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Tues., 11/11/08 @ 6:00 p.m. (Veterans'
Day)
 Rules of Engagement, directed by Academy Award®
winner William Friedkin,
stars Academy Award® nominee Samuel
L. Jackson as
highly-decorated U.S. Marine Colonel Terry Childers, who led a rescue mission
gone bad when his troops took fire while evacuating the ambassador -- Academy
Award® winner Ben Kingsley -- and his family from a U.S. embassy in the
Middle East, and Academy Award®
winner Tommy Lee Jones as U.S. Marine Colonel Hays Hodges, a JAG attorney whose
life Childers saved in combat in Vietnam, and who finds himself almost thirty
years later defending Childers against a general court-martial in which Childers
is charged with 83 counts of murder after ordering his troops to return fire on
a crowd of allegedly unarmed civilians. The supporting cast includes Guy
Pearce as the prosecuting Marine JAG attorney and Bruce Greenwood as the National Security Advisor --
both of whom seem bent on a speedy resolution of the case, caring less about
Childers's actual guilt or innocence -- as well as Academy Award®
nominee Anne Archer, Blair Underwood, and Mark Feuerstein. A controversial film that is not as
well known or well decorated as
A
Few Good Men or
Breaker Morant (both of which also revolve around courts-martial),
Rules of Engagement raises issues that are more relevant to contemporary
U.S. military personnel on foreign soil who daily face decisions about when and
against whom to exercise deadly force.
Discussion Leader: Professor Chris
Blakesley
Sat., 10/25/08 @ 12:15 p.m.
 The most celebrated American movie about lawyers,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
adapted by Pulitzer Prize®-winning
playwright and two-time Academy Award®
winner Horton Foote from
Harper Lee's eponymous Pulitzer Prize®-winning
novel, stars
Academy Award®
winner Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a small-town 1930s Alabama lawyer
representing an African-American man, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), falsely
accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox). His
decision to represent Tom Robinson subjects Atticus and his children, Jem and
Scout, to the ire of many of their neighbors, but earns them the respect and
affection of the local African-American community. Nominated for
eight Academy Awards,® To Kill a
Mockingbird garnered Oscars® for
Peck (Best Actor), Foote (Best Adapted Screenplay), and Best Art Direction-Set
Decoration. In 2008, the
ABA Journal named To Kill a Mockingbird #1 among its
25 Greatest Legal Movies. In 2008, the
American Film
Institute voted it the
#1 Courtroom Drama,
having previously voted it #25 among its
100 Greatest American
Movies and Atticus Finch the
#1 Movie Hero
of the first 100 years of American movies.
Atticus's stand between an angry lynch mob and the insubstantial jail holding
Tom Robinson on the eve of trial, his skillful cross-examination of Mayella and
her father, Bob (an unabashed bigot), and his impassioned closing argument are
the stuff of cinematic-lawyer legend. But it is Atticus's
interaction with his children, and with Tom and his family, and his fervent
belief that right will prevail that make him a truly admirable person.
Discussion Leaders: Professors
Jennifer Carr, Lynne Henderson, and Keith Rowley
Mon., 10/20/08 @ 8:00 p.m.
 Michael Clayton
stars Academy Award® winner George Clooney as a major law
firm's "fixer" ("I'm not a miracle worker; I'm a janitor.") who must deal with the meltdown of the firm's lead litigator
(Academy Award® nominee Tom Wilkinson) in a
massive products liability class action law suit, the
decidedly unrighteous indignation of two of the firm's important clients, the
machinations of his firm's senior partners (the late Academy Award®-winning
director/producer/actor Sydney Pollack
and Academy Award® nominee Michael O'Keefe) and the class-action
client's general counsel (Academy Award®
winner Tilda Swinton),
his own crises of conscience and confidence, and growing suspicion about and
around his work for the firm. The movie is a cautionary tale about the
demands clients sometimes make of their attorneys and that law firms sometimes
make of their partners, associates, and counsel and the consequences --
professional and personal -- individual lawyers may face for meeting or failing
to meet those demands. It also delves into problems that can arise when an
attorney is forced to choose between serving a client and serving truth.
One of 2007's best-reviewed and most acclaimed movies,
Michael Clayton garnered a Best Supporting
Actress Oscar® for Swinton and Oscar® nominations for
Clooney (Best Actor), Wilkinson (Best Supporting Actor), writer/director Tony
Gilroy (Best Original Screenplay and Best Director), Best Picture, and Best
Original Score (James Newton Howard). In part of his unabashedly 4-out-of-4-star
review, celebrated movie critic
Roger Ebert declared Michael Clayton
to be a "just about perfect" exercise of the "legal/business thriller genre,"
adding: "I've seen it twice, and the
second time, knowing everything that would happen, I found it just as
fascinating because of how well it was all shown happening. It's not about
the destination but the journey, and when the stakes become so high that
lives and corporations are on the table, it's spellbinding to watch the
Clooney and Swinton characters eye to eye, raising each other, both
convinced that the other is bluffing."
Discussion Leaders: Professors Keith
Rowley and Jeff Stempel
Mon., 9/15/08 @ 8:00 p.m.
 Legally Blonde stars Academy Award®
winner Reese Witherspoon as a former "Miss Hawaiian Tropic" runner-up who decides
to go to Harvard Law School ("What? Like, it's hard?") to win back her former
boyfriend, despite her father's admonition that "Law school is for people who
are boring and ugly and serious; and you, button, are none of those things."
I can't imagine anyone now or recently in law school not having seen this movie;
but, in case you haven't, it's
Clueless meets
The
Paper Chase, with dashes of
The
Graduate,
My
Fair Lady, and
The
Truth About Cats and Dogs thrown in for good measure. Selma
Blair, Jennifer Coolidge, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber, Ali Larter, and Luke
Wilson co-star.
Discussion Leaders: Professors Peter
Reilly and Elaine Shoben
Thurs., 3/26/07 @ 5:00 p.m.
 A
Time to Kill, starring Matthew McConaughey and Academy Award® nominee Samuel L. Jackson in Academy
Award®-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldman's and director Joel Schumacher's adaptation of John Grisham's
first (and best) legal thriller, asks whether an African-American man (Jackson)
accused of killing two white men can get a fair trial from an all-white, small-city Mississippi jury,
a white judge (two-time Emmy® winner Patrick McGoohan, as the ominously-named
Omar Noose), a white
D.A. (two-time Academy Award® winner Kevin Spacey), and a white defense attorney
(McConaughey). The acts of violence that lead to the trial and the
uncertainty whether justice can be color-blind in this case are set against a
backdrop of a long-simmering racial divide and of the slow, often small, steps
individuals make to try to bridge that chasm. It also addresses some of
the prejudices and pressures a white attorney faces -- from a predominantly
white legal, business, and social establishment, from members of the
African-American community, even from his own client -- championing an
African-American client accused of killing two white men. (We saw many of
the same tensions in Ghosts of Mississippi, where Bobby DeLaughter's
tenacious digging angers many of his white friends and family, while his motives prompt
suspicion among many African-American community leaders and members of Medgar
Evers's family.) Two-time Blockbuster
Entertainment Award® winner Sandra Bullock, two-time
Golden Globe® winner Donald Sutherland, and multiple Emmy® and Golden Globe®
nominee Oliver Platt also star, respectively, as idealistic Ole Miss law student Ellen Roark, who volunteers to assist Jake
with the case, Jake's disbarred mentor Lucien Wilbanks, and cynical divorce
attorney Harry Rex Vonner, who may be Jake's only true friend among the local
legal establishment. Emmy® and Golden Globe® winner Keifer Sutherland
turns in a disturbing performance as a local KKK activist whose brother was one
of
the men Carl Lee killed. This is not a film for the faint-hearted or the
closed-minded. Tonya's rape and another scene later in the film involving
Roark are particularly disturbing. Characters' lives are destroyed or
permanently damaged. Antagonists employ terror tactics, hurl racial slurs,
and try to bully one another, those involved in the case, and those whose only
"transgression" is being friends with the wrong person or being in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Mayhem erupts outside the courtroom.
Discussion Leaders: Professors Mary
Berkheiser and Keith Rowley
Fri., 3/2/07 @ 6:00 p.m.
 Gandhi stars Academy
Award® winner Ben Kingsley in the eponymous title role. This epic motion
picture, which captured 8 Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, Best Actor
(Kingsley), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director (Richard Attenborough),
traces the adult life of Mohandas K. Gandhi from his career as a lawyer in South
Africa through his return to British-occupied India, his life's work as arguably
the Twentieth Century's greatest proponent of nonviolent civil disobedience (or
"non-cooperation," to use Gandhi's term), his role in winning India's
independence from British colonial rule, and his struggle to keep what was so
dearly won from being torn asunder by sectarian violence and political intrigue.
The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
held Gandhi in great esteem and adapted many aspects of Gandhi's philosophy and
his nonviolent tactics to the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Gandhi's life and teachings similarly inspired Stephen Biko and other leaders of
the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. When Time magazine
published its Person of the Century issue (Dec. 31, 1999), Mohandas K. Gandhi
was one of three featured "finalists" -- along with Person of the Century Albert
Einstein and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Gandhi features an all-star
supporting cast, including Academy Award®-nominee and five-time Emmy
Award® winner Candace Bergen, Emmy Award® winner Martin
Sheen, three-time BAFTA® winner Edward Fox, Academy Award® winner John Gielgud, Ian Charleson, Academy Award® nominee Trevor Howard, Academy Award® winner John Mills, and
South African playwright Athol Fugard, a six-time Tony Award® nominee.
When the American
Film Institute compiled its list of the 50 greatest motion picture heroes of
all time, "Mahatma" (Great Spirit) Gandhi, as portrayed here by Ben Kingsley,
was one of three lawyers listed -- trailing only the fictional Atticus Finch (To
Kill A Mockingbird) for the unofficial honor of most heroic lawyer.
Discussion Leader: Professor Marty
Geer
Fri., 2/2 /07
@ 6:00 p.m.
A Man
for All Seasons
stars Academy
Award® winner Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under
Henry VIII, who was stripped of his title and ultimately martyred for refusing to acknowledge Henry's right to break with the Roman Catholic
Church and appoint himself supreme pontiff of the Church of England. More,
a lawyer and author, whose book Utopia (1515) was required reading for
centuries, was canonized some 400 years after his death. This epic adaptation of a multiple Tony Award®-winning play,
which won 6 Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Scofield), Best
Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director (Fred Zinnemann), and also earned Robert
Shaw and Wendy Hiller Academy Award®
nominations for their performances as Henry VIII and Alice More, begins with More's appointment as Lord Chancellor in 1529 and ends with his execution in
1535. On the scaffold, More declared himself "the King's good servant, but
God's first." In between, we see More becoming the King's closest and most
powerful advisor, falling increasingly out of favor for disapproving of Henry's
efforts to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in an at-all-cost quest to
sire a male heir, withstanding all manner of pressure -- including midnight
inquests, false accusations, imprisonment, and public ridicule -- to capitulate
to Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn, and finally his trial for high treason --
which ended in a preordained guilty verdict, based in part on perjured
testimony, despite a brilliant defense by More. A Man for
All Seasons is a terrific study of self-conviction in the face of
unrelenting political and personal pressure and helps to explain why Thomas More
is the patron saint of lawyers. It is also, as its many awards suggest, a
great movie -- one that, like To Kill A Mockingbird (10/25/08), 12 Angry Men,
The Paper Chase (10/24/03), Judgment
at Nuremburg (11/11/04), and
Philadelphia (3/8/06), every law student
and lawyer should see.
Discussion Leader: Professor Tom
McAffee
Sat., 1/20/07 @ 6:00 p.m.
 William Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice stars Academy Award® winners Al Pacino
and Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, and Lynn Collins in the first feature-film adaptation since
the silent movie era of what has become arguably Shakespeare's most
controversial play. Directed by Academy Award® nominee Michael Radford, this visually sumptuous film contextualizes, rather than
trivializing or ignoring altogether, the systemic prejudice Shylock (Pacino) and
his fellow Jews faced as "necessary evils" in Sixteenth Century Venice and some
of the particular indignities that drive Shylock to seek his "pound of flesh"
from Antonio (Irons), the titular merchant. In
addition to presenting a rich -- albeit fictional -- case study in de jure and
de facto discrimination, The Merchant of Venice's characters are caught
(or catch themselves, as the case may be) in a web of interesting legal
questions, including a dead father's right to dictate from beyond the grave the
circumstances under which his daughter might marry and her husband might inherit
his fortune, a lender's right to demand security (in lieu of or in addition to
charging interest) and to "foreclose" on the security in the event the debtor or
his surety defaults, a contracting party's right to insist upon strict judicial
enforcement of the contract's terms, the nettles into which one who chooses to
represent himself in court may fall -- particularly if the judicial system from
which he seeks remedy is inherently biased against him -- and the role of
"experts" in assisting a court adjudicate a dispute.
Discussion Leader: Professor Keith
Rowley
Fri., 10/20/06 @ 6:00 p.m.
 Lone Star stars Academy
Award® winner Chris Cooper and
Elizabeth Peña, with strong supporting
performances by Joe Morton,
Ron Canada, Matthew McConaughey, and Academy
Award® winners Frances McDormand and Kris
Kristofferson. Written and
directed by two-time Academy Award® nominee John Sayles, one of the truly great
independent filmmakers whose work will stand the test of time, Lone Star
follows Sam Deeds (Cooper), reluctantly elected to serve as sheriff of fictional
Rio County, Texas following the death of his father, legendary sheriff Buddy
Deeds (McConaughey), as he investigates human remains found in the desert
between town and the nearby Army base. Unearthing the skeleton means
unearthing the unpleasant past of Rio County -- lawless law enforcers, political
corruption, racial intolerance, and gross mistreatment of illegal aliens who
made the mistake of crossing the Rio Grande into Rio County -- particularly
during the tenure of Buddy's predecessor, Sheriff Charlie Wade (Kristofferson).
All the while, Sam is dealing with political corruption, racial intolerance, and
disdain for illegal aliens -- sometimes from the least expected sources -- in
present-day Rio County.
Discussion Leader: Professor Leticia
Saucedo
Wed., 3/8/06 @ 5:00 p.m.
 Philadelphia stars multiple Academy
Award® winners Tom Hanks (who won the first of two consecutive Best Actor
Oscars® for this performance) and Denzel Washington, with strong supporting turns by Antonio Banderas and Academy
Award® winners Jason Robards, Mary
Steenburgen, and Joanne Woodward, and directed by Academy Award® winner Jonathan Demme. This movie, which tells the story of a
Philadelphia attorney who is fired by his law firm after he begins to manifest
symptoms of AIDS and who sues his firm for disability discrimination, is among the handful of movies
that
every law student and lawyer must see.
Discussion Leader: Professor Ann
McGinley
Tues., 11/29/05 @ 4:15 p.m.
 Two Weeks Notice stars Hugh Grant and Sandra
Bullock as, respectively, a self-absorbed real estate magnate driven to exceed
people's low expectations of him and an attorney who he hires, despite her
record of opposing his company and all it stands for,
to bring her skills and her sensibilities to his company. Some of the
issues raised by this movie should resonate with anyone who has read the U.S.
Supreme Court's recent eminent domain decision, Kelo v. City of New London,
545 U.S. 469
(2005), attended the Federalist Society's
Nov. 17th debate, during which Professor Pindell and Boyd alumnus and Nevada
Assemblyman William Horne discussed
Kelo and
some of its implications, or has an interest in urban
"renewal" and preservation.
Discussion Leader: Professor Ngai
Pindell
Sat., 11/12/05 @ 6:15 p.m.
 Absence of Malice
stars multiple Academy Award® winners Paul Newman
(nominated for Best Actor for this film) and Sally Field,
Academy Award® nominee Bob Balaban, and everyone's
favorite crusty old guy, Wilford Brimley, in a scene-stealing performance, and takes its title from the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark
defamation decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254
(1964), which held that, absent proof of malice, a public official could not
recover for defamatory statements published about him or her. The movie
explores the role of the press in reporting government investigations, the
sometimes delicate relations between state and federal investigative agencies
and prosecutors, the effects on involved and uninvolved parties of making
"confidential" investigations public through strategic leaks, some clever ways
to avoid being railroaded by overzealous crusaders.
Discussion Leader: Professor Sylvia
Lazos
Sun., 11/6/05 @ 7:15 p.m. (Green Valley Ranch
Theatres)
North Country stars Academy Award® winners Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, and Sissy Spacek and
Academy Award® nominee Woody Harrelson, in
a film about the events that gave rise to the first successful sexual
harassment class action lawsuit in U.S. history: Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite
Co., 130 F.3d 1287 (8th Cir. 1997).
Discussion Leaders: Professors Ann
McGinley, Elaine Shoben, and Jean Whitney
Fri., 4/1/05 @ 6:30 p.m.
 House of Sand and Fog,
directed by Vadim Perelman, stars Academy Award® winners Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley
and Academy Award® nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo.
Kingsley, Aghdashloo, and composer James Horner were nominated for
Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Score, respectively,
for this work on this film. Amazingly, despite the fact that author
Andre Dubus III received more than 100 offers from film studios who wanted to
make this book into a movie, the finished product was not nominated for Best Screenplay.
House of Sand and Fog tells the story of a woman (Connelly) who is evicted
from her home for failing to pay taxes and her personal, legal, and extra-legal
attempts to regain the house from the family who purchased it at a foreclosure
sale (Kingsley, Aghdashloo, and newcomer Jonathan Ahdout).
Guest Host and Discussion Leader: Professor
Katherine Porter
Sat., 3/5/05 @ 6:15 p.m.
 The Insider,
directed by Michael Mann, stars Academy Award® winners
Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. Crowe portrays Dr. Jeffrey
Wigand, a research scientist for Brown & Williamson, who eventually gives in to
persistent questioning by "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino) to
produce confidential documents supporting his claims that "Big Tobacco" knew the
health risks associated with cigarette smoking for decades. Emmy®
winner Christopher
Plummer stars as "60
Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace who, after initially balking at the story because
of pressure from CBS corporate, finally tells Wigand's story, triggering and
bolstering a series of major lawsuits against the tobacco industry. While the
facts are, no doubt, tinkered with a bit for dramatic effect, this movie is
based on a true story, and presents a fairly uncompromising look at
all of the major players. The Insider explores a variety of issues
relevant to law students -- many of which will resonate with those of you taking
Professional Responsibility or who will be studying earlier that day for the
MPRE -- including confidentiality, privilege, duty of loyalty, inducing someone
to breach a confidentiality agreement, threatening civil suit as a means of
keeping a whistleblower quiet, using documents obtained in violation of a
confidentiality agreement, perjury and suborning perjury before a court of law
and before Congress, balancing one's duty to the truth to one's duty to one's
employer, and corporate social responsibility.
Discussion Leader: Professor
Keith Rowley
Tues., 11/30/04 @ 4:00 p.m.
 Erin Brockovich,
directed by Academy Award® winner Steven Soderbergh
and starring Academy Award®
winner Julia Roberts and Academy Award® nominee Albert Finney, is based on the
real-life story of scrappy-while-poorly-dressed paralegal Erin Brockovich (who
appears in the movie as a cafe waitress ironically named "Julia") and small-firm
practitioner Ed Masry (who cameos in the movie) who developed a toxic tort case
against Pacific Gas & Electric that led to what was, at the time, the largest
direct (i.e., non-class) action lawsuit settlement in U.S. history. Packed with
interesting environmental law, discovery, arbitration, and other legal issues,
Erin Brockovich also features biker-with-a-heart-of-gold Aaron Eckhart,
"CSI" star Marg Helgenberger, and the ever-creepy Tracey Walters. For more
information about the movie and back story, see
http://www.erinbrockovich.com/home.html.
Discussion Leaders: Professors
Tuan Samahon, Jean
Sternlight, and Pavel Wonsowicz
Thurs., 11/11/04 (Veterans' Day) @ 6:00 p.m.
 Judgment at Nuremburg,
directed and produced by nine-time Academy Award® nominee and Irving G. Thalberg
Memorial Award® winner Stanley Kramer, was nominated for eleven Academy Awards®,
and won for Best Actor (Maximilian Schell) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Abby
Mann). A timeless classic, Judgment at Nuremberg stars two-time Academy
Award® winner Spencer Tracy, Academy Award® winner Burt Lancaster, Academy Award®
winner Schell, Academy Award® nominee Richard Widmark, and Academy Award® nominee
Marlene Dietrich, and features supporting turns by Judy Garland (nominated for
Best Supporting Actress), Montgomery Clift (nominated for Best Supporting
Actor), and William Shatner (yes, that William Shatner). Based on
actual events, Judgment at Nuremberg tells the tale of a Maine state
court judge (Tracy) who is called to serve as part of a three-judge panel
presiding over the trial of four prominent German judges who are charged with
war crimes for enforcing the laws of the Third Reich. Judgment at
Nuremberg is a cautionary tale that clearly evidences that "I was only
following orders" is no more successful a defense strategy for judges than it
was for the hundreds of German officers and Nazi party officials tried and
convicted during several years' worth of proceedings following the end of World
War II and that criminal conspiracies -- and particularly conspiracies to commit
crimes against humanity -- often include participants who, by all appearances,
are at complete odds with the more visible and voluble leaders of the
conspiracy. Ernst Janning (Lancaster), an internationally-renowned legal
expert and author of numerous significant judicial opinions and legal texts,
could not seem less like Adolf Hitler and the historically-prominent members of
Hitler's high command. And yet, in the end, Janning and his co-defendants may
have been more guilty, in some sense, because they clearly knew that the laws
and edicts they were enforcing were contrary to any legally-recognized concepts
of justice and equity. Judgment at Nuremberg is also an object lesson
for lawyers and lawyers-to-be in its depiction of the lead prosecutor (Widmark)
and defense counsel (Schell), the tactics each was willing to employ to serve
what they believed to be the best interests of their clients, and their
motivations for doing their jobs with the vigor and rancor they displayed; the
judges, the extreme and changing political pressures brought to bear on them,
and the effects of their daily interaction with post-War Germany and its people;
and the daunting task of balancing punishment and reconciliation. For more
information about the movie and its historical roots, see
http://www.usfca.edu/pj/articles/Nuremberg.htm.
Discussion Leader: Professor Chris
Blakesley
Fri., 10/22/04 @ 6:00 p.m.
 Presumed Innocent,
directed by three-time Academy Award®
nominee Alan J. Pakula, and starring Academy Award®
nominee and Cecil B. DeMille Award®
winner Harrison Ford, Golden Globe®
winner Brian Dennehy,
Emmy®
and Golden Globe®
winner Raul Julia, Golden Globe®
nominee Bonnie Bedelia, Emmy®
winner John Spencer, Emmy®
winner Greta Scacchi, and Academy Award®
nominee Paul Winfield, is
based on Scott Turow's award-winning novel of the same title. The movie, while
not quite able to live up to the caliber of the book, provides excellent
discussion points in criminal law, criminal procedure, professional
responsibility, and evidence, as well as both office politics and electoral
politics. This is a taut legal thriller that will leave some viewers
wondering "Who dunnit?," others wondering "Will the killer get away with it?,"
and the rest wondering "Did the person responsible for Harrison Ford's hairstyle
ever work in movies again?"
Discussion Leader: Professor
Katherine Kruse
Fri., 10/1/04 @ 3:00 p.m.
 Gideon's Trumpet,
the 1980 film adaptation of Anthony Lewis's eponymous 1964 Pulitzer
Prize®-winning book, starring
Academy Award®
winners Henry Fonda as Clarence Earl Gideon, Jose Ferrer as
attorney (and future Supreme Court justice) Abe Fortas, and John Houseman as
Chief Justice Earl Warren, is based on the landmark case of Gideon v.
Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), which our 1Ls read during this year's
Introduction to Law Week, and is almost always a source of lively in-class
discussions in Constitutional Law and Criminal Procedure courses. (For
film trivia buffs, the movie is also the final screen appearance of Fay Wray,
the original object of King Kong's desire.)
Discussion Leader: Professor Lynne
Henderson
Thurs., 4/15/04 @ 5:00 p.m.
The Milagro Beanfield War
Discussion Leader: Professor Bret
Birdsong
Thurs., 4/1/04 @ 5:00 p.m.
 Eight Men Out,
which two-time Academy Award®
nominee John Sayles adapted from Eliot Asinof's eponymous book and directed, is based on the
real-life 1919 Chicago "Black Sox" Scandal, in which several members of what
might well have rivaled the 1927 Yankees as the best team in major league
history conspired with gamblers to throw the world series. A grand jury
indicted eight players, who stood trial for conspiracy to commit a confidence game.
In addition to a sideshow-like trial, the scandal also led to the appointment
of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis as the first truly independent commissioner of
major league baseball (or, for that matter, any American sport). For those of
you more familiar with Field of Dreams, this is a largely factual account
of the fall of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson from the pinnacle of American baseball
(his swing, which Field of Dreams told us Babe Ruth copied, produced the
third highest career batting average -- .356 -- in major league history) to
banishment from the sport he so loved and played so well. The movie stars
John Cusack, Golden Globe®
winner Charlie Sheen, Academy Award®
nominee David Strathairn, D.B. Sweeney, Emmy®
winner Gordon Clapp, and others as the players,
Golden Globe® nominee John Mahoney
as manager "Kid" Gleason, Pulitzer Prize®
winner Studs Terkel and Sayles as sportswriters Hugh Fullerton and Ring Lardner, who
uncover the scandal, and Academy Award®
nominee Michael Lerner and three-time Emmy®
winner Christopher Lloyd as the gamblers
who financed the scheme. While largely overlooked by the Academy (it came out
in the days before "independent films" were all the rage), this is
arguably the
best baseball movie ever made. It also evenhandedly tells the story of one of
the two most significant legal cases involving baseball (the other being Curt
Flood's challenge to the "reserve clause," Flood v. Kuhn,
407 U.S. 258 (1972), which led to the advent of
free agency).
Discussion Leader: Professor Keith
Rowley
Mon., 2/16/04 (Presidents' Day) @ 6:00 p.m.
 Amistad, directed by
two-time Academy Award® winner Steven
Spielberg, is
based on the real-life case The Amistad, 40 U.S. 518 (U.S. 1841), which former
President John Quincy Adams argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of a group
of slaves who had mutinied while being transported to Cuba aboard La Amistad
and were found adrift by a U.S. Coast Guard surveying vessel, whose crew claimed
the right of salvage not only of the ship but also of the slaves, which it
deemed to be chattels. Thus, the Supreme Court was faced with, among other
lofty issues, the question of whether slaves were people or property.
Amistad -- an excellent, if somewhat embellished (see Douglas O. Linder,
Salvaging Amistad, 31 J. Mar. L. & Com. 559 (2000)), film that raises
important issues of property rights, civil rights (more accurately, in this
context, "natural law"), maritime law, and the roles of lawyers, politicians,
and courts in shaping both the law and, in this case, social and international
policy -- stars Academy Award® winner Anthony
Hopkins as Adams (our first son of a president to be elected president); Matthew
McConaughey, as attorney Roger Baldwin, who first took the case on behalf of the
mutinous slaves; two-time
Academy Award® nominee Djimon Hounsou as Cinque, the erstwhile leader of
the mutiny; and
Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman, as a fictional abolitionist, most of whose good
deeds can be attributed to real-life white abolitionist Lewis Tappan (who Stellan Skarsgård portrays in the film). Amistad also features former
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun as fabled Justice Joseph Story,
Academy Award® nominee Nigel
Hawthorn as then-President Martin Van Buren,
Academy Award® nominee David Paymer as Secretary of State
John Forsyth, and
Academy Award® winner Anna Paquin as Queen Isabella II of Spain.
Discussion Leader: Professor Sylvia
Lazos
Mon., 1/19/04 (Martin Luther
King, Jr. Day) @ 6:00 p.m.
 Ghosts of Mississippi
is based on the successful re-prosecution some thirty years after the fact of
white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of civil rights
leader Medgar Evers, after two all-white, all-male juries refused to render
verdicts. Academy Award®
nominee Alec Baldwin stars as Hinds County Assistant DA Bobby DeLaughter who, on his own initiative, reopened the case,
reinvestigated, and retried it. (DeLaughter is currently a judge on the
Mississippi Court of Appeals.) Two-time
Academy Award® nominee James Woods, one of my favorite actors, plays De
La Beckwith well -- not as some monster, but rather as someone who simply viewed
shooting a black man to be no different than shooting a pesky squirrel that
keeps eating all of the bird seed. Academy Award®
winner Whoopi Goldberg plays Myrlie Evers, Medgar's
widow, who is first skeptical that the whole thing is a political ploy, but
ultimately comes to trust and support DeLaughter. The cast also includes
Emmy® winner Craig T. Nelson as DeLaughter's boss,
Academy Award® nominee William H. Macy as one of DeLaughter's
investigators,
Academy Award® nominee Virginia Madsen, Susanna Thompson, and several people who were
involved in the case, many of whom play themselves. Ultimately, DeLaughter
disproves De La Beckwith's statement that "No jury will ever convict a white man
for killing a black man in Mississippi." This is a good film that will get
you thinking about the law and lawyers' roles both in shaping the law and, in
some cases, society at large. I will add what insights I can from having
lived and taught in Jackson for two years not long after the trial and my
conversations with
Pat Bennett, a former colleague of mine at Mississippi
College, who was almost called in to take over the case when local
African-American politicians accused the DA's office of not taking the case
seriously.
Discussion Leader: Professor Keith
Rowley
Fri., 12/5/03 @ 6:00 p.m.
 Wall Street stars
Michael Douglas, who won a Best Actor Academy Award® for this film (and whose
character, Gordon Gekko, was voted the #24 movie villain of the 20th Century by
the American Film Institute), Golden Globe®
winner Charlie Sheen, Emmy® winner Martin Sheen,
former mermaid Daryl Hannah, three-time Emmy®
winner James Spader, Academy Award®
nominee Hal Holbrook, and a number of director Oliver
Stone's "repertory" cast in a film about corporate finance, mergers and
acquisitions, insider trading, and the drive to become what
Tom Wolfe, in his
masterpiece The Bonfire of the Vanities (not to be mistaken for the
wretched movie of the same title) called "Masters of the Universe." Directed by
three-time Academy Award® winner Oliver Stone,
Wall Street is a taut,
cautionary tale about the unwavering drive for MORE, at any cost.
Discussion Leader: Professor Bob
Lawless
Tues., 11/11/03 @6:00 p.m.
 Class Action,
directed by Michael Apted, stars two-time Academy Award® winner Gene Hackman and
Academy Award® nominee Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as father and daughter
attorneys who face off against each other in a products liability class action
suit. Hackman plays Jed Ward, who sues corporate giant Argo Motors on behalf of
a class of persons killed or injured due to an alleged defect in the Argo
Meridian's turn signal assembly that makes the car vulnerable to explosion if it
is struck while the turn signal is activated. Mastrantonio plays Jed's
daughter, Maggie, who is being groomed for partnership at a major San Francisco
law firm and is lead defense counsel for Argo, though she is preparing and
defending the case under the close supervision of both the head of the
litigation section and the firm's managing partner -- Argo being the firm's
largest single client. As we follow the case through document production
and review, evidence tampering, depositions, pretrial motions, and trial, the
film raises a number of interesting procedural, ethical, tactical, evidentiary,
and tort issues. There are also some wonderful insights into how tightly-knit
the practicing bar really is (even in a city as large as San Francisco) and how
one's prior behavior can come back to haunt you (and your client) sometime
later. The managing partner of the first firm I worked for in Houston talked
about "The Favor Bank" and the importance of making "deposits" (i.e., granting
reasonable requests for additional time, not opposing perfectly reasonable
motions, and generally not being obstinate solely for the sake of making
opposing counsel's -- or worse, a judge's -- life more difficult) whenever doing
so did not compromise your client's position because you never knew when you
might need to make a "withdrawal." A strong supporting cast includes
Academy Award® nominee Laurence Fishburne as one of Jed's associates, Donald
Moffat as the managing partner of Maggie's firm, celebrated Australian actor
Colin Friels as Maggie's supervising partner, former U.S. Senator Fred Dalton
Thompson as Argo's chief of research and product design, and pseudo-Las Vegan
Robert David Hall as the lead plaintiff whose wife and children were killed and
whose own injuries confined him to a wheelchair. (Ironically, Hall, who
plays crutch-wielding coroner Dr. Albert Robbins on CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation, had both of his legs amputated after suffering burns over 65%
of his body as a the result of an automobile accident.)
Discussion Leader: Professor Jeff
Stempel
Fri., 10/24/03 @ 6:00 p.m.
 The Paper Chase,
directed and adapted by two-time Academy Award® nominee James Bridges from John
Jay Osborne, Jr.'s eponymous novel, and starring Timothy Bottoms and John
Houseman, who won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award® for his
portrayal of the
mythical Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr., is the iconic film about life
as a 1L. Next to the CBS/Showtime series of the same name, The Paper Chase
is the most realistic Hollywood depiction of the life of a law student. Unlike
more recent movies that feature law students (e.g., Soul Man,
The Pelican Brief, Legally Blonde), the characters, while eccentric,
are not satiric stereotypes, nor do any of them sleep with their law professors
(although one does sleep with a professor's daughter).
Discussion Leader: Professor Keith
Rowley
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