Law Commons^™

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

Virtue: A Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jessica Mcgivney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a screenplay for an imagined "biopic" of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft has already been the subject of many biographies, each presenting their authors' own understanding of her life. Here, I present my view, guided -- to varying and sometimes conflicting degrees -- by my understanding of her own fictionalized autobiographical efforts; by my understanding of Godwin's attempted work in his Memoir of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman; by the idea that her beliefs about virtue and freedom drove her forward through her own life; by the needs of narrative structure and the challenges …

Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American pickpocket, blackmailer, con-woman, and bank robber. She was raised in New York City's underworld, by Jewish immigrant parents who were criminals that trained their children to pick pockets and shoplift. "Pretty Sophie" possessed a rare combination of skill at thievery, intellect, guts and beauty and became the woman Herbert Ashbury described in Gangs of New York as, "the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced." Newspapers around the world chronicled Sophie's exploits for more than sixty years, because her life read like a novel. Her mentor was another forgotten woman who held a …

'A Literary Man & A Merchant': The Legal Career Of Sir William Young, William H. Laurence

PhD Dissertations

Sir William Young (1799-1887) of Halifax was a leading lawyer, served as Attorney General, promoted legal reforms in the Assembly, sat as Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, and promoted the establishment of Dalhousie University's Faculty of Law. He thereby fulfilled a variety of roles in his pursuit of two professional goals he had set at an early age, namely material success and intellectual interest. Nonetheless, his career in the law has been mostly ignored. By examining Young's legal career in detail, especially by paying attention to the duties he performed in his professional roles, this thesis seeks …

Governor James G. Scrugham And The Search For Economic Prosperity For Nevada, 1923--1927, Paul Robert Bruno

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

James G. Scrugham, Nevada's 14 th governor, assumed office during the economic downturn of the early 1920s. The Comstock, and Tonopah - Goldfield mining boom days were in the past, and the new governor made development of a sustainable economic model for the state the top priority of his administration.

Governor Scrugham focused on education, irrigation, parks, and highways as vehicles for economic development, and significant accomplishments were made in all these areas during his term. The governor's initiatives, however, failed to immediately alter the state's economy away from agriculture and mining. The passage of the gambling and divorce bill …