Dan Ortiz / Law

Imagining Law

Law is a both an autonomous and public discipline.  On the one hand, it requires many years of education, its rules often mystify the public, and its players—judges, lawyers, and law students—enjoy authority partly by virtue of knowledge thought inaccessible to the world at large.  On the other, it affects nearly every aspect of behavior—public and private alike.  Its rules determine not only how the government operates, where the state’s reach can and cannot extend, but also how individuals must treat each other and how intimate relationships, like families, are structured and insulated from outside governance.  It reaches everyone and governs much of their lives.  It enjoys an authority, however, that, as current events show, remains suspect.  It is both necessary and often disliked and distrusted.

This Mead offering would consider what cultural depictions of law tell us about it and its relationship to us, its subjects.  The class would look at demotic and “high” culture and everything in between.  Through cultural artifacts like “Legally Blonde” and “Bleak House” it would explore law’s power over its subjects and their support of, ambivalence about, criticism of, and sometimes rejection of its authority.

We would discuss questions like the following: To what extent does law work top-down, controlling behavior through its presumed authority?  To what extent does it work down-up, responding to and reflecting popular belief as to what it is and legitimately should be?  To what extent both at the same time?  How does culture “compete” with law?  What kinds of social privilege or power does law give it insiders?

The class would meet five times, looking at different cultural artifacts—novels, essays, films—interrogating the relationship of law to those it “rules.”  Is ambivalence the most that can be achieved?  Should it be celebrated?  Or should we strive for a world where we can trust law’s authority or is our best attitude to totally distrust it?

The first four classes would discuss materials that the students would be expected to read or view beforehand.  For the final class, students would be assigned to teams of two and expected lead a 15- to 20-minute discussion about a cultural artifact on law chosen by them that the other students could read or view before class.  If possible, students would be admitted from both GSAS and LAW.