Law Commons^™

Preempting Justice: “Precrime” In Fiction And In Fact, Mark C. Niles

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story The Minority Report, we see stylistically edited, disjointed images that appear to depict a man murdering two lovers. It is soon made clear that the images are the video representations of precognitive predictions of a future crime that were made by members of a futuristic crime prevention agency.

Later in the film, we see the same man, at home with his wife—the woman he is shown murdering in the earlier images—and it becomes clear that we are watching the last few moments …