Law and Film

This book explores how law can be understood through film by engaging creatively with the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of both fields.

Challenged to go beyond an instrumental analysis of a law "and" film, the contributors to this book instead consider instead the need to turn to film and what this means for how we come to understand law and its absences. The chapters explore a variety of narratives, aesthetics, cinematic epistemologies and legal phenomena; from assessing law in social debates to film as legal critique, from notions of justice to contemplations on evil, and from masculine vigilantism to radical feminism. Taken together, they constitute an inspiring body of work that embodies an urgency for diverse and subversive ways to challenge law?s formalism and authority; and to think about and respond variously to law?s impotence, its disappointment, or its boredom.

This book will appeal to legal scholars and students in law and the humanities, especially those with interests in aesthetics, law and literature, law and culture, law and society, and critical legal theory.

"The joys of reading this volume can only be matched by the personal enthusiasm of its editors: straight out of an extraordinarily imaginative series of film-projection-and-discussion events at Sciences Po ?Eating Popcorn like a Lawyer? (in which I have had the privilege of being invited), this book continues with the same personal freshness, ludic inventiveness, and rigorous analysis of the intersection between juridical thought and moving image. The result is nothing less than astonishing: a panorama of spectacular reconfigurations of both what law and what cinema is through a fine balance of personal autoethnographic details, film theory, philosophy, aesthetics, and critical legal and critical sociolegal theory. This is an astutely curated collection, with early career as well as established interdisciplinary thinkers, that pushes the limits of law, image, senses, perceptions and affects. What unites all chapters is a strong sense of responsibility to open up the law to the revitalising power of films. An extremely fresh and valuable addition to the law and film literature" Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Legal Theorist / Artist / Fiction Author, University of Westminster, London, UK