Visual Legal Advocacy (Levinthal)
Additional Information
Skills Training
Expository Writing
Grading
25% Participation,
50% Paper,
25% Other (Three two page response papers )
No
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- If you are absent, due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can ask for volunteers among your classmates to share their notes with you.
- When you are better, please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
- Please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
Meeting Times/Location
W 4:30PM - 6:20PM
Silverman Hall 280
Category
Upper-Level
Credits
2.0
Visual Legal Advocacy: Examining the Interplay of Visual Media, Storytelling and Legal Systems
The legal system like documentary film is all about constructing narratives based on found materials. In both, you are using facts -- discovery, case law or footage to weave together a compelling and persuasive narrative. What choices you make – what discovery to admit into evidence, what witness to call, how to frame the issue will shape the courtroom narrative. Similarly in documentary film, filmmakers must choose what footage of countless hours to include, whose voices to hear from, what style of storytelling to choose all of which may determine where your sympathies lie as an audience or how one will understand a particular issue.
The goal of this class is to help students gain critical thinking tools in narrative construction and storytelling that will serve them in their legal career by examining storytelling in a different context --- documentary film. The course will focus on legal documentaries and we will dissect how filmmakers approach their storytelling and what is being included and or left out and why. We will look at the limits of certain forms of evidence that appear both in film and in our legal system – body cameras, interrogation rooms, among others. We will focus on the criminal legal system and the family regulation system as the case studies to look at documentary film and narrative construction. By focusing on two legal frameworks we can compare and contrast how different filmmakers approach the same legal landscape. Finally, students will have an opportunity to use their understanding of documentary film to examine how video is employed in the courtroom.
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Grading: Grading is comprised of three elements: 25% Class Participation, 25% Response Papers, and 50% Final Paper
Class participation: Thoughtful class participation is crucial to the success of this course. All students are expected to come prepared to each class session, participate in class discussion, offer critical analysis of the readings and films, and respond respectfully to the insights of their classmates.
Response Papers: Students must select three classes for which they will write a two page response paper. The response paper should engage with that week’s film and readings. They should be submitted the day before class.
Final Paper: Over the course of the semester, we will have done close “readings” together of a number of documentary films. The final paper is your turn to apply these skills. The orientation for this paper is fairly open. Students may choose, for example, to focus in more depth on a single theme covered in the course or explore a new issue related to law, visual storytelling, and legal meaning.
Criminal Law and Procedure Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of criminal law and procedure; Perform legal analysis in the context of criminal law and procedure; Communicate effectively on topics related to criminal law and procedure; Demonstrate an understanding of the role criminal law and procedure play in society and their impact on other areas of law and society.
Family Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of family law; Perform legal analysis in the context of family law; Communicate effectively on topics related to family law; Demonstrate an understanding of how family law affects other areas of law.
Perspectives on the Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of how the law affects, and is affected by, the individual course topic; Perform legal analysis in the context of the individual course topic; Communicate effectively on the legal and other aspects of the individual course topic; Demonstrate the ability to use other disciplines to analyze legal issues relevant to the individual course topic, including economics, philosophy, and sociology, as appropriate.
Public Interest Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of the varied legal aspects of public interest law; Perform legal analysis in the context of public interest law; Communicate effectively on topics related to public interest law; Demonstrate an understanding of how public interest law is connected to and affected by a wide variety of legal and regulatory structures and doctrines.
Textbooks
"The Journalist and the Murderer" by Janet Malcolm |