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- Title
Patterns of Courtroom Justice.
- Authors
Silbey, Jessica
- Abstract
Any one film can sustain a myriad of compelling intepretations. A collection of films, however, sharing formal and substantive qualities, reveals a common effect more than a diversity of meanings. This essay traces the shared formal and substantive qualities of a group of films, as I name them 'trial films'. It documents this genre of film by identifying the genre's norms of viewing and identification. It also investigates peculiar hybrid discourse of the trial film genre that combines both filmic and legal discursive practices to show how trial films cultivate support for the American system of law through its constitution of a specific viewing audience. In so doing, I broach the following questions: how do images of law in film help sustain the power and legitimacy of legal institutions? How does the study of film genres, like the courtroom drama, reveal the way law lives beyond its formal processes?
- Subjects
UNITED States; TRIALS in motion pictures; COURTS in motion pictures; MOTION pictures &; society; AMERICAN law
- Publication
Journal of Law & Society, 2001, Vol 28, Issue 1
- ISSN
0263-323X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-6478.00181