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Law & Humanities Blog

A French Law and Film Blog
Medieval English Juries
The Old Bailey, Trial Practice, and Legal Culture
An Unlikely Place For a Homicide
Race, Poverty, and Disability on "The Wire"

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 01:46 PM PDT

Check out the blog Droit et Cinema, a French site devoted to the subject of law and film. One post discusses

the fascinating film Commis d'office (2009), based on the novel by attorney Hannelore Cayre (she also directed). The poster doesn't seem to have liked the film as much as I did, finding it less realistic than it could have been, but still thinks it worth watching for its picture of an attorney caught in the day-to-day criminal justice system. The film (the title would translate as something like "Legal Aid" or perhaps "Public Defender") does not seem to be available in the U.S. although Amazon has copies of the novel (in French).

The site also gives links to a number of other interesting blogs, all in French.

Medieval English Juries

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:31 AM PDT

Daniel Klerman, University of Southern California Law School, has published The Selection of Thirteenth-Century Disputes for Litigation, as USC Law School Olin Research Paper No. 00-10. Here is the abstract.

Priest and Klein's seminal 1984 article argued that litigated cases differ systematically and predictably from settled cases. This article tests the Priest-Klein selection model using a data set of thirteenth-century English cases. These cases are especially informative because juries rendered verdicts even in settled cases, so one can directly compare verdicts in settled and litigated cases. The results are consistent with the predictions of the Priest-Klein article, as well as with the asymmetric-information selection models developed by Hylton and Shavell.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Old Bailey, Trial Practice, and Legal Culture

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:29 AM PDT

Bruce Bower discusses the use of old trial records to study both cultural history and trial practice in this article from Science News. Digitizing those records helps also. Visit the Old Bailey's database here.

An Unlikely Place For a Homicide

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:30 AM PDT

From NPR: a discussion of the criminal fictional goings-on in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Race, Poverty, and Disability on "The Wire"

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:01 AM PDT

Rabia Belt, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has published 'And then Comes Life': The Intersection of Race, Poverty, and Disability in HBO's, 'The Wire'. Here is the abstract.

Despite its low ratings and lack of Emmys or Golden Globes, HBO's groundbreaking show, The Wire, has caught and kept the attention of critics, academics, and others interested in urban life. Though the show has disappeared off the airways, it is now becoming part of the academic landscape through conferences, panels, books, and courses. The article will be the first to examine The Wire, from a legal perspective. I focus upon The Wire's lack of attention to disability. Injury abounds in The Wire. Police officers are shot, suspects are beaten, and drug addicts overdose. Despite the onslaught of injury, disability is an underdeveloped part of the world of The Wire. The Wire is not alone in its failure to adequately examine the intersection of race, poverty, and disability, but it is a helpful lens through which to examine the neglect of poor people with disabilities and disabled people of color with disabilities. The article will open new avenues in a longstanding debate concerning appropriate policy and legal interventions for the urban poor, link together disability studies with critical race studies, and illustrate the use of an artistic medium to convey complex policy and legal ideas. The article will be of substantial utility for the growing number of scholars who teach classes on The Wire, critical race scholars, disability law scholars, and poverty law scholars.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.