It was the McCarthy hearings which really boosted politics into the arena of electronic media entertainment - 'arena' in the sense that, in keeping with the majority of tele-movies and series, this entertaimnent is grounded in a combative system in which one adversary must triumph over another in a display of strength and wit (in that order, for most) which provides the entertainment. With the addition of discourses of myth and institutional power, the entertaining spectacle ofgood vs bad took on urgency in the 1950s hearings. They did again in 1991 in what was variously called the Hill vs Thomas spectacle, travesty, and cultural event, with its narratives of success over impoverished beginnings, female hysteria, male vulnerability, and, foremost and most obscuring, race, race, race.

Although the practice of law has long provided source material for works of fiction in literature, drama and film, the transformation of the judicial process into spectacle is commonly perceived as a serious problem. However, an analysis of trials that received heavy media exposure, and of various genres of fiction based on legal cases, demonstrates that it is crucial to distinguish between detrimental excesses and the fundamental characteristics of judicial proceedings: they are communicative events bringing together performers and spectators for a session whose efficacy demands their co-presence in a determined space and time. Since the rendering of justice is, essentially, a form of spectacle, we need to question the exact role of fiction in both: while the presence of fiction does not invalidate a trial, from a legal perspective, some real trials are essentially shows whose main purpose is entertainment or propaganda.

Normative theories of law conceive the courtroom as a geometrically delineated, politically neutral, and linguistically transparent space designed for a fair and orderly administration of justice. The trial, the most legalistic of all legal acts, is widely regarded as a site of truth and justice elevated above and beyond the expediency of ideology and politics. These conceptions are further underpinned by certain normative understandings of sovereignty, the subject, and politics where sovereignty is conceived as self-instituting and self-limiting; the subject is understood as an autonomous and rational being capable of self-consciousness and self-representation; and politics is posited as the exercise of reason in the public sphere. In this article, I argue that such a normative conceptualization of the criminal trial and the courtroom not only ignores structures of power and privilege that produce inequalities but also forecloses possibilities for transformative judicial praxis. Dr...

Few people outside certain specialized sectors of the press and the legal profession have any particular reason to read the increasingly voluminous opinions through which the Justices of the Supreme Court explain their interpretations of the Constitution and laws. Most of what the public knows about the Supreme Court necessarily comes from the press. That fact raises questions of considerable importance to the functioning of our constitutional democracy: How, for example, does the press describe the work of the Supreme Court? And has the way in which the press describes the work of the Court changed over the past several decades? This Article seeks to address those questions by comparing the language used in print media coverage of two highly salient cases involving similar legal issues decided fifty years apart: Brown v. Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. Our study suggests that, at least in highly salient cases, the nature of print media coverage may well have changed dramatically during that fifty-year interval. More specifically, our study suggests that while the mid-twentieth century press described the Court’s decisions largely in terms of the legal questions presented, the contemporary press seems more likely to describe the Court’s decisions in non-legal terms—as something resembling a spectacle, in which unelected judges are presumed to decide cases, not on properly contested legal grounds, but based on their respective political commitments. That conclusion is striking. First, it suggests that in the ongoing scholarly debate over the nature of the Justices’ approach to their work, the press has chosen sides. Rather than closely interrogating the Court’s work to determine whether particular analyses and results can be defended on legal grounds, contemporary reporting seems to proceed on the assumption that that question lacks salience—because we already know that the Justices’ political views and allegiances are the true drivers of Supreme Court decisions. Thus, contemporary press coverage tends to emphasize such factors as the political affiliation of the president who appointed a particular Justice. Second, it raises questions about the way in which the contemporary press is discharging its responsibility to educate the public about the Court and its work. It also raises the possibility that the public will become predisposed to doubt the Court’s legitimacy, and, indeed, the very legitimacy of the American system of judicial review. If the Court’s decisions really reflect nothing more than the Justices’ political predilections and commitments, or those of the elites to which they belong, it is important for the public to know that. Nothing could be more important than discovering and documenting the fact that the Justices wear no clothes. On the other hand, whether Supreme Court decisions deserve to be viewed in that way is a question that needs to be tested through a careful examination of the Court’s work product. It is something to be proved rather than presumed. The contemporary print media’s seemingly casual assumption that the main point about reporting on the Supreme Court is not to test the validity of the Court’s reasoning, and explore its flaws, but to try to trace connections between the Justices’ voting behavior and their political or other commitments, may well corrode public confidence in the Court. If that occurs unnecessarily, and without adequate justification, the consequences for the institution of judicial review may well be dire. Moreover, if the public’s expectations are lowered, so too may be the standards the Justices set for themselves and each other. In other words, if the press leads us to believe that the Court’s work product is nothing more than politics, that may well become a self fulfilling prophecy—if it has not already happened.