New Law and the Humanities Books From Ashgate Publishing

New books available or due out soon from Ashgate Publishing:

Cathrine O. Frank, Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837-1925 (2010)

Christopher Frank, Master and Servant Law: Chartists, Trade Unions, Radical Lawyers and the Magistracy in England, 1840-1865 (2010)

Kelly Hager, Dickens and the Rise of Divorce: The Failed Marriage Plot and the Novel Tradition (2010)


Henry Ansgar Kelly, Law and Religion in Chaucer's England (2010) (Variorum Collected Studies Series; CS957)

Dennis R. Klinck, Conscience, Equity and the Court of Chancery in Early Modern England (2010)

Bridget M. Marshall, The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790-1860 (January 2011)

Science and the Criminal Mind

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Evan R. Goldstein reviews Douglas Starr's new book exploring the origins of criminology, The Killer of Little Shepherds.

The Magic of the Courtroom

The Eleventh Judicial Circuit and Miami-Dade County reached back--far back--to re-enact Al Capone's perjury trial. Partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of a sense of the importance of the law, the people involved took on key roles in the decades-old proceeding to bring key figures to life. In the peanut gallery, some adults with an interest in Capone, and in the historic, and some ninth graders who may now know who Al Capone was. Or not. More here from the New York Times.

Leopold and Leob in History and Popular Culture

Edward Larson, Pepperdine University School of Law, has published An American Tragedy: Retelling the Leopold-Loeb Story in Popular Culture, at 50 American Journal of Legal History 119-156 (April 2008/2010). Here is the abstract.

This Article scans the cultural history of an American tragedy: the Leopold and Loeb murder case. In what has widely been referred to as "the crime of the century," teenagers Richard Loeb and Nathan F. Leopold, Jr., under the counsel of the experienced and successful defense attorney Clarence Darrow, pled guilty to the 1924 abduction and murder of Bobby Franks, a child of a wealthy Chicago family. Due to Darrow's advocacy, both defendants were spared the death penalty, and given life sentences instead. Sensational details about the crime, the suspects, and the criminal proceedings were enthusiastically reported by the six daily newspapers published in Chicago during this time.

This Articles focuses on the evolution of several distinct personas of the suspected killers, three of which were created by the print media as they covered the story from confession to sentencing. One of the personas developed by newspaper articles was that of both suspects, but particularly Leopold, as self-conceived Nietzschean supermen, exempt from normal moral, ethical, and legal standards. Later, this persona was more fully developed in popular novels and major motion pictures based on the Leopold and Loeb story. The second persona developed by the print media is that of the precocious teenage thrill-seekers. This persona, which was seen to exemplify the indulged, immoral youth culture of the 1920s that was enjoyed by wealthy young men, was also later developed in artistic interpretations of the story of the crime. The print media also presented a third persona in its stories about the criminal proceedings against Leopold and Loeb. With the assistance of East Coast alienists who adopted a Freudian approach to psychology, as well as two physicians, defense attorney Darrow created and developed this third persona during the hearing - that of deeply disturbed youth who were emotionally unable to control their actions. Darrow used this image of Leopold and Loeb as deeply troubled boys to persuade the judge to not sentence the defendants to death. It has reappeared in later artistic presentations of the episode.

In addition to the three personas developed in the print media, the Article also discusses two other personas that have evolved since the original events took place in 1924. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the sexual aspect of Leopold's and Loeb's relationship was subject to increased scrutiny. With this came the development, through plays, movies and other artistic portrayals of the events leading up to the crime, of a gay persona for both Leopold and Loeb; particularly, a persona of repressed lovers. Finally, Leopold himself, in telling his own story through magazine articles and a popular autobiography, created for himself a new persona: that of a model prisoner who deserved parole.

The highly publicized crime, prosecution, and punishment of Leopold and Loeb have served as a seemingly endless source of material and inspiration for American writers, dramatists, and social commentators. Because of continued interest in these events, they, together with attorney Clarence Darrow, have remained celebrities whose stories have inspired novelists, playwrights, poets, essayist and artists well into the new century. Perhaps more than any other trial in American history, the Leopold and Loeb case has served as an ongoing inspiration for the American imagination.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Richard Nixon, Watergate and Pop Culture

On this day in 1974, Richard M. Nixon became the first U.S. President to resign, unable to overcome the rather deleterious effects of the Watergate coverup (and the vote to impeach him) on his administration. Mr. Nixon and the Watergate period have been immortalized in popular culture in such films and tv mini-series and books as

Frost/Nixon (2008), a film dramatizing the David Frost interviews with Mr. Nixon, directed by Ron Howard, whose own career began during the period during which the politican was Vice-President (and check out a blog post from the Daily Telegrapht about Nixon's representation in movies here)

Nixon (1995), a film directed by Oliver Stone, starring Anthony Hopkins

All the President's Men (1976), based on the Woodward/Bernstein book (1974) in which Nixon barely appears, but which he dominates

Mark Feeney discusses Hollywood's love/hate relationship with Mr. Nixon in Nixon at the Movies (University of Chicago Press, 2004)

David Greenberg analyzes the impact of that five-o-clock beard in Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image (W. W. Norton, 2004)

Mr. Nixon even turns up in music: think John Adams (great name) Nixon in China (1987), and recorded in 1988.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of Watergate for lawyers and law students? That pesky course in legal ethics and all those tv shows and movies that highlight attorney bad behavior. Every non-lawyer loves trying to identify it and writing about it has become a cottage industry. Here's one example.

A complete Watergate bibliography might be impossible, but here's one from 2000. Here's one on Richard Nixon.

Interpreting the Effects of Jim Crow

Brando Simeo Starkey, Harvard Law School Research Fellow; Equal Justice Society, has published Jim Crow and the Birth of Uncle Tom: Law’s Impact on Black Culture . Here is the abstract.

Uncle Tom has grown into the most injurious pejorative that blacks can hurl at one another. That it occupies such a 'lofty' status is due to segregation. During Jim Crow, law and legal institutions vehemently reflected America’s racist priorities. All three branches of the federal government subordinated blacks. State and local governments, meanwhile, disfranchised blacks and required their segregation from mainstream life. The biggest reminder to blacks of their second-class citizenship was segregation. In response, many blacks realized the need to unify to repel the onslaught of Jim Crow. Some blacks, however, might either retreat from the daunting struggle or be co-opted by the majority and become double agents hindering the race’s ability to fight American apartheid. To prevent potential turncoats, blacks needed to enforce loyalty. Many sketched the contours of acceptable behavior; that blacks must both resist their subordination and refuse enlisting for the opposition. Deserters would be denounced with the most opprobrious epithet of which blacks could conceive: Uncle Tom. This paper argues that law frequently steers and directs black culture and that it does is best seen through the community’s use of Uncle Tom in the context of segregation.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising

A friend at the University of Lodz sent this trailer for a digital film which commemorates the 60th Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The Warsaw Rising Museum (English description here)commemorates the event, which began against the Soviet Army August 1, 1944 and lasted until October 2, 1944. When the Soviets finally entered the city in January 1945, over 85 percent of the city was in ruins. While the number of civilian deaths is unknown, estimates range up to 200,000. August 1 is now a Polish national holiday.

More about the film's premiere here.


Thanks to Dr. Marek Tracz-Tryniecki, University of Lodz, for alerting me to news of the film.

A Collection on Law and Magic

New publication: Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Christine A. Corcos, ed., Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2010). This collection of 24 essays explores the very rich ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other. The authors bring both a U.S. and a comparative law perspective while examining areas such as law and religion, criminal law, intellectual property law, the law of evidence, and animal rights. Topics include alchemy in fifteenth-century England, a discussion of how a courtroom is like a magic show, stage hypnotism and the law, Scottish witchcraft trials in the eighteenth century, the question of whether stage magicians can look to intellectual property to protect their rights, tarot card readings and the First Amendment, and an analysis of whether a magician can be qualified as an expert witness under the Federal Rules of Evidence.

The Significance of the Charles River Bridge Case

Alfred S. Konefsky, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY, has published "Simon Greenleaf, Boston Elites and the Social Meaning and Construction of the Charles River Bridge Case," in Transformations in American Law: Essays in Honor of Morton J. Horowitz (sic), vol. II (Daniel Hamilton & Alfred Brophy, eds. Harvard University Press, forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines the complexity of the social and cultural forces in antebellum Boston that led to the framing and resolution of the legal and constitutional issues in the Charles River Bridge Case. Though often viewed as a clash between models of economic development, the lines of conflict in the case in reality were first honed in pamphlet wars in the early Jacksonian turmoil of the 1820s focusing on other often overlooked contemporaneous Boston free bridge disputes and the birth of a free bridge political party. Boston elites were pejoratively termed “aristocrats” for their support of the Charles River Bridge franchise and accused of defending the creation of exclusive and monopolistic privilege and property through government grant, while proponents of a new competing - and ultimately free - bridge were castigated as “agrarians” and accused of forcibly taking property in order to equalize its distribution in the face of a state-sanctioned privilege. The driving force of the dispute, therefore, turned out to be the acute social anxiety and stress of Boston’s investors and commercial elites. No one better signifies the contours of the struggle than Simon Greenleaf, recently arrived in Cambridge as a law professor at Harvard. Greenleaf, as one of the lawyers for the competing Warren Bridge, stood in opposition to the established Charles River Bridge interests and was responsible for shaping the legal arguments that ultimately prevailed. For that sin, he was pilloried in the public press and ostracized in the community. Greenleaf’s unhappy experience then becomes a metaphor of sorts, allowing us to appreciate how understanding a social environment can assist us in cracking the code of legal arguments, particularly in this instance early Contract Clause and Takings jurisprudence. In the process of examining this historical episode, we might wish to consider under what conditions legal history might be entitled to call itself a form of social history and to speculate whether the critical question for legal historians interrogating these events is not whether law matters, but rather of what matter law is made.

Download the abstract from SSRN here.

The Law in Ancient Athens

Adriaan Lanni, Harvard Law School, has published "Social Norms in the Courts of Ancient Athens," at 1 Journal of Legal Analysis 691 (Summer 2009). Here is the abstract.

Ancient Athens was a remarkably peaceful and well-ordered society by both ancient and contemporary standards. Scholars typically attribute Athens’ success to internalized norms and purely informal enforcement mechanisms. This article argues that the formal Athenian court system played a vital role in maintaining order by enforcing informal norms. This peculiar approach to norm enforcement compensated for apparent weaknesses in the state system of coercion. It mitigated the effects of under-enforcement in a private prosecution system by encouraging litigants to uncover and punish their opponents’ past violations. Court enforcement of extra-statutory norms also permitted the Athenians to enforce a variety of social norms while maintaining the fictions of voluntary devotion to military and public service and of limited state interference in private conduct.

Download the article from SSRN here.

The Impact of Civil Law On Common Law

Vivian Grosswald Curren, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published "Voices Saved from Vanishing," at 70 University of Pittsburgh School of Law 435 (2009). Here is the abstract.

Jurists Uprooted: German-speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth-century Britain examines the lives of eighteen émigré lawyers and legal scholars who made their way to the United Kingdom, almost all to escape Nazism, and analyzes their impact on the development of English law.

Download the article from SSRN here.

The Masons (Collectively, Not Perry)

And on the Freemasons, suddenly hip, with the publication of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

Writing Domestic Violence Scholarship

Lively discussion between Nancy Lemon and Christina Hoff Sommers over Myths or Facts in Feminist Scholarship? in The Chronicle Review.

Women's Memoirs

From History Today: Julie Peakman writes about "blaming and shaming in whore's memoirs." Men may have had power, but women often got the last laugh. Says Dr. Peakman,

Just as the exploits of the likes of Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse and Charlotte Church fill today’s gossip magazines, notorious 18th-century women frequently found themselves in the limelight for their emotional outbursts, drunken revellings or pub brawls. Juicy titbits about them and other famous people were delivered in exposés of their affairs, adulteries and divorce cases, which in turn became part of the social make-up of public life. Gossip about sexual liasions first started to be broadcast in an explosion of print at the beginning of the century. Sex and how it figured within the lives of prostitutes, bawds and aristocrats became a topic aimed at an audience with an increasing appetite for titillation.

Read more here.

New From Susan Jacoby

A book on the Alger Hiss case: Alger Hiss and the Battle for History (Yale University Press, 2009).

Privacy and the Limits of History

Neil M. Richards, Washington University School of Law, has published "Privacy and the Limits of History," in volume 21 of the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities (2009). Here is the abstract.

A short review essay of Lawrence Friedman's "Guarding Life's Dark Secrets: Legal and Social Controls over Reputation, Propriety, and Privacy" (Stanford Press 2007). The essay argues that Friedman tells a nuanced and compelling story of the rise and fall of the "Victorian Compromise," a series of interlocking legal doctrines protecting the reputations of elites around the turn of the twentieth century. "Dark Secrets" undeniably advances our understanding of both the genesis of privacy law and the relationships between law and culture in the Gilded Age. As a work of legal history, it is an instant classic - a must-read for anyone interested in privacy law. But although Dark Secrets is first-rate legal history, it is less successful in its latter chapters when Friedman shifts his focus from the past to the present. The limits of Friedman's social criticism raise important questions about the ability of history alone to provide answers to social problems in our modern, networked information society.

Download the essay from SSRN here.

Who Set the Fire?

Cokesbury College, a small Methodist institution in Maryland, burned to the ground in December 1795, and the cause was probably arson. But who set the fire, and why? Until now, no one had uncovered a plausible explanation. But a senior majoring in history and anthropology, Bonnie J. McCubbin, did the kind of digging around that gets applause, and has come up with interesting results. Read more in a Chronicle of Higher Education story here (registration may be required).

Non-Profits and Self-Regulation: A Case Study

Edward Balleisen, Duke University, Department of History, has published "Private Cops on the Fraud Beat: The Limits of American Business Self-Regulation, 1895–1932." Here is the abstract.

From the late 1890s through the 1920s, a new set of nonprofit, business-funded organizations spearheaded an American campaign against commercial duplicity. These new organizations shaped the legal terrain of fraud, built massive public-education campaigns, and created a private law-enforcement capacity to rival that of the federal government. Largely born out of a desire among business elites to fend off proposals for extensive regulatory oversight of commercial speech, the antifraud crusade grew into a social movement that was influenced by prevailing ideas about social hygiene and emerging techniques of private governance. This initiative highlighted some enduring strengths of business self-regulation, such as agility in responding to regulatory problems; it also revealed a weakness, which was the tendency to overlook deceptive marketing when practiced by firms that were members of the business establishment.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Birthday

The late John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917. His representation in popular culture is ubiquitous. Think of movies that dramatize events from his presidency such as The Missiles of October (1974)in which William Devane played JFK, A Woman Named Jackie (1991)(Stephen Collins), Thirteen Days (2000)(Bruce Greenwood), and the one that started them all, PT 109 (1963)(Cliff Robertson). After his assassination, a number of documentaries and dramas poured out of Hollywood, including of course JFK(1991), a film which has now created its own mythology.

For fictional works in which Kennedy or events in his life appear, see among others lawyer Mark Lane's Executive Action, which, like JFK, speculates on the motives for the assassination, and which was turned into a 1973 film and Don De Lillo's Libra (1988), which fictionalizes the life of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Visit the John F. Kennedy website here.

Here are some other websites of interest.

American President: John F. Kennedy

The Kennedy Assassination Home Page.

PBS' The American Experience: The Kennedys

Law and Popular Culture

From the New York Times's Brent Staples, a survey of "The Ape in American Bigotry, From Thomas Jefferson to 2009." Provocative reading in the wake of the controversy over the publication of that cartoon in the New York Post.