Law in Popular Culture

Alan Dershowitz’s new book calls the biblical figure Abraham the ‘world’s first lawyer’

High-profile attorney Alan Dershowitz has written a new book dedicated to the historical legacies of Jewish attorneys. Abraham: The World’s First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer will be released on Oct. 6. Dershowitz, a Brooklyn native whose parents were Orthodox Jews, told the Wall Street Journal that the biblical…

Sep 18, 2015 12:15 PM CDT

As movie about courthouse shooter premieres, hostage recalls how experience turned her life around

A new movie has been released based on the 2005 crime spree of Brian Nichols, which began at an Atlanta courthouse. On March 11, 2005, Brian Nichols fatally attacked a judge and three others before taking a woman hostage miles away. Captive focuses on Nichols’ interaction with the hostage, Ashley…

Sep 18, 2015 10:15 AM CDT

Teen invited to White House after arrest for bringing homemade clock to school

This week has clearly been a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows for a 14-year-old Texas high school student. Reportedly arrested, handcuffed and suspended from school (although not criminally charged) after bringing a homemade alarm clock to school in an effort to connect with others interested in technology, Ahmed Mohamed…

Sep 17, 2015 9:00 AM CDT

Did Harper Lee write a true-crime novel? Lawyer’s wife says she has the first chapter

After writing To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee researched and began writing a true-crime book about a possible serial murderer, according to the family of the lawyer who represented an acquitted suspect. Lee worked on the book for months and possibly years, but there is no indication that her notes…

Sep 10, 2015 5:45 AM CDT

Sony softened ‘Concussion’ storyline to avoid issues with NFL, hacked emails show

In the wake of litigation over dementia among professional football players attributed to repeated head injuries on the field, Sony Pictures Entertainment decided to make a movie on the subject starring Will Smith. But as the Concussion movie was filmed, hacked emails show, its focus changed. Sony executives, the director…

Sep 2, 2015 3:15 PM CDT

Lawyer convicted in wife-murder said to inspire ‘Fargo’ movie plot dies at home at 88

A Minnesota lawyer convicted of first-degree murder in one of the state’s most notorious crimes died at his home last month. T. Eugene Thompson was 88 years old. He served nearly 20 years for the 1963 slaying of his wife, Carol Thompson, who was fatally beaten and stabbed by a…

Sep 2, 2015 11:40 AM CDT

Did Harper Lee write a third book? Expert says manuscript is early version of ‘Mockingbird’

An expert hired to evaluate another manuscript in Harper Lee’s safe-deposit box says the work is an early version of To Kill a Mockingbird, rather than a third novel. Lee’s lawyer, Tonja Carter, hired rare-books expert James Jaffe, explaining in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in July that he would…

Sep 2, 2015 7:11 AM CDT

Wrong man arrested on ‘troubling’ reality TV show has no civil rights case, 7th Circuit rules

Allowing a television reality show to pay and film police homicide detectives as they are investigating a case is hardly a good idea, a federal appeals court says. And it is easy to see how such a joint effort by producers of The Shift and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department…

Aug 19, 2015 2:18 PM CDT

Acquitted man sues ‘Cold Justice’ producers and sheriff over claimed malicious murder prosecution

Acquitted earlier this year in the 1981 murder of his ex-wife, an Ohio man has filed a federal civil rights suit over a true-crime television show. In portraying the case in August 2014, TNT’s Cold Justice put him in a false light, Steven Noffsinger contends. The suit says that the…

Aug 11, 2015 12:35 PM CDT

57 arrested at federal courthouse in Ferguson anniversary protest; state of emergency declared

Nearly 60 people were arrested Monday at the federal courthouse in St. Louis in what authorities called a peaceful protest by approximately 200 people. Additional protests by some 1,000 people over the weekend of the one-year anniversary of the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by police in nearby Ferguson…

Aug 10, 2015 5:24 PM CDT

Fugitive mom captured in parental kidnap case; did vaccination issue prompt her exit?

A little over a year after a mom and her young daughter disappeared, the fugitive Florida woman has been captured and is being held in a federal parental kidnapping case. Megan Elizabeth Everett, 23, and her 3-year-old daughter, Lilly Abigail Baumann, were found Monday in the Palatka area of Florida,…

Aug 4, 2015 10:50 AM CDT

Judge’s movie night brings the court and the public closer together

More than 20 years ago, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski realized his clerks had a troubling gap in their education: They hadn't seen 12 Angry Men. Wanting to rectify the situation, Kozinski started showing classic movies in the courthouse law library.

Aug 1, 2015 7:20 AM CDT

Planned documentary will look at the shortcomings of the public defender system

Marshall Goldberg moves between two professional worlds. As a civil rights lawyer in the 1960s and '70s, he served as counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights and in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Later, as a screenwriter, he wrote episodes of The Jeffersons, LA Law and Life Goes On, as well as feature screenplays. These days, he's both an entertainment writer and a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School.

Aug 1, 2015 7:10 AM CDT

How trials are more like plot-driven movies than character-driven novels

Character is crucial in most popular storytelling practices. Most especially, it is at the core of the modern novel. The late literary critic and novelist John Gardner observed that at "the center of all great literature is character."

Aug 1, 2015 6:50 AM CDT

How the ‘Golden Decade’ of legal films still influences us today

The ABA Journal was first published in January 1915. And during the 100 years since, some of the best movies in each decade have depicted the law and its lawyers—whether ideal or evil—as refractions of contemporary society, and as imperfect agents of justice and its aims. The People vs. John Doe (1916), Blackmail (1929), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and M (1951) come quickly to mind.

Aug 1, 2015 6:40 AM CDT