out of the courtroom and placed in jail.
     The despair that Fletcher exhibits as a lawyer is made more poignant by the implied connection between what is happening in court and what is happening in his life. Although he makes no direct mention of this connection during oral argument, the similarity between Mr. Cole's situation and his own are readily evident to film audiences. In many ways, Samantha's character parallels his own; she is an opportunist who is not afraid to use sex and perjury for profit, even at the expense of a meaningful personal life with a husband and kids. In switching sides from Samantha to her husband in court, Fletcher uses the legal process to express his resolve not to be a bad spouse/parent in his own personal life. The law is constructed essentially as a metaphor for Fletcher's conflict between work and home. Although Fletcher's realization about the power of truth leads him to despair as an attorney, it is this same realization that leads ultimately to his redemption as father and husband. Fletcher, to put it another way, may have lost the battle to succeed as a lawyer, but, in doing so, he acquires a self-awareness that allows him to reclaim a meaningful life.

     Fletcher's road to redemption begins almost immediately from the point that he is dragged from the courtroom. Realizing that his incarceration will make him miss another promised afternoon with Max, Fletcher uses his jailhouse call to contact Audrey in order to explain his predicament. Unlike the scenes at the beginning of the film, Fletcher is eager to tell his ex-wife the whole truth. Audrey, of course, does not know that Fletcher is a changed man. Before hanging up the phone, she informs him that she and Max plan to fly to Boston that evening, the first step in a decision to move that would take Max away from Fletcher. Complicating the plot is a boyfriend who has asked Audrey to marry him and move to Boston. Although she is ambivalent about the new man, she explains that she has decided to accept the proposal because she cannot bear the thought of Fletcher breaking any more promises to Max.
     Stuck in jail and unable to make another call, Fletcher desperately tries to explain his plight to prison guards who are wholly unmoved by his emotion. Just as it seems that his professional transgression may prevent him from undoing the errors of his personal life, redemption comes to him, literally, in the form of Greta, his ex-secretary (Anne Haney). Greta, a loyal assistant who quit earlier in the day after Fletcher was forced to admit that he lied to her during salary negotiations, explains that she had a change of heart when she heard that Fletcher had acted nobly in court, and comes to rescue him from jail. Greta's reappearance is symbolic of redemption because it represents the first time that someone else is willing to believe in Fletcher. The extent of the change in Fletcher is especially evident when one compares the jail scene with the scene in which Greta resigns. In the earlier scene, Greta gives Fletcher one last chance to redeem himself. She tells him a story of a friend who was sued for six thousand dollars by a burglar who was injured in her friend's house. When she asks Fletcher if that is justice, the as-yet-unrepentant Fletcher is compelled to tell her that it is an injustice because he could have settled for more.
     Greta, in the jailhouse scene, is delighted to learn that Fletcher has decided to give up his lucrative practice and go solo. Although she expresses uncertainty that he can make enough money to pay her salary, she does not care. Greta functions to remind Fletcher-and filmgoers-that justice is possible if an attorney is willing to take on cases because he believes in the client's innocence, as opposed to his or her money. By posting bail, Greta also makes it possible for Fletcher to pursue Audrey and Max, in the hope of also changing their minds about him. This is, in fact, exactly what happens in the film's climax, a slapstick sequence in which Fletcher uses a cherry picker to race alongside and then board a moving jet. Although the scene is funny to watch, it is unconvincing. Audrey 

apparently decides that Fletcher's Herculean efforts to say goodbye to Max mean that her ex-husband has indeed changed for the better. In the final scene, there is even a suggestion that Fletcher and Audrey may reunite, now that Fletcher is eager to express his true feelings to his family.
     If the film's ending seems simplistic and cliche, that is because it is. In terms of the private sphere, Liar, Liar, in the end, tells a positive story of Fletcher's reunion with his family. However, its dialogue about the strain the profession has on the private lives of lawyers is, in reality, not far from the truth. There have been several studies on the effects of the long hours required of attorneys practicing in law firms.³⁹ There are high rates of depression, alcoholism, and, most notably, divorce that plague the legal profession.⁴⁰ Liar, Liar not only exposes this negative aspect affecting the private lives of lawyers, but also expresses a belief that those who practice law in an ethical way will also likely find success in their personal endeavors. What the film does, in effect, is show that even lawyers undergoing a legitimation crisis and experiencing a conflation between their public and private spheres can find success in both arenas.
     More complex, however, is the ambivalent approach to the film's depiction of good lawyering and justice. In a way, Liar, Liar makes two poignant statements. On the one hand, the film seems to say that lawyers who are willing to manipulate the legal process through lies are more likely to achieve justice than those who are truthful. This approach, of course, is suggested semiotically in the film's title, which itself links the word "lawyer" with "liar.”⁴¹ It is also the reason that Fletcher's epiphany on the power of truth works to destroy him professionally even while it redeems him personally. On the other hand, the film seems to promote the idea that the most effective lawyers are the ones who are honest. This is borne out in Fletcher's first courtroom epiphany, when he realizes he can win a higher amount for Samantha because she lied about her age. It is also consistent with the professional redemption that Greta seems to offer as she bails him from jail.
     It may be that Liar, Liar fails as a film because it cannot credibly 

reconcile its two approaches to law and justice. Perhaps the film is simply a misguided effort to combine two cliches in legal representation: a modern view that equates truth with justice and a post-modern view that describes law as nothing more than a simulacrum of truth and justice. At the same time, the film seems to be making a more subtle distinction between the act of lawyering and the objective of law. A good lawyer, after all, must accept a certain degree of artifice, whether it is in the high degree of deference to a judge or in the sincerity that is conveyed in a summation. In Liar, Liar, it is clear that this artifice is seen as lying. Fletcher's truth compulsion forces him to make a mockery of courtroom procedure and ritual. He laughs in disbelief even when the judge is introduced as the "Honorable." Perhaps the point the film wanted to make is that justice is possible only when one recognizes a distinction between the law and lawyers.
     But the film has more than just a point to make. Liar, Liar has cultural implications both in the public and private sphere. For example, the distinction between law and lawyers was not lost on the American public when Liar, Liar was released in March, 1997. Ambivalence, confusion, and cynicism toward the law and lawyers were at a peak in the immediate aftermath of the O.J. Simpson trials. Indeed, for those unfamiliar with the differences between criminal and civil trial practice, it may be hard to reconcile both Simpson trials other than to attribute the two contrasting outcomes to the conduct of the judges and lawyers in each. Liar, Liar seems to make a conscious effort to exploit this post-O.J. zeitgeist of ambivalence. The director even goes as far as to give Christopher Darden, one of the attorneys who prosecuted Simpson, an uncredited cameo in a scene with Carrey.⁴² In Liar, Liar, the law itself is not a means to justice since it manipulates the truth. Justice is possible only when lawyers are motivated not by truth as a function of law, but as a sign of character that is independent of law.

* Professor of Law, Southwestern University School of Law; B.A. Columbia College; J.D. Columbia University School of Law; M.A., Ph.D. (American Culture) University of Michigan. Dr. Epstein is associated with the Donald E. Biederman Entertainment and Media Law Institute at Southwestern University and is a past chair of the Section on Law and Humanities at the Association of American Law Schools. The author would like to thank Lara A.H. Shortz for her capable interdisciplinary research assistance. 

1. I AM THE LAW (Columbia Pictures Corp. 1938). 

2. MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY (Republic Pictures Corp. 1941). 

3. INDECENT PROPOSAL (Paramount Pictures 1993). 

4. THE FIRM (Paramount Pictures 1993). 

5. THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (Cutting Edge Entertainment, El Dorado Pictures, Miracle Entertainment 2001). 

6. THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE (Warner Bros., New Regency Pictures, Kopelson Entertainment, Taurus Film 1997). In The Devil's Advocate, Al Pacino gamely plays a law firm's head attorney, who also happens to be the Devil. 

7. MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (20th Century Fox 1947). 

8. LIAR LIAR (Imagine Entertainment, Universal Pictures 1997) [hereinafter Liar, Liar]. 

9. Id. 

10. Liar, Liar, in its first year of theatrical release, grossed $ 181,400,000 in the United States. See Marching to the Fore, VARIETY, Mar. 16-22, 1998, at 23. 

11. INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE, LIAR LIAR (1997) at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119528 (last visited Mar. 9, 2004). 

12. See DAVID MARC, COMIC VISIONS 9 (Blackwell Publishers ed., 1997) (1989) (explaining how comedy allowed Stephen Rojak, a character in Norman Mailer's An American Dream, to keep his sanity). 

13. See ANTHONY T. KRONMAN, THE LOST LAWYER: FALLING IDEALS OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 11-17, 371-72 (1993); see also, William H. Rehnquist, The Lawyer-Statesman in American History, 9 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 537, 537 (1986) (examining the role of the lawyer-statesman in the development of the nation). 

14. Rehnquist, supra note 13, at 537, 546. 

15. Perry Mason (CBS Television 1957). 

16. See KRONMAN, supra note 13, at 14-17 (describing the main elements of the lawyer-statesman ideal). 

17. Michael Asimow, Bad Lawyers in the Movies, 24 NOVA L. REV. 533, 576-77 (2000). 

18. Michael M. Epstein, Judging Judy, Mablean and Mills: How Courtroom Programs Use Law to Parade Private Lives to Mass Audiences, 8 UCLA ENT. L. REV. 129, 131 (2001) (comparing "judge shows" to Jerry Springer). 

19. JURGEN HABERMAS, LEGITIMATION CRISIS 46-48, 74-75 (Thomas McCarthy trans., Beacon Press ed. 1975) (1973) ("A legitimation crisis then, must be based on a motivation crisis- that is, a discrepancy between the need for motives declared by the state, the educational system and the occupational system on the one hand, and the motivation supplied by the socio-cultural system on the other."). 

20. Id.; see also Michael M. Epstein, For and Against the People: Television's Prosecutor Image and the Cultural Power of the Legal Profession, 34 U. TOL. L. REV. 817, 824-25 (2003) [hereinafter Epstein, For and Against the People]. 

21. See Epstein, For and Against the People, supra note 20, at 825 (asserting that the breakdown of the separateness of public and private spheres is "well underway in the United States"). 

22. See id. 

23. SUSAN BORDO, THE FLIGHT TO OBJECTIVITY: ESSAYS ON CARTESIANISM AND CULTURE 105 (1987). 

24. EVELYN FOX KELLER, REFLECTIONS ON GENDER AND SCIENCE 79 (1985). 

25. The Trials of Rosie O'Neill (CBS Television 1990). 

26. Kate McShane (CBS Television 1975). 

27. Ally McBeal (Fox Network 1997). 

28. See Epstein, For and Against the People, supra note 20, at 821 (discussing how "high-profile legal trials" have become spectacles). 

29. Andrea Peyser, 'Rosie' Case at Bitter End, N.Y. POST, Dec. 18, 2003, at 29, available at 2003 WL 69594517. 

30. Michael Cieply & James Bates, As Spender, Ovitz was $ 6-Million Man, L.A. TIMES, Feb. 28, 2004, at A1, available at 2004 WL 55896120. 

31. Max Heuer, Fans: Since When Is It a Crime to Be Perfect?, BOSTON HERALD, Mar. 14, 2004, at 5, available at 2004 WL 57715791. 

32. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, A MODERN INSTANCE, at xvii (Viking Penguin ed., 1984) (1882). 

33. L.A. Law (Nat'l Broadcasting Co. 1986). 

34. ADAM'S RIB (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1949). 

35. Ally McBeal, supra note 27. 

36. Ally McBeal: Cro Magnon (Fox Network television broadcast, Jan. 5, 1998). 

37. See Hakes Inv. Co. v. Lyons, 137 P. 911, 912 (1913) (noting that it is well settled in law that one deals with infants at his peril). 

38. CAL. FAM. CODE § §  2550-2556 (West 1994). 

39. Michael Asimow, Embodiment of Evil: Law Firms in the Movies, 48 UCLA L. REV. 1339, 1376-77 (2001); see, e.g., The Report of At the Breaking Point: A National Conference on The Emerging Crisis In the Quality of Lawyers' Health and Lives-Its Impact on Law Firms and Client Services, ABA, Apr. 5-6, 1991. 

40. Asimow, supra note 39 at 1376; see also G. Andrew H. Benjamin et al., The Prevalence of Depression, Alcohol Abuse, and Cocaine Abuse Among United States Lawyers, 13 INT'L J.L. & PSYCHIATRY 233, 233-35, 245 (1990); Connie J. A. Beck et al., Lawyer Distress: Alcohol Related Problems and Other Psychological Concerns Among a Sample of Practicing Lawyers, 10 J.L. & HEALTH 1, 18 (1995-96). 

41. This link is made explicit even before the film's opening credits. Max is corrected by his teacher in school after he identifies his father as a "liar" instead of a "lawyer." 

42. Darden greets Fletcher with respect and sarcasm in a transitional scene that is easy to miss. My thanks to Robert L. Waring for this observation. Robert L. Waring, Swimming with the Bottom Feeders, at www.usfca.edu/pj/articles/LiarLiar.htm (Nov. 1997).