{"id":54443,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/when-law-goes-pop.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"when-law-goes-pop","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/when-law-goes-pop.html","title":{"rendered":"When Law Goes Pop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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WHEN LAW GOES POP<\/h1><\/span>
\nBy JUDITH HAGLEY
\n<\/a>
—-\n\n\n way; of selecting from massive evidence the telltale documents and testimony \n that will make the case. Lawyers, then, must constantly simplify, and quite \n often, they do so by telling stories: to their clients, to their colleagues \n and, most dramatically, to the juries who sit in judgment to decide their clients’ \n fates. \n \n\n\n

These stories, of course, do not simply arise full-formed from the evidence. \n Instead, they are constructed out of the evidence, in a way that the lawyer \n thinks makes sense — and often according to a narrative paradigm that is familiar \n to the lawyer. Where do these paradigms come from? The source may be as close \n as the television set in your living room, or the press release your company \n issued yesterday. <\/p>\n

How Lawyers Borrow From Popular Culture\t<\/b><\/p>\n

In his recent book When Law Goes Pop — The Vanishing Line Between Law and \n Popular Culture<\/i>, New York Law School Professor Richard Sherwin makes the \n interesting argument that lawyers’ stories have, in many ways, been shaped by \n popular culture. According to Sherwin, legal meanings are “thinning” as they \n collapse into the popular vernacular. And, in his view, law has “[taken] root \n in a culture of spectacle” by adopting the communicative style and techniques \n of public relations. <\/p>\n

According to Sherwin, lawyers are using methods of persuasion that borrow from \n fiction. They are also manipulating the press to win cases, much as a publicist \n might do. Judges, for their part, increasingly are allowing cameras in the courtroom. \n And the public is pushing the law\/entertainment merger forward, as its endless \n appetite for legal docudramas and reality-based cop shows grows. <\/p>\n

Can this marriage work? Not according to Sherwin, who seems more in favor of \n a quickie divorce in the law\/entertainment union. He points out that one danger \n of working on a P.R. or entertainment model is that while the goal of public \n relations is to achieve the right subjective spin, the goal of law traditionally \n has been a search for “objective” truth and universal justice. Another risk \n is that P.R. and entertainment attempt to serve popular passions and impulses, \n while law’s traditional function — think, for example, of the Bill of Rights \n — has been to check them. <\/p>\n

The Trial Lawyer as Storyteller: How Gerry Spence Used Popular Mythology \n To Win His Case<\/b><\/p>\n

In the most compelling part of the book, Sherwin — a former prosecutor — \n examines the storytelling techniques used by successful lawyers in well-publicized \n criminal trials. His analysis here is sophisticated, informative and insightful. \n<\/p>\n

For example, Sherwin considers trial lawyer Gerry Spence’s closing argument \n in the trial of Randy Weaver on charges related to the killing of a federal \n marshal in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Spence drew on American mythology in urging the \n jurors to resist tyranny’s threat to freedom as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams \n did. And his dazzling plea to the jury employed a host of clever tactics that \n included literary references — including a reference to the Weavers’ dog as \n “Old Yeller.” The jury acquitted Randy Weaver on all counts. <\/p>\n

Popular Culture — But How Popular? <\/b><\/p>\n and on pop culture, it is also replete with academic jargon; the real audience \n of this book, ironically, is legal scholars — not the general public. While \n law may have gone pop, this book is no evidence of that. Bonfire of the Vanities<\/i> \n — an equally penetrating exploration of the relationship between law and popular \n culture — is also a vastly better read. Nevertheless, serious scholars will \n appreciate Sherwin’s in-depth analysis.\n

\n\nSherwin’s elite bent may also be the reason why much of the culture that he \n examines would not be recognized by most people as “popular.” A chapter on popular \n film and T.V. includes, for example, analyses of The Thin Blue Line<\/i>, \n Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Red<\/i>, and Phillip Haas’s The Music of Chance<\/i>. \n None of these is exactly multiplex fare — the graduate faculty lounge projector \n is a more likely venue. And referencing any of them in a summation would be \n more likely to garner jurors’ puzzled glances than their nods of agreement. \n<\/p>\n

Sherwin’s Conclusion: A Warning About Storytelling And Law<\/b><\/p>\n

Sherwin ends with a recommendation and a warning. Noting that the savvy lawyer \n must know what sells — and learn to use narrative devices, visual technology, \n and other cultural models in the courtroom — Sherwin recommends that law schools \n teach these techniques. <\/p>\n

But Sherwin also warns that postmodern storytelling — where symbolic truth \n overtakes factual truth — tends to blur beyond recognition truth, meaning \n and objective reality, the very qualities on which the law is predicated. Law \n should go pop, he advises, but not by selling out its very soul. <\/p>\n\n<\/span>\n\n

\n\n\nJudith Hagley, an attorney in the Solicitor’s Office of \n the Federal Labor Relations Authority, has reviewed books for Boston Book Review \n and the New York Law Journal.\n

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