@article{1480072,
      recid = {1480072},
      author = {Rapping, Elayne, },
      title = {Law and Justice as Seen on TV /},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {Law and Justice as Seen on TV examines the impact,  significance, and social and political problems raised by  the enormous onslaught of law-related television  programming, both fiction and nonfiction, in the years  since the rise of live televised trials as major media  events. The book weaves together the various strands-media  history and analysis, legal history and policy, and the  national turn to the political right in the last  decades-which gave birth to this trend and has kept it  thriving and growing, by leaps and bounds, to the present  day. Beginning with the history of courtroom drama on TV  and its various contradictions and shifts, since the late  1940s to the present, the book analyzes the various  entertainment series and genres that have so proliferated  in recent years, giving special attention to such popular  and influential series as "Law and Order" and "Cops." The  second section begins by charting the complex and contested  history of the coming of cameras to the courtroom and the  way in which that legal decision led to televised trials  and to the rise of Court TV. It examines as especially  interesting and important the major trials-such as those of  the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and Timothy  McVeigh-which helped to shape the way television came to  frame trials and their social implications for public  consumption. From there it examines major social  issues-gender violence, youth crime, family dysfunction,  victims' rights which, with the rise of the courtroom as a  major political and television arena, have come to be  viewed largely as legal issues to be discussed and  determined in legal terms by Americans in general.  Accessible and lucid, Law and Justice as Seen on TV  concludes with an examination of the broad implications of  this social and cultural trend, closing with some thoughts  about its expansion, on television and in the actual legal  arena, during the "war on terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1480072},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814769102.001.0001},
}