The Conflicts of Law and the Character of Men: Writing Reversal of Fortune and Judgment at Nuremberg
![handle is hein.journals/usflr30 and id is 1005 raw text is: The Conflicts Of Law and the Character of
Men: Writing Reversal of Fortune and
Judgment at Nuremberg
By SUZANNE SHALE*
I had a professor, when I went to New York University.... I asked him,
'What's the best way to study to become a writer, playwriter, write mov-
ies?' And he says, 'Become a lawyer. Because they are so meticulous
on structure . . . [and] presenting a very dramatic thing.'
We shall not look upon [Sir Edward Marshall Hall's] like again, for the
age that produced him, and gloried in his spectacular triumphs in the
courts, has passed away forever. The advocate no longer plays the part in
our public life that he once did. The fashionable divorce suit, the sensa-
tional libel action, the great murder trial-they are no longer the dramatic
events that once occupied public attention to the exclusion of almost
everything else. The television star and the film actor, idolized by mil-
lions, now take pride of place.'2
LAW AND THE CINEMA are both theaters of conflict, spectacles
through which we understand essential aspects of our humanity and soci-
ety. Drama and the law have always shared a close affinity, as Abby
Mann's New York professor understood. To write drama is to articulate
one's own understanding of the sprawling, ill-understood conflicts of
* Fellow and C.U.F. Lecturer in Law, New College, Oxford University. B.A., Kent Uni-
versity, 1984. 1 am grateful to Carol Clover for comments on my approach to courtroom drama
and to Bernard Jackson for comments on a draft of this paper. I am also grateful to Richard
Sherwin for his efforts to secure its publication in this special issue, and to Bethany Kaye and her
staff at the University of San Francisco Law Review for persisting with what turned out to be a
difficult editorial task. The research was supported by a British Academy Small Personal Re-
search Grant No. APN 3017, 1995 and by New College, Oxford.
1. Interview with Abby Mann, Screenwriter, in Los Angeles, Cal. (Oct. 5, 1995). Myra
Mann, his wife, suggested, Lawyering and a dramatist in a way are the same, because you are
doing a dramatic compression; that's what you should be doing. So what Abby does is, he drops
all the boring crap. And looks for the big points . . . and then tries to humanize them with
characters. Interview with Myra Mann, Screenwriter, in Los Angeles, Cal. (Oct. 5, 1995).
Alan Dershowitz has described the process of preparing an appellate brief as somewhat akin
to producing and editing a TV program ... TV producers begin with an unformed mass of data
that they eventually reduce to thousands of minutes of videotape. From that tape they must cull a
very few minutes that dramatically and accurately reflect .the major issues. ALAN M. DERSHO-
WITZ, REVERSAL OF FORTUNE-INSIDE THE VON BULOW CASE 118 (1986).
2. Great Advocates (BC radio broadcast, Apr. 16, 1961) (the first in a series of portraits
by Lord Birkett reviewing achievements of outstanding members of the English Bar).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/usflr30&div=42&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Conflicts of Law and the Character of Men: Writing Reversal of Fortune and Judgment at Nuremberg
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