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5 - To Influence, Shape, and Globalize

Popular Legal Culture and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2011

By
Jo Carrillo
Edited by
Robert W. Gordon  and
Morton J. Horwitz
Jo Carrillo
Affiliation:
University of California Hastings
Robert W. Gordon
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Morton J. Horwitz
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

INTRODUCTION: LOOKING FOR LAW

At a law school orientation, a professor of criminal law stood up to introduce himself. A few minutes into his introductory remarks the professor said, “Close your eyes. Count the number of TV shows that you've watched that deal with criminal law. You have ten seconds.”

After ten seconds the professor asked, “How many of you can think of at least one program?” All hands went up.

“How many of you can name five programs?” About one-third of the hands in a room of ninety-plus students remained in the air.

“How many of you can think of ten programs?” The students broke into laughter.

The professor conducted this exercise to reassure students about law school. The students might not yet know how to define a tort (“not a fruit pie”) or real property (“distinct from fake property”), but they knew something about the criminal justice system because they had seen it represented on TV.

TV, movies, crime novels, popular novels, Web sites, blogs – these are sources of culture. They mediate our experience with the world. They give us the illusion of knowledge about complex systems, the criminal justice system being just one example. Yet their impact stems from more than just the message; it also comes from the medium, as demonstrated by the efforts of trial lawyers to rely more on hypertexting sorts of visual/cultural logic than on the linear textual logic of old.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law, Society, and History
Themes in the Legal Sociology and Legal History of Lawrence M. Friedman
 , pp. 69 - 89
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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