The celluloid courtroom

the long version

"The genre of legal cinema is an extensive and revealing one, often depicting lawyers, clients, criminals, judges, and juries not as they actually are, but as we would like them to be. The idealized courtroom of many legal movies tells us a great deal about what we think of our justice system and what we want it to reflect about America, but the films in the genre vary widely in how they do this. From To Kill a Mockingbird to Liar, Liar, from A Time to Kill to Twelve Angry Men, we see certain stereotypes repeated again and again: the judge as stern referee, the jury as an ultimately fair body of decision makers, the lawyer as hardworking and passionate fighter for the underdog. In this new and comprehensive study of this under-studied category of film, author Ross D. Levi argues that, contrary to popular belief, legal movies show us a system that is far more fair than our actual one, with corruption downplayed and greed made subordinate to compassion and compromise."--BOOK JACKET.