Legal Reelism/Legal Realism:
Representations of Women Lawyers and Women's Lives in Film
Professor Kate Nace Day
Syllabus
Fall 2009
This seminar’s examination of the representations of women lawyers and
women's lives in the Hollywood film, nonfiction documentaries, and video advocacy
projects proceeds in two parts.
Part One begins with an introduction to film study through critiquing
representations of women lawyers in the Hollywood film. From Katherine Hepburn in
Adam's Rib to Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde II, women
lawyers in film have been the site where cultural attitudes about women, power, and law
have converged. Part One then examines representations of women’s lives and men’s
laws in the genre of human rights films. Lawyers – like filmmakers - tell other people's
stories and they are increasingly doing it through film. Clients and rights-claimants
themselves are now taking up video cameras in order to tell their own stories directly to
the public and law's decision makers. This is especially true in the area of international
human rights of women and girl children, in general, and sex trafficking, in particular.
Part Two involves student presentation of independent and collaborative projects
in law and film. Students will be asked to organize themselves into teams to research,
develop, shoot, and present a documentary film or video. The general subject of the
student projects will be sex trafficking. Each team will select one perspective in the
social, political, and legal efforts to combat sex trafficking, including: survivors; ngo’s;
lawmakers and policy-makers; filmmakers; and, legal and film academics and theorists.
There is no assigned casebook or text. Sets of readings will be distributed to you
in class each week. They will also be available one week before class in the outer office
to Suite 240. If you have any questions about the handouts, please ask my assistant,
Seth Markley (smarkley@suffolk.edu) or me. As the seminar progresses, we may
deviate from the syllabus for guest lecturers on film and/or sex trafficking. Throughout
the seminar, active participation and attendance are important. During student
presentations, they are crucial. It is a matter of respect and professionalism to be
present and engage with the work of your peers.
PART ONE
Week One
INTRODUCTION:
August 28
Lawyers and the Hollywood Film
Filmography:
To Kill a Mockingbird (Brentwood Productions 1962) (Robert
director).
Mulligan,
Reading:
David A. Black, Law and Film as Narrative Regimes in LAW
REPRESENTATION 34-51(1999).
IN
FILM: RESONANCE AND
Malcolm Gladwell, The Courthouse Ring, The New Yorker 26 (August 10 & 17,
2009).
Kristin Bumiller, Spectacles of the Strange: Envisioning Violence in the Central
Park Jogger Trial in FEMINISM, MEDIA, AND THE LAW (Martha A. Fineman and
Martha T. McCluskey, eds.) (1997).
Notes on Student Projects
There are three stories we are following here: the role of law and how it
engages with activities and conceptual frameworks in the rest of society; the
narrative elements of Atticus Finch as hero; and, the representations of girls and
women.
In thinking about student projects, I thought it might be helpful to pull
together some readings on “story” in documentary film.
Week Two
September 4
No Class
The Contemporary Emergence of Women Lawyers
Filmography:
The Verdict (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation 1982) (Sydney Lumet,
director).
Michael Clayton (Samuels Media 2007) (Tony Gilroy, director).
Reading:
Cynthia Lucia, Women on Trial: The Female Lawyer in the Hollywood
Courtroom in FEMINISM, MEDIA, AND THE LAW (Martha A. Fineman and Martha T.
McCluskey, eds.) (1997).
See also:
Adam’s Rib (Loew’s 1949) (George Cokor, director)
Jagged Edge (Columbia Pictures Corporation 1985) (Richard Marquand,
director).
The Big Easy (Kings Road Entertainment 1986) (Jim McBride, director).
Week Three
September 11
Women and Law: Beginning with A Sense of One’s History
Filmography:
Daughters of The Dust (American Playhouse 1991) (Julie Dash,
director).
Law and Creativity (Erica Ferdinandi, Legal Reelism, 2008).
Selling of Innocence, Parts I-VI (Ruchira Gupta) at Ruchira Gupta, Videos
youtube.
Reading:
Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 US (16 Wall) 130 (1873)
Arvonne Fraser, Becoming Human: The Origin and Development of Women’s
Human Rights, 21 Human Rights Quarterly 4 (1999)
THE REPORT OF THE SECRETARY GENERAL, UNITED NATIONS, IN-DEPTH STUDY ON ALL FORMS
OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (July 6, 2006)
Week Four
September 18
Women, Violence and National Behavior through Law: Beyond
Public/Private, Beyond Coercion/Consent
[There are] four dimensions along which national behavior through law has been
analyzed in gendered terms State behavior that promotes and institutionalizes
male dominance has been found to distinguish public from private, naturalize
dominance as difference, hide coercion behind consent, and obscure sexual
politics behind morality. Women’s assertion of their human rights can be seen, on
one level, at once not only as an attempt to make states adhere to human rights
but as an attempt to separate states from the human rights they guarantee,
ignore, and violate. Women have pushed for the formal changes they need to
secure their substantive rights, moving violators and violated alike – to the center
of the human rights process.
Catherine A. MacKinnon, Women’s Status, Men’s
States in
ARE WOMEN HUMAN? 4 (2006)
Filmography:
Holly (City Lights Entertainment 2007) (Guy Moshe, director).
Reading:
United States v. Morrison, 529 US 598 (2000)
Wiinnebago County Dep’t of Soc. Services, 489 US 189 (1989)
Gunilla Ekberg, The Swedish Law That Prohibits the Purchase of Sexual
Services: Best Practices for Prevention of Prostitution and Trafficking in
Human Beings, 10 Violence Against Women 1187 (2004).
Somaly Mam, THE ROAD OF LOST INNOCENCE (2008).
Week Five
September 25
Student Projects: Documenting Perspectives on
Sex Trafficking
Filmography:
WRITING DESIRE (Ursula Biemann 2000)
The Day My God Died (Andrew Levine Productions 2003) (Andrew Levine,
director)
Trading Women (Documentary Educational Resources 2003) (David Feingold,
director)
Dubai Sex Trade Exposed (Mimi Chakarova, director) at
http://www.mideastyouth.com/2007/12/23/dubai-sex-trade-exposed/
Readings:
Kevin Bales, Zoe Trodd, and Alex Kent Williamson, MODERN SLAVERY: THE SECRET
WORLD OF 27 MILLION PEOPLE (2009).
Siddharth Kara, SEX TRAFFICKING: INSIDE THE BUSINESS OF MODERN SLAVERY (2009).
Guest Lecturer:
Alicia Foley Winn, Executive Director of the Boston Initiative To Advance Human
Rights (BITAHR), a research partner of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts
University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Week Six
October 2
NO CLASS
Week Seven
October 9
NO CLASS
Week Eight
October 16 and 23
Student Projects: Progress Reports and Issues
Readings:
Regina Austin, The Next “New Wave”: Law-Genre Documentaries, Lawyering in
Support of the Creative Process and Visual Legal Advocacy, 16 Fordham Intell.
Prop. Media & Ent. L. J. 809 – 847 (2006).
Bill Nichols, Why Are Ethical Issues Central to Documentary Filmmaking?
in INTRODUCTION TO DOCUMENTARY 1 (2001).
Sheila Curran Bernard, DOCUMENTARY STORYTELLING FOR VIDEO AND
FILMMAKERS 115-32 (2004)
Week Ten
October 28
NO CLASS
PART TWO: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
The schedule of student presentations will be organized by insights drawn from Arvonne
Fraser, Becoming Human: The Origin and Development of Women’s Human Rights.
Week Eleven
November 6
Week Twelve
November 13
Week Thirteen
November 20
Week Fourteen
November 27
Week Fifteen
December 4
Thanksgiving Holiday
FINAL CLASS