Citation

McCann M, Haltom W. Law Soc. Inq. 2008; 33(4): 1043-1070.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, American Bar Foundation, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1747-4469.2008.00131.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Although feature films may overpraise lawyers and civil courts as means of securing justice, they caricature lawyers and litigation. Analysis of Erin Brockovich (directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by Danny DeVito, et al., 2000) reveals four motifs—two favorable and two unfavorable to public-interest litigants and litigation—that characterize similar films in the last decades: Class Action (1991), The Rainmaker (1997), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), A Civil Action (1998), The Insider (1999), Runaway Jury (2003), and North Country (2005). These filmic populist romances promote ordinary heroines (mostly) who redeem a problematic system through common sense and everyday virtue rather than through laws, lawyers, and litigation.