Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

Law in Culture and Society
later generations digging in the ruins, discover intact only the archives
of NBC Television. The diggers would certainly get a distorted picture
of the legal system. They would learn little or nothing about property
law, tax law, regulation of business, and very little about tort law or
even family law; but they would find an enormous amount of material
on police, murder, deviance, rape and organized crime . . . Crime
shows, for example, overrepresent violent crimes; shoplifting is no great
audience-holder, but murder is. A study of prime-time TV in 1972
counted 26 murders and 20 cases of aggravated assault out of 119 total
crimes in a single week; there were only two burglaries and three cases
of drug possession". 18
Similar considerations apply to the portrayal of law in programmes
such as Rumpole or LA Law, in classic and popular novels and
in courtroom scenes in films and soap operas. In that context
Friedman's warnings are important: we should not assume that
newspapers, the media or fiction deal with all aspects of law in
society or legal practice; nor should we expect them to present a
sociologically accurate or balanced picture of the realities of the
law in action; nor, merely by looking at books and films, can we
tell to what extent they either reflect or influence how ordinary
people perceive or understand law.
Nevertheless the newspaper exercise and the book shop fantasy
illustrate some valid points: first, the law is ubiquitous—it pervades
nearly all aspects of our lives, whether or not we realise it. Indeed,
it may be because we are so dependent on law that it is so prominent
in the media, even if its reflection is distorted. Secondly everyone
in society has had a great deal of direct and indirect exposure
to matters legal, but what they have learned, the impressions they
have gained may not be representative or accurate. "Life in America,
and in the West in general", says Friedman, "is a vast diffuse
school of Law". 19 But, one might add, you do not want to believe
all you learn in school. Thirdly, law as a subject of formal study
is important and can be interesting; yet there is a puzzle about the
relationship between law as a discipline and law in culture and
society. For example, if one does penetrate to the law section in a
remote part of a good second-hand book shop one is still likely
to find plenty of evidence for the old image of heavy, daunting,
impenetrable, technical, fustian, tomes with incomprehensible
titles that suggest a subject that is mysterious and remote from
common sense and everyday experience. More like an old testament
litany, perhaps: Byles on Bills, Cheshire on Conflicts, Bodkin
on Champerty, Gale on Easements, Scrutton on Charterparties,
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