ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION This chapter seeks to set out the terrain on which the teaching and study of legal film is based, and to consider the boundaries to this evolving area. In that sense this chapter acts as a method of orientation and provides the means to navigate the text as a whole. It contains a number of important interlocking elements that are vital to the law and film dimension. First, we consider the wider issue of the contemporary study of the relationship between law and popular culture, and how film and the law intersect within this broader field. Second, we analyse how films have been used as an aid to teaching in general, and then law teaching more specifically. Third, we investigate the contemporary academic work in the area of film and the law. Finally, we attempt to define the ‘law film’. In a sense this is perhaps the most difficult issue to address, and is a theme that pervades the book as a whole. As we will show, the lines of demarcation between what is and what is not a law film are, at best, unclear, yet clarification remains a central need. There is also the additional question of how legal theory and film theory can intersect with respect to legal films. It is perhaps necessary to indicate at the outset that we are approaching this subject as lawyers with backgrounds more rooted in legal theory than with any specialist expertise in film theory. We have sought, wherever possible, to engage with some aspects of film theory and it is clear that this is a potentially profitable area of future enquiry. Clearly some understanding of the rich history of work that seeks to explain the dynamics of film is very useful. For example, we have endeavoured to apply the concept of genre though, it must be said, not without some difficulty, much of which we ascribe to the type of film we are examining.1
