My scholarship engages the cultural analysis of law, asking how popular cultural
forms (of film and literature, for example) shape legal disputes and explanations. I have
written widely on the use of film in law (as a tool and a method of analysis) as well as
the use of law in film (its popular representation as a manner by which legal
consciousness is created and shaped). My new project concerns popular conceptions of
intellectual property and how those conceptions motivate and structure various statutory
intellectual property regimes.
I graduated from Stanford University and then went to graduate school at the University
of Michigan, where I earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature and a J.D. My dissertation
was on the genre of films I call "trial films" (courtroom dramas). I may be the
only person who enjoyed doing the exhaustive research required for a dissertation.
After law school I clerked for Judge Robert Keeton in the United States District Court
for the District of Massachusetts. And then I clerked for Judge Levin Campbell on the
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. I practiced law at Foley Hoag LLP
in Boston working primarily on intellectal property disputes and bankrupty matters.
Litigation was fun, but teaching and writing is much more so. I teach constitutional law
and intellectual property.
I live outside of Boston with my husband, a chef, and my two daughters, Charlotte
(pictured above) and Harper.
Intellectual Property
Law and Film
Law and Popular Culture
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A Witness to Justice, Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Vol. 46, Special Issue: Symposium on Law and Film (2009)
