Law & Humanities Blog

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Unbuttoned Bob Dylan Posted: 25 Dec 2011 01:00 PM PST Renee Newman Knake, Michigan State University College of Law, has published Why the Law Needs Music: Revisiting NAACP v. Button Through the Songs of Bob Dylan in volume 38 of the Fordham Urban Law Journal (2011). Here is the abstract. The law needs music, a truth revealed by revisiting the United States Supreme Court's opinion in NAACP v. Button through the songs of Bob Dylan and Sandra Seaton's play Music History. The Court decided Button in 1963, just a few months before the debut of Dylan's acclaimed album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. In Button, the Court held that the First Amendment protected the NAACP's legal assistance to individuals for the enforcement of constitutional and civil rights. The decision was a victory for the NAACP, yet success in the courtroom did not translate entirely to success on the ground. Indeed, in the same year, NAACP Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated, and the Birmingham Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed. These events serve as reminders of law's inadequacies, in that the constitutional protection of legal services in Button did little to stop the needless loss of life and violence that was characteristic of racial desegregation efforts. Not only did tragedy persist, but the NAACP's long-term vision for racial equality has never been completely realized. Playwright Sandra Seaton focuses on the law's inadequacies in her drama Music History, also set in the turbulence of 1963.

Law & Humanities Blog

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The FTC Versus Santa Posted: 21 Dec 2011 07:55 PM PST Poor Santa. As if he didn't have enough problems, what with having to contend with all those jets in his airspace, and children who question his existence, now he's been hit with a fine levied by the FTC. Apparently he has violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Read coverage by Jeff Jarvis here.

Law & Humanities Blog

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The Top Law-Related TV Series For 2011 Posted: 20 Dec 2011 07:53 PM PST A number of law-related television series have made various "top ten" critics' lists for the year, including Justified, Boardwalk Empire, Southland, The Good Wife, Homeland, and Treme. Here are some lists, compiled by Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter, Adam Vary (listing the AFI's picks) and Willa Paskin  of New York Magazine. Here's  a link to Metacritic's comprehensive collection of critics' lists. Here are my choices, some for their originality, some for presenting us with really good acting and writing in nearly every episode, and some because they're just a lot of fun.

Law & Humanities Blog

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British Gun Control and the American Revolution Posted: 15 Dec 2011 12:52 PM PST David B. Kopel, Denver University College of Law, is publishing How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution in the Charleston Law Review. Here is the abstract. This Article chronologically reviews the British gun control which precipitated the American Revolution: the 1774 import ban on firearms and gun powder; the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gun powder, from individuals and from local governments; and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations. It was these events which changed a situation of rising political tension into a shooting war. Each of these British abuses provides insights into the scope of the modern Second Amendment. From the events of 1774-75, we can discern that import restrictions or bans on firearms or ammunition are constitutionally suspect — at least if their purpose is to disarm the public, rather than for the normal purposes of import controls (e.g., raising tax revenue, or protecting domestic industry). We can discern that broad attempts to disarm the people of a town, or to render them defenseless, are anathema to the Second Amendment; such disarmament is what the British tried to impose, and what the Americans fought a war to ensure could never again happen in America. Similarly, gun licensing laws which have the purpose or effect of only allowing a minority of the people to keep and bear arms would be unconstitutional. Finally, we see that government violence, which should always be carefully constrained and controlled, should be especially discouraged when it is used to take firearms away from peaceable citizens. Use of the military for law enforcement is particularly odious to the principles upon which the American Revolution was based.

Medical Humanities Blog

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Call for Papers: Pain as Emotion; Emotion as Pain: Perspectives from Modern History Posted: 12 Dec 2011 07:33 AM PST Call for Papers Pain as Emotion; Emotion as Pain: Perspectives from Modern History Public conference, 26 October 2012 The Birkbeck Pain Project and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities Birkbeck, University of London Organised by Visiting Fellow to the Birkbeck Pain Project, Rob Boddice, Ph.D (Languages of Emotion Cluster, Freie Universität, Berlin) 'With the benefit of the past two centuries of scientific work and thought, can one define pain?' The question was asked by the neuroscientist Edward R. Perl (Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 8, 2007). He concluded that 'it seems reasonable to propose pain to be both a specific sensation and an emotion'. With that, the question of physiological pain opens up to those who study the history of emotions, which in turn gives way to new possibilities of understanding the historical and cultural contingencies of physical pain. The statement also begs the question of the extent to which emotion is in fact pain, if pain is in part emotion.