Law and Film

This book explores how law can be understood through film by engaging creatively with the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of both fields. The contributors to this book consider the need to turn to film and what this means for how we come to understand law and its absences. The chapters explore a variety of narratives, aesthetics, cinematic epistemologies and legal phenomena; from assessing law in social debates to film as legal critique, from notions of justice to contemplations on evil, and from masculine vigilantism to radical feminism. Taken together, they constitute an inspiring body of work that embodies an urgency for diverse and subversive ways to challenge law's formalism and authority; and to think about and respond variously to law's impotence, its disappointment, or its boredom. This book will appeal to legal scholars and students in law and the humanities, especially those with interests in aesthetics, law and literature, law and culture, law and society, and critical legal theory.

Vittoria Becci is a doctorate candidate at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris, France. Alexia Katsiginis is a doctoral candidate at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris, France. Edward van Daalen is a socio-legal researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory (LLDRL) at McGill University, Canada.

1. Eating Popcorn Like a Lawyer: On Fictions, the Senses, and Belonging Alexia Katsiginis, Vittoria Becci, Edward van Daalen 2. Writing about Evil Alberto Rinaldi 3. Reading a Law Film in Cinematic Context as a Commentary on the Decline of Liberal Democracy and the Rule of Law: Emin Alper's Burning Days (2022) read against John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Orit Kamir 4. Violence as Law: Reading Dirty Harry, Unforgiven & Gran Torino as Comments on Vigilantism Günter Frankenberg 5. The Impossible Truth in Law and Films: The Female Gaze of Saint Omer and Anatomy of a Fall Séverine Dusollier 6. Teaching Law and Feminism through Cinema: A Proposal Helena Alviar García 7. Holy Motors: Law and Technology Nathan Moore 8. Kafka in the Balkans: "Before the Law," Nihilism and Crisis in Cristi Puiu's Aurora Camil Ungureanu 9. Revitalizing the Law: An Existentialist Take on Law and Film Louis Hill 10. Lost Horizons, or how to Lose more Slowly? Geoffrey Samuel 11. The Legal Spectacle Elie Aslanoff