Full Description
Vincenzo Tomeo's pioneering research in the 1960s and 1970s drew attention to the importance of popular culture in our understanding of the operation of the justice system. He was the first to recognize that how laws are interpreted and put into effect depends heavily on how the public understand them. This understanding comes from the ideas and understanding which the public have about the justice system. These ideas, in an era of mass popular culture, come largely from film. In his groundbreaking research he examined how judges and the police were viewed in popular film. He also stressed the importance of popular culture as opposed to classical accounts of law and justice and showed how these meshed with law and justice on film. The Judge on the Screen preceded the attention paid to popular culture by over a decade and provided empirical data some thirty years before any such work was carried out by Anglo-American and other European scholars. This classic work now appears for the first time in an English translation with additional supporting materials.
Contents
Memories of Vincenzo Tomeo
Vincenzo Ferrari
Il Giudice Sullo Schermo: A Classic in the Study of Popular Legal Culture, Finally Reborn
Ferdinando Spina
Locating Vincenzo Tomeo's "Il Giudice Sullo Schermo" in Law and Popular Culture Scholarship: A Personal Reflection
Peter Robson
The Judge on Screen by Vincenzo Tomeo
Foreword
Preface
Chapter One: The Image of the Judge in Mass Culture
Chapter Two: The Judge and the Trial in Four Italian Films
Chapter Three: The Public Reaction to the Film: The Judge as Hero
Chapter Four: The Public Reaction to the Film: The Problem of Justice
Chapter Five: The Judge as Interpreter of Conflict
Appendices
Note on Methodology
I. In the Name of the Law
II. City on Trial
III. The Magistrate
IV. Confessions of a Police Chief
Questionnaire for the Film: The Magistrate
