Pawlowski, M; Greer, S --- "Film and literature in the legal classroom" [2009] LegEdDig 44; (2009) 17(3) Legal Education Digest 50

• Film and literature in the legal classroom

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Film and literature in the legal classroom

M. Pawlowski and S. Greer

43 (1) The Law Teacher, 2009, pp49–61

Law Through Film and Literature is taught over two terms, with students spending a term on each element of the course. Despite this structure, the course is very much a coherent unit, with each element underpinning and complementing the other. The learning outcomes for the course reflect this cohesion. In addition to outcomes directed specifically at the acquisition of legal skills (such as independent research and critical analysis), students are also expected, by the end of the course, to have developed the ability to examine critically the portrayal of the law and legal personnel in film and literature and acquire a wider critical awareness of law within popular culture. An interesting by-product of the course is that all of the students providing feedback felt that it improved their skills of expression, both in writing and orally.

The course begins with the film component. A total of 11 films are screened during the first term of the academic year. The films are screened during timetabled slots (in the evenings) and teaching is by means of post-film workshops. Students are given a course booklet at the beginning of the course containing a synopsis of each film, a set of workshop questions and detailed directed reading. In each workshop, they are required to consider this material against the representations of various themes in the films screened.

By way of introduction to the course, students are also asked to read and reflect on G. Osborn’s excellent article on ‘Borders and Boundaries: Locating the Law in Film’ which provides a useful rationale for the extension of the law curriculum into the broader socio-legal and cultural context. The introductory reading also refers students to some of the literature on how to read a film and analyse its key components and imagery.

The preparation for the literature element requires students to read a variety of texts, including novels, short stories and plays. Broadly speaking, law and literature classes fall into three categories: law in literature, which considers the fictional representation of lawyers and the law; law as literature, which looks at judgments and statutes as literary works; and legal imagination, which looks predominantly at language and style. Starting a course such as this, with nothing in the way of a prescribed or even conventional syllabus, it seemed sensible to take elements from all three schools of thought, while concentrating on perhaps the most accessible, law in literature. Consequently, the selected texts all focused on legal themes.

The nature of the course means that students are required to read and write intensively over a relatively short period of time – a skill which, with the growing use of ‘gobbets’ as acceptable answers in A-level examinations, has declined rather in recent years. One of the joys (and worries) in preparing this course is that, with this subject, spoon-feeding is not an option.

The process of watching films and reading the texts, thinking about them and discussing them in workshops and then writing about them not only develops measurable skills, given in the learning outcomes of the course, but also, for some students, lights a fire that continues long after they have obtained their degree.

The offering of films and texts on the course varies from year to year. Our approach, however, is generally thematic. Themes explored in the first term in film are revisited and developed through the literature element of the course. For example, one common theme is the way in which lawyers are perceived in popular film culture. In the film part of the course, three films are screened: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Verdict (1982) and Suspect (1987). The role of the lawyer in these films is used to demonstrate different popular perceptions of men and women in the legal profession. The interesting question that emerges from this type of analysis is whether screen portrayals of lawyers actually reflect our popular cultural experience of what a lawyer should be like and what he (or she) should represent. The popular image of the legal profession is important because it is reflected in the public’s attitude towards the law and lawyers. For example, fulfilling clients’ expectations of how a lawyer should behave is an important aspect of a successful legal career.

Continuing this theme in the literature part of the course, students read a range of fiction, classical to popular, from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House to Mark Gimenez’ The Colour of Law. The perception of the lawyer as a grasping, amoral money-making machine has changed little from Tulkinghorn to Scott Fenney. Students are encouraged to question their own reasons for wanting to join the legal profession and to develop a more realistic and critical appreciation of what constitutes a ‘good’ lawyer.

The course also explores the complex machinery of the legal process and prompts students to question the balance between justice and procedure.

A third group of films, comprising Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), A Few Good Men (1992) and Breaker Morant (1980) is used to focus on the theoretical debate between positivism and natural law. The third film screened in this group, Breaker Morant, is set in South Africa in 1902 during the time of the Boer War. Here again, the central issue is whether acting under orders can be a defence to a war crime and students are asked to reflect on notions of personal blame and responsibility and the due process of law.

Issues around the death penalty are explored in films such as Let Him Have It (1991), which recreates the circumstances surrounding the murder of a London policeman during an attempted burglary of a warehouse in the early 1950s. Although the film version is inaccurate in many places, it raises serious questions about judicial bias towards police testimony and the use of the death penalty in a legal system. Other films such as In the Name of the Father (1993) offer opportunity for discussion of related issues, such as police corruption and the admissibility of uncorroborated confessional evidence.

The portrayal of the judge and jury system in film and literature forms the last thematic grouping.

Stanley Kramer’s classic masterpiece Twelve Angry Men (1957) considers the fate of a teenager accused of his father’s murder, a fate that rests on the verdict of 12 jurors locked inside a steamy jury room. The jury system is also explored in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, through the eyes of Atticus Finch and his children, Scout and Jem. Prejudice and the jury system are recurring themes in film and literature and students reading To Kill a Mockingbird and then The Colour of Law were quick to identify that, in this respect, little had changed in the years between both novels.

Both elements of the course are taught by means of workshops. For film, this takes place through a series of structured post-film workshops scheduled a week after each screening. Students are required to prepare for classes by reading the course materials (comprising a variety of articles taken predominantly from different American journals) and answering the accompanying questions, which focus on different aspects of each film. In addition, students are given extracts from S. Greenfield, G. Osborn and P. Robson’s book, Film and the Law (2001), and directed to a number of useful websites featuring online articles on a variety of legal themes.

For some workshops, the materials are not limited to articles or internet resources. When considering the film Let Him Have It, for example, students are provided with a full transcript of the Court of Appeal judgment in R v Derek William Bentley, 30 July 1998. The purpose of this is to encourage a critical analysis of the judge’s summing up to the jury in the original trial. Similarly, the workshop on the film In the Name of the Father contains references to a number of extracts from textbooks on the law of evidence examining the current English law on the admissibility of confession evidence under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Students are asked to use the film as the basis for a practical exercise in determining which elements of the Act were flouted.

The first few literature workshops aim to encourage students to think about writing. We usually start with the question: ‘What do lawyers do?’ After the inevitable painful silence, we begin to stumble towards some answers. We identify some of the tools of the trade. Advocacy – whether verbal or written, is a vital skill for the lawyer. Communication is a key skill — words are the lawyer’s bread and butter (‘walls of words!’). We think about what constitutes ‘literature’. Before the first workshop, the students will have read Jim Meyers’ article: ‘What is Literature? A Definition Based on Prototypes’. Armed with this, we look at two different pieces of writing and attempt to work out whether either, both or neither are really literature. We begin by looking at the opening passage of Bleak House with its creeping fog and move on to an extract from Lord Denning’s dissenting judgment in Miller v. Jackson, which begins, in true Denning style: ‘In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch’.

We think about the kinds of writing, the words used and why they are used, the metaphors and the effect on the reader. Invariably, Dickens is, of course, judged to be the most literary of the two (the ‘birdiest bird!’) but Denning offers us a glimpse of the law as literature.

In the session that follows, we do some writing ourselves, to introduce the idea of finding our own voice as writers. Law students often struggle with the idea of writing ‘like a lawyer’. We begin by thinking about how language is used to persuade the reader. Students are provided with the facts of a case – usually Burns v. Burns – a sorry tale of an unmarried woman acquiring no property rights in the home after 19 years of cohabitation – and each group is asked to write the story as if they were writing for one of the national newspapers or a popular magazine (anything from the Financial Times to the Sun). Not only is this great fun – the results are always funny and impressive – it starts a very serious discussion about how important a tool the written word is for lawyers as advocates. We remind ourselves of this during the course and spend time thinking about the editing process. We look at the editing undertaken by Dickens in Bleak House (even down to his careful choice of title) and think about how, in Hardy’s original version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, he carefully weaves metaphors by hand, throughout the text, after the original draft.

Workshops involving the texts themselves inevitably vary according to the text and the issues that we identify from it.

Assessment for the film part of the course is by means of an extended essay analysing a particular aspect of law in film. There is also a two-hour written examination at the end of the academic year on both components of the course. So far as the essay is concerned, students are required to go beyond the directed reading in the course booklet and select their own theme(s) in a film (or group of films) that is not screened. Suggestions for suitable ideas are discussed in the workshops and a wide selection of possible essay topics is included in the booklet. The essay must identify a particular theme or argument which is academically worthy of debate and analysis.

Students are also assessed in the literature element by means of an extended piece of coursework and the examination at the end of the year. The nature of the coursework varies and, to some extent, is dictated by areas of student interest. One successful piece took the form of a legal opinion, for which students had to advise their client, Tess Clare (from Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles), as to her defences to the charge of murdering her lover, Alec. Students used the text as their bundle of evidence and also had to research substantive law on matters such as provocation, battered woman syndrome and diminished responsibility. They also need to perform independent legal research in areas of law that they may not previously have been taught and they must then apply that law to a lengthy and detailed set of facts. All of these are key skills, not only to help students succeed in other LLB subjects, but also in terms of employability and practising law at a later date.

Last year’s coursework was an essay on the ethics of cloning, whether cloning harmed the clone, and potential legal solutions, using Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go as a basis for argument. Students are also told at the outset that their work will also be marked on writing style and accuracy. This is obviously a particularly important skill, which impacts on all of their other LLB subjects. We spend a considerable amount of time as a class talking about the editing process and looking at how writers refine and hone their work. The coursework is an opportunity for students to practice this and students indicated in their feedback that they found this particularly useful.

In terms of future assessments, it would be interesting to build some oral advocacy into the course, perhaps by encouraging students to participate in a moot.

When we began teaching this course, we discovered a perception amongst students (and some academic staff) that this was a ‘soft’ option: ‘sitting around and talking about books and films’, as one student put it. The feedback from students has been that the course has instead been challenging, not only in terms of the workload but also in that it has also required them to think, develop arguments and form an opinion of their own.

The general consensus is that the course gives students the opportunity to reflect on the wider issues surrounding the legal process and the business of ‘lawyering’ generally.

Without exception, students felt that the workshops were of particular benefit in providing a genuine arena for group discussion and debate – something which was less easy to do in the black-letter core subjects. For some students, the course was seen as a definite ‘morale booster’ in building confidence and self-esteem: ‘It made me more confident about expressing my opinions in class.’ Interestingly, many students were quite open about how uneasy they felt about participating in seminar discussions in the core law subjects for fear of ‘getting it wrong’ and looking foolish in front of their peer group. One of the recurring comments on the feedback form was that, unlike many of the substantive law courses, there were no right or wrong answers in group discussions. Students enjoyed sharing – and defending – their point of view. They thus assimilated an essential legal skill without even realising it!

Students enjoyed the range of films and texts, many commenting that they were required to read books that they would otherwise probably not have read at all. A number of students felt a real sense of achievement simply by persevering and reaching the end of Bleak House or Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Developing an ability to persevere with difficult texts and concepts is, of course, a skill that all lawyers require in order to perform their duties well.

Most students were also very supportive of the method of assessment, in particular, the opportunity to select their own essay topic, which enabled them to develop their own particular areas of interest and explore aspects of a film (or films) that had not been considered in the mainstream sources.

Student feedback has also suggested extending certain aspects of the course to first year students as part of their introduction to legal education and the law curriculum. In particular, films such as The Paper Chase (1970) and Legally Blonde (2001) are identified as providing opportunities for students to examine their preconceptions of the law school environment against the popular portrayal of law teachers and students in film. Interestingly, both films were criticised by students for perpetuating myths and stereotypes that may adversely influence career choices among university applicants. This year, we were fortunate enough to be able to screen A Civil Action (1999) to the first-year students as part of their induction programme at the beginning of the academic year. We then held a workshop as part of their introductory Legal Method classes asking them to reflect on various issues raised by the film.

Recently, we approached a small number of graduates among the first cohort of Law Through Film and Literature students to discover whether the course had had any continuing impact on them as they take the first steps into legal practice. All of the respondents continued to profess that the course had been interesting and useful to them: ‘it broadened my thinking’; ‘I really enjoyed the course and found it interesting’; ‘it adds variety to the LLB course’; ‘it has assisted both with my oral and written expression’; ‘it helped me to read more, argue constructively and write more’.

The importance of providing law students with a broader and more far-reaching legal curriculum has already been highlighted by a number of academics, most notably, Guy Osborn in his influential article, ‘Borders and Boundaries: Locating the Law in Film’. Above all, the course has enabled students to improve their abilities to analyse and communicate effectively within a legal discipline. This is to be welcomed at all levels.