Course Home Page for Trials Of The Century: Lit.

Fall 2008
Law No.: LAW7833
Sched. No.: 30303

Trials of the Century: Literary and Legal Representations of Great Criminal Truth*
Section 0001
X
Coughlin, Anne M

Administrative Information:

Days, Times (Room):	T, 1815-2015 (WB 127)
Credits:	3	Type:	Seminar
Capacity:	16^{This information is current as of}^{08/29/2008 06:18:10 PM}^
Current Enrollment:	16 ^{This information is current as of}^{08/29/2008 06:18:10 PM}^

Course Description:

This seminar will examine a number of famous, even sensational, criminal trials in order to ask a set of intersecting questions. What makes a sensational criminal trial sensational? What commonalities, if any, are shared by those trials that capture our cultural imagination? What role do sensational criminal trials have in our popular conception of law and justice, and how, if at all, does this cultural significance matter for how we understand "ordinary" criminal trials? Do sensational trials ever prompt significant reforms in substantive crime definitions, criminal procedure rules, or rules of evidence? We will especially focus on rhetorical and narrative strategies for representing the facts, as well as the legal rules, adversarial norms, and ideological stakes, in such trials. How are sensational criminal trials represented in legal materials, in non-fiction accounts, in literary depictions and on film? How are the facts of the case made and remade within various genres, from the testimony of the trial itself, through appellate briefs, through both fictional and journalistic accounts? What is the relation, if any, between genre and what is depicted and how? Does comparing the conduct of the trial itself to later depictions reveal anything of importance about how we construct our ideas of law, authority, evidence, or responsibility? Texts for the course will include trial transcripts, cases, briefs, works of non-fiction, works of literature, and films. We will study, among others, the trials of Socrates, Lizzie Borden, Oscar Wilde, John Scopes, the Scottsboro boys, Leopold & Loeb, and O.J. Simpson. Students will be expected to undertake and present their own case study of a significant trial and its representations. For those who want to get a jump on the reading over the summer, our texts will include: Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; Merlin Holland, The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde; James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro; William Shakespeare, Othello

ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENT: Attendance at the first class meeting is mandatory; students who do not attend will be dropped.
COURSE REQUIREMENT: Several short response papers and a research paper