The “Extreme Makeover” Effect of Law School: Students Being Transformed by Stories

The relationship between law and popular culture has caused great interest among scholars over the years. It is a field that invites the merging of disciplinary boundaries and allows for plurality in the ways that law can be viewed. This paper seeks to view this relationship from the vantage point of the first-year law student and to explore the representation and transformation of meaning about law and lawyering within the social and academic context of law school. Situated within the expanding scholarship on law and popular culture, this paper examines how the image of the lawyer is constructed and interpreted by law students. Of particular concern are the stories that are interpreted and produced through the medium of television and within the context of law school

Through the looking glass: the framing of law through popular imagination

It has been 150 years since the first publication of Lewis Carroll’s acclaimed children’s fiction Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,2 and it remains a book that is appreciated widely across culture for its unique representation of the world. Indeed, the enduring quality of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass,3 is evident in the way they have inspired creations of art, theatrical performances,4 judicial decision-making,5 cinematic portrayals,6 videogame plot development,7 and of course, the desire for adventure

A Different Kind of Justice: a critical reflection

Despite the accepted success of many restorative justice programs with youth and Indigenous offenders, debate still proliferates about the utility of adult restorative justice programs within the criminal justice system. Many important questions are raised about the efficacy and impact of such programs including: ‘What can restorative justice offer adult offenders and victims of crime? What are some of the challenges of using restorative justice in this context? And what can we learn from emerging developments in practice?’ (Bolitho et al, 2012). As will be discussed in this review, Russell Finch’s BBC Radio 4 production of A Different Kind of Justice addresses each of these questions with vigour. Narrated by ‘dialogue expert’ Karl James, the documentary explores the impact of a restorative justice program from a deeply empirical perspective. In interviewing, and then facilitating discussion between a burglar and his victim, James provides an exquisitely emotional look into the cathartic and potentially transformative impact of one particular restorative justice encounter in Blackburn, UK. A Different Kind of Justice expertly uses the interlacing of articulated memories in three distinct movements to re-tell a crime story by weaving together victim and offender perspectives, and in the process reveals not only the profound transformative effects of restorative justice on those participants, but also the impact it can have on the listener

The bitter taste of payback: the pathologising effect of TV revengendas

The thirst for vengeance is a timeless subject in popular entertainment. One need only think of Old Testament scripture; Shakespeare\u27s Hamlet; Quentin Tarantino\u27s Kill Bill or the TV series Revenge, and we immediately conjure up images of a protagonist striving to seek justice to avenge a heinous wrong committed against them. These texts, and others like it, speak to that which is ingrained in our human spirit about not only holding others responsible for their actions, but also about retaliation as payback. This article seeks to problematise the way the popular revenge narrative effectively constructs the vendetta as a guilty pleasure through which the audience can vicariously gain satisfaction, while at the same time perpetuates law\u27s rhetoric that personal desires for vengeance are to be repressed and denied. In particular, the article will demonstrate the way such popular revenge narratives contribute to the pathologising of human desire for payback

Natural Law and Vengeance:Jurisprudence on the Streets of Gotham

Batman is allied with modern natural law in the way he relies upon reason to bring about his vision of ‘true justice’, operating as a force external to law. This vision of justice is a protective one, with Batman existing as a guardian—a force for resistance against the corruption of the state and the failures of the legal system. But alongside his rational means, Batman also employs violence as he moves beyond the boundaries of the civilised state into the dark and violent world outside law’s protection. He thus sacrifices his own safety to ensure the safety of others—he is a Dark Knight, a sentinel, fighting the nasty and brutish underworld of criminality in his effort to bring rational order to the world and protect the people of Gotham from criminal harm. This fight for justice is fuelled by a deeply private trauma: the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents: a private desire for vengeance that Batman transcends. In navigating Batman’s jurisprudential dimensions, we are ultimately reminded that private desires and motivations are enfolded within the public structures of justice

A SARS-CoV-2 protein interaction map reveals targets for drug repurposing

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19 respiratory disease, has infected over 2.3 million people, killed over 160,000, and caused worldwide social and economic disruption1,2. There are currently no antiviral drugs with proven clinical efficacy, nor are there vaccines for its prevention, and these efforts are hampered by limited knowledge of the molecular details of SARS-CoV-2 infection. To address this, we cloned, tagged and expressed 26 of the 29 SARS-CoV-2 proteins in human cells and identified the human proteins physically associated with each using affinity-purification mass spectrometry (AP-MS), identifying 332 high-confidence SARS-CoV-2-human protein-protein interactions (PPIs). Among these, we identify 66 druggable human proteins or host factors targeted by 69 compounds (29 FDA-approved drugs, 12 drugs in clinical trials, and 28 preclinical compounds). Screening a subset of these in multiple viral assays identified two sets of pharmacological agents that displayed antiviral activity: inhibitors of mRNA translation and predicted regulators of the Sigma1 and Sigma2 receptors. Further studies of these host factor targeting agents, including their combination with drugs that directly target viral enzymes, could lead to a therapeutic regimen to treat COVID-19

Justice with a vengeance: retributive desire in popular imagination

The punishment of criminal behaviour has always been a hot topic in popular culture. Whether in fictional crime dramas or in mainstream news coverage, issues of law, justice, and punishment are constantly being refracted and reframed in a myriad of ways. We seem to like watching criminals not only being caught but also receiving the punishment they deserve. We love it when Sherlock Holmes or Patrick Jayne solves the crime on fictional television, and too often we hear stories in the media of a victim’s family that is indignant and angry that the perpetrator is seemingly “getting away” with a light sentence. We seem to have such a desire for justice to be done that we cry out for it when it seems lacking. This cry for justice, I argue, comes from a desire to hold individuals responsible for their actions, and it is the major reason for a contemporary suggestion in Australia that the criminal justice system is experiencing a “crisis of confidence.

‘Riddle me this…?’ Would the world need superheroes if the law could actually deliver ‘justice’?

As an entertainment and cultural icon, the costumed superhero pervades our culture, and superhero imagery (in both literary and visual forms) is ubiquitous (Morris and Morris 2005: ix).1 Superhero stories present and explore many important and pressing concerns such as ethics, justice, crime, punishment and social responsibility. Originating in the visually stimulating form of comic books, superheroes have transitioned well into other forms of popular culture – ranging from children’s animated television series (such as Superhero Squad or Spectacular Spiderman) through to the slick special-effects laden Hollywood productions (such as Iron Man 2008, Fantastic Four 2005, The Avengers 2012) and the ofttimes violent and explicit ‘mature audience’ cinematic portrayals (such as Watchmen 2009). In any format, superheroes are generally set apart not just for their special powers or impressive gadgets, but for their fearlessness in the face of betrayal, chaos and destructive violence. They ‘pursue justice, defending the defenceless, helping those who cannot help themselves and overcoming evil with the force of good’ (Loeb and Morris 2005: 11)