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Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Home Sweet Home

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 09:15 AM PST

I Bennett Capers, Hofstra University School of Law, has published Home Is Where the Crime Is in volume 109 (2011) of the Michigan Law Review. Here is the abstract.



There is a new vision of home that is beginning to gain ascendance, at least from the point of view of legal actors and doctrine in the criminal justice system. Under this vision, home is not always, or even usually, "sweet." Under this new vision, the home is not a safe haven, inviolate and inviolable except for, perhaps, a burglar. Under this new vision, the home is a place of violence. And not violence perpetrated by intruders, but by co-habitants. The home, notionally a site of security, a place "safe" from outside intervention, now functions as a place that enables abuse, assault, and rape. It is the exemplary place of coercion. The home, in this re-vision, has metastasized into the scene of the crime. In short, home has become "where the crime is."



What are we to make of this shift in how the law perceives the home, and how we perceive the home? What are the collateral consequences of this shift? These are the questions Jeannie Suk takes up in her provocative At Home in the Law. This Review assesses Suk's claims critically, turns to some of the collateral effects of this shift that Suk elides, and switches lens to reveal a larger, more troubling picture.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Copying Across Cultures

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 09:12 AM PST

Madhavi Sunder, University of California, Davis, School of Law, has published Bollywood/Hollywood at 12 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 179 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Free flow of culture is not always fair flow of culture. A recent spate of copyright suits by Hollywood against Bollywood accuses the latter of ruthlessly copying movie themes and scenes from America. But claims of cultural appropriation go far back, and travel in multiple directions. The revered American director, Steven Spielberg, has been accused of copying the idea for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial from legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's 1962 script, The Alien. Disney's The Lion King bears striking similarities to Osamu Tezuka's Japanese anime series, Kimba the White Lion. Neither Ray nor Tezuka's studio sued the American filmmakers and this Article is by no means an attempt to revive any particular legal case. Rather, this Article considers copyright's role in promoting free cultural exchange, albeit on fair terms in a global marketplace of ideas marked by sharp differentials in power, wealth, and knowledge.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Meditation on Comic Books, Their History, and Copyright Law

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 09:09 AM PST

Keith Aoki, University of California, Davis, School of Law, has published Pictures within Pictures, in volume 36 of the Ohio Northern University Law Review (2010). Here is the abstract.


This is a meditation on the creative process, copyright law, and comic book history.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.
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