Jan 7, 2010 | Lead Articles, Number 1, Print Edition, Volume 43
In May of 2007, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly that literally revolutionized the standard for determining the legal sufficiency of a complaint. In that decision, which Justice Souter wrote for the majority, the Court abandoned...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film The articles collected in this Symposium Issue on “Legal Outsiders in American Film” are examples of a turn in legal scholarship toward the analysis of culture. The cultural turn in law takes as a premise that law and culture...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film When we think of “outsiders” in the context of law, those who often come to mind are members of disenfranchised minorities, such as the mentally challenged. But in many of Hollywood’s lawyer films, the paradigmatic and...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film The concept of justice is a dominant theme in traditional Western liberal culture. Indeed, the ideal of justice has taken on an almost mythic quality in our political and social culture. Interestingly, however, the...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film In this paper, the object of my attention is the HBO television production, Deadwood. In this highly acclaimed series, NYPD Blue’s creator, David Milch, both drew on and disrupted the genre of the American Western,...