Law and Magic Blog

Priests Carry Out Book Burning To Defeat Sorcery

According to this article from the Guardian, some Polish Catholic priests have carried out a book burning, which they documented and posted on Facebook. They claimed that the books that they torched, including a Harry Potter novel, promoted sorcery. More here and here from Newser. 

Book burning has a long history, as this Smithsonian Magazine article documents. 

Books carry forward ideas.  Some people seem to think that if they burn the representations of ideas, they can stamp out the ideas themselves. Amazingly, the ideas just blaze back with even more power. 

A Little More Interest In "Carter Beats the Devil"

Phil Lord and Chris Miller ("21 Jump Street") are trying to bring "Carter Beats the Devil" to the big screen. Tom Cruise was interested in this project some time ago, but his option apparently lapsed and so did the film. Now, still snoozing at Warner Brothers, the movie project has caught the attention of Mr. Lord and Mr. Miller, whose film "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" was a huge success in 2009. More here from the Hollywood Reporter.

The Wizard of Oz and Witness Examination

Stephen D. Easton suggests using the film The Wizard of Oz to help law students learn the techniques of direct and cross examination of witnesses. Read his article "`Toto, I Have a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore': Using the Wizard of Oz to Introduce Students to the Skills of Witness Examination." It's published at 12 Clinical L. Rev. 283 (2006). Here's the abstract.

In the classroom, exercises designed to give students experience questioning witnesses before handling real cases for clients in clinics or in practice usually involve simulations. In these simulations, a student "witness" is asked to memorize a sheet of facts that she hypothetically "observed." Unfortunately, this leads to a dynamic quite different than the one students will face when questioning their clinic clients or other witnesses. An actor pretending to be someone else will struggle as a witness, of course, but the struggles will be to try to remember something on the "fact sheet" or to fill in its gaps.

This article outlines an exercise that clinic and trial advocacy instructors can use, with very little advance preparation, to present a more realistic experience. In this simulation, the "witnesses," though fellow students, will struggle not with fictional memories, but with their own memories, when they take the stand as "Dorothy" from The Wizard of Oz. As student attorneys ask questions to try to elicit certain facts that Dorothy observed, they see themselves and other students struggle to obtain the desired testimony. They also see Dorothy answer questions correctly, incorrectly, and not at all (i.e., "I do not know" or "I do not remember"). Even after a witness who saw the movie the previous night takes the stand, challenges and problems continue. The students' struggles provide opportunities for the instructor to introduce important lessons about direct and, to a more limited extent, cross-examination.

Download the Article from SSRN here.

New Derren Brown Book Forthcoming

Mentalist Derren Brown's new book Confessions of a Conjuror is coming to the U.S. (and elsewhere) in mid-October. The Kindle edition will appear around the same time. Mr. Brown's title recalls that of Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin's famous autobiography, variously translated as Confessions (or) Memoirs of a Conjuror.

The Early Popular Culture of Amazement

From Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon talks with William Kalush about the history of magic.

For the history of the regulation of magic, start with Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, first published in 1584. Full text here. Scot wanted to disabuse his contemporaries of the notion that witches really existed, and that instead what they believed was the result of witchcraft was actually tricks, illusion, or misapprehension brought on by mental disability or disease. Scot actually pointed out that many "witches" were also "women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles; poor, and sullen, superstitious, and papists; or such as know no religion: in whose drowsy minds the devil hath gotten a fine seat..." (thus, people who are marginalized in the community and likely to be demonized by others).

However, James VI of Scotland (I of England) believed in witches (and burned a fair number) and rejected Scot's view. He wrote the Daemonologie in response and after he came to the English throne, made use of Elizabeth I's witchcraft act (5 Eliz. 1, passed 1562, amended 2 Jac. I, 1604) with great relish.

Owen Davies, A History of Grimoires (2009).

Matthew Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (2003).

And the Next Magician Movie Will Be...

So, now that Tom Cruise has abandoned (apparently) The War Magician (based on David Fisher's book), the magician as hero market is wide open. Warner Brothers has picked up the option on Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil, which was originally optioned to be made into an AMC series but never emerged on the small screen. Now it looks like it may be headed for filmdom. Michael Gilio will turn the novel into a script and Jon Shestack will produce. More here.

A Nice Mention...

Of Law and Magic as an "unusual law book" over at the Duke Law Library's blog. And Above the Law asks, "Can practicing magic help you in practicing law? Perhaps this subject is addressed in the new book, Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays," and citing the blog Katz Justice.

Well, since you ask, check out Noel Marcovecchio's "Hocus Ipsa Loquitur: The Affinity Between Law and Magic," and Ken Trombly's "Conjuring and the Courtroom: All I Needed To Know About Trying Cases I Learned By Doing Magic Shows," well as the introduction by Judge Loren A. Smith.

Stay Out of the Cemetery

Eric Gouvin's essay "On Death and Magic: Law, Necromancy and the Great Beyond," published in Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Carolina Academic Press) gets a nice mention in a new post on the Wilson Quarterly's blog Findings. The author discusses our curiosity about the dead, and when it's all right to disturb mortal remains.

But what, he says, "if it’s the dead who disturb the living? That can depress property values, Eric J. Gouvin writes in Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Carolina Academic Press). In two in­stances, courts tried to protect unwary buyers." Keep reading here. 

Law & Magic: A Collection of Essays Now Available

The book Law & Magic: A Collection of Essays made its debut at the AALS meeting in New Orleans. It's available at CAP's website (discount!) and also via amazon.com and bn.com.

New Book On Harry Potter and the Law Forthcoming From Carolina Academic Press

Forthcoming in January 2010 from Carolina Academic Press, The Law and Harry Potter, edited by Jeffrey E. Thomas and Franklin G. Snyder. Here's a description from the website.

This volume considers the depiction of law and legal institutions in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. It contains more than twenty chapters by legal academics from the U.S. and abroad. The chapters are organized in five sections: Legal Traditions and Institutions, Crimes and Punishments, Harry Potter and Identity, the Wizard Economy, and Harry Potter as an Archetype. Some chapters analyze the way law and legal institutions are portrayed, and what these portrayals teach us about concepts such as morality, justice, and difference. Other chapters use examples from the narratives to illustrate or analyze legal issues, such as human rights, actual innocence, and legal pedagogy. The volume is suitable for undergraduate or law school courses, and will be of interest to those Harry Potter fans who also have an interest in law and the legal profession.

Get a ten percent discount by ordering from the website. (Full disclosure: CAP is my publisher as well).