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20 Windsor Y.B. Access Just. 87 (2001)
Getting the Insider's Story Out: What Popular Film Can Tell Us about Legal Method's Dirty Secrets

handle is hein.journals/windyrbaj20 and id is 107 raw text is: GETTING THE INSIDER'S STORY OUT: WHAT POIPULAR FIILM CAN TELL US ABOUT LEGAL METHOD'S DIRTY SECRETS by Rebecca Johnson* Ruth Buchanan** I said there is no justice as they led me out the door and the Judge said, This isn't a court ofjustice, it's a court of law. -Line from a Billy Bragg song, Waiting on Remand, Worker's Playtime (1988) In this paper, the authors seek to use the insights gained by viewing and thinking critically about a range of Hollywood films to better illuminate the disciplinary blindspots of law. Both law and film are viewed as social institu- tions, engaged in telling stories about social life. Hollywood films are often critical of law and legal institutions. Law is dismissive of its representation within popular culture. However, the authors argue that law disregards cine- matic cynicism about itself at its peril and that there is much to learn by tak- ing cinematic portrayals of law very seriously---not as representations of the truth of law, but as analogies for how law itself operates in constructing truth. Indeed, the authors conclude by arguing that law requires a better con- ception of itself as a culturally productive institution. Law, like film, is not simply engaged in the finding of truth, but also more fundamentally in the making of meaning. I. INTRODUCTION Hollywood has long been obsessed with law, truth, and justice. In partic- ular, Hollywood cinema has sought to trouble the correspondence between law and justice that is presumed by most traditional approaches to legal institutions and theory. A classic opposition between law and justice is found in films such as Adam's Rib, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The films work by creating a slippage between what is cinematically represented as the essential truth of a matter and a lesser, limited or distorted truth that the law is able to grasp. The dra- matic tension turns on the desire that the whole truth be revealed so that justice may be done. More recent films that trade (sometimes ambiv- alently) upon this particular dichotomy include The Thin Blue Line, Thelma and Louise and The Insider. Sometimes a heroic protagonist (like a Karen Silkwood or an Erin Brockovitch) is able to save the day, stitching together the threads of law and justice through extraordinary perseverance and at great personal cost. Often, however, the legal system is seen as beyond University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law. ** University of Victoria, Faculty of Law. The authors would like to thank participants at the workshop at UBC in April, 2000 who provided valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this paper and the UBC Hampton Fund for supporting the interdisciplinary project Rethinking Law as Discipline from which the project originated. (2001), 20 Windsor Yearbook ofA ccess to Justice

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