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Full-Text Articles in Law
Honey, You're No June Cleaver: The Power Of "Dropping Pop" To Persuade, Victoria S. Salzmann
Honey, You're No June Cleaver: The Power Of "Dropping Pop" To Persuade, Victoria S. Salzmann
Maine Law Review
Imagine a contentious child-custody hearing in which the husband is testifying about his wife's behavior. If he were to state “she is no June Cleaver,” that testimony would have an immediate impact upon those present. Most people would understand that the husband was making a reference to Mrs. Ward Cleaver, the pearl-clad mother figure from the popular 1950s television show Leave It to Beaver. However, the reference does more than simply call to mind 1950s television. It is a vivid popular-culture allusion that immediately taps into the psyche of anyone familiar with the show. It tells the listener that the …
Popular Culture And Legal Pluralism: Narrative As Law. By Wendy A. Adams [Book Review], Dana Neacsu
Popular Culture And Legal Pluralism: Narrative As Law. By Wendy A. Adams [Book Review], Dana Neacsu
Law Faculty Publications
Wendy Adams’ book is published in Routledge's “Law, Justice, and Power” series, edited by Austin Sarat. Like Sarat, Adams, who teaches law at McGill University, belongs to the school of "cultural studies of law". Thus, her writing is refreshingly cosmopolitan and interdisciplinary. Her project is to build a “legal narrative,” which is a framework for popular culture as law, where illegal acts could easily become re-imagined in an alternative legality. She argues that “legal texts originating with the state may well be of less significance in creating legal meaning in our lives than the representations of law in popular culture.”