What screen do you have in mind? Contesting the visual context of law and film studies

Abstract

Law on the screen goes beyond film. It takes us to the domains of mind and culture, power and politics, technology and rhetoric, and the changing contours and norms of professional practice, craft, and pedagogy. Law on the screen is a multidisciplinary affair. It embraces empirical/descriptive, political/normative, and jurisprudential/theoretical dimensions of scholarship. By codifying what we know and how we know it, culture and technology mimic the regulatory force of law. But just as law is shaped and informed by technology and culture so, too, are technology and culture shaped and informed in turn by law's power to regulate. Code is a two-way street. Who gets to design the code, how, and with what effect? That is the political question par excellence of our day.

Citation

Sherwin, R.K. (2008), "What screen do you have in mind? Contesting the visual context of law and film studies", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 46), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-31. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2009)0000046001