Storytelling. Reel Justice

• Author: Philip N. Meyer
• Pages: 24-26

Pictures are worth more than a

thousand words—especially

when sequenced into moving

pictures. Our imaginations are

fueled by the consumption of high-oc-

tane visual stories. The American

cinema is, in the words of  lm historian

Robert Ray , “one of the most potent

ideological tools ever constructed.”

Last year, the World Justice Project,

a rule of law watchdog organization,

released its Rule of Law Index 2019.

The index measures how the rule of

law is experienced and perceived by the

general public worldwide and is based

upon 120,000 household and 3,800

expert surveys.

In the most recent index, the United

States ranked 20th of 126 countries.

The United States placed 14th out of

24 countries in a geographical cohort

of countries from the European Union,

European Free Trade Association and

the North American region . And we

were 20th of 38 high-income countries .

We rank securely in the bottom half of

both cohorts.

What does this index have to do

with the power of movies, television

and other forms of popular cultural

storytelling? Plenty.

Movies and anti-legalism

Educational psychologist and lawyer-

ing theorist Jerome Bruner argued that

our attitudes, beliefs and identities are

shaped and informed by the stories

that we consume and, in turn, by the

Practice Matters

STORYTELLING

Reel Justice

The films that become Hollywood blockbusters

reveal popular skepticism about the rule of law

BY PHILIP N. MEYER

stories that we then tell to others and

ourselves . Simply put in the slogan of

an earlier time, “You are what you eat!”

Similarly, we are especially in uenced

by the visual stories we binge on—in-

cluding movies and television programs.

In the 2016 article “Cinematic An-

ti-Legalism: Recent Hollywood Movies’

Rejection of the Belief in Law, ” pub-

lished in the Journal of Popular Film &

Television, professor David Ray Papke

of Marquette University Law School

draws compelling connections between

the decline in our collective belief in the

effectiveness of our legal system and

the stories told in Hollywood movies—

including six blockbusters that were

identi ed on the Internet Movie Data-

base listing in 2015 as the most popular

recent law movies, based on box of ce

returns.

According to Papke, the “six high-

est-ranked movies with prominent legal

characters, dramatic legal proceedings,

and developed legal themes, were, in

box of ce order: Liar, Liar (1997), Chi-

cago (2002), The Firm (1993), A Few

edited by

BLAIR CHAVIS & LIANE JACKSON

blair.chavis@americanbar.org

liane.jackson@americanbar.org

Photo illustration by Brenan Sharp/Cinematerial.com/Getty Images/Shutterstock/ Starlight Media/Open Road Films

ABA JOURNAL | FEBRUARY–MARCH 2020

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