Hero or Villain? Cinematic Lawyers and the Delivery of Justice
| Author | Steve Greenfield |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00176 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2001
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 25–39
Hero or Villain? Cinematic Lawyers and the Delivery of
Justice
Steve Greenfield*
This essay is concerned with two specific issues that have as their bac kdrop
the heroic central figure, the trial lawyer. First it considers the role of
screen lawyers in seeking to maintain public (in this sense the public is the
community within the film) support for the due process of law. The issue is
the link between the lawyer and the initiation of the formal legal process.
Essentially it is the extent to which the lawyer defends the institution of law.
The second part of the piece considers when screen lawyers are permitted
to go outside the formal process of law to ensure that the right result is
achieved. It examines instances of where lawyers have been prepared to go
‘beyond law’ to achieve justice. Such acts raise a number of questions
concerning how such behaviour affects perception of the legitimacy of the
law, professional ethics, and the relationship between law and justice
INTRODUCTION
Within the area of film and the law there are a number of distinct approaches
that have been adopted by different academics. There is clearly a growing
interest in films that are concerned with the portrayal of law and lawyers and
this is reflected in a wide variety of works. Some analysis of legal film is
rooted in a desire to understand the nature of the broader relationship
between law and popular culture and this has emerged as the study of
popular culture itself has itself moved further forward into the mainstream.
1
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ßBlackwell Publishers Ltd 2001, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*School of Law, University of Westminster, 4 Little Titchfield Street, London
W1P 7FW, England
Many thanks to Guy Osborn for his learned thoughts and comments on the
original drafts of this piece.
1 See, for example, A. Chase, ‘Towards A Legal Theory of Popular Culture’ (1986)
Wisconsin Law Rev. 527–69; G. Newman, ‘Popular Culture and Criminal Justice: A
Preliminary Analysis’ (1990) 18 J. of Crim. Justice 261–74; S. Macaulay, ‘Popular
Legal Culture: An Introduction’ (1989) Yale Law J. 1545; D. Papke, ‘Law in
American Culture: An Overview’ (1992) 15 J. of Am. Culture 3.
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