Ahead of our inaugural Discussions on 4-5 July at St Mary's
University, Twickenham, we are happy to start publishing a series of abstracts
of papers that will be presented at the conference. Registration remains open -
see previous post for the details.
First up is this great-looking paper from Lisa Macklem (University
of Western Ontario): 'The Law Doesn’t Have to be Ugly or Boring: A Legal
Education in Pictures'. It sounds like it will be a fantastic exploration of
how comics can improve legal education.
Access to justice can be thwarted by a basic
misunderstanding of or lack of education about the law. Bound by Law? and
Music: A History of Theft by James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins, and Keith Aoki,
produced by the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law, layer
the lessons of fair use through the use of metaphor, story, and their own
creative commons licenses. Bound by Law? was intended for an audience in the
entertainment industry to help dispel myths about their own rights. Cory
Doctorow points out that Bound by Law? “is a sensible book about a ridiculous
subject. It’s an example of the principle it illustrates” (Introduction). The
authors noted that “readers seemed to prefer comic books to our law review
articles” (253). Comics provide a non-threatening and non-intimidating medium
that welcome readers in who are more familiar and comfortable with the artistic
ways of making meaning between word and picture than with the legalese of
statutes or law textbooks. Bound by Law? had a specific audience in mind, but
the story and medium can educate a broader audience, and Music: A History of
Theft deepens the discussion begun in the first volume, adding a further layer
of meaning to the principles set out in Bound by Law? This paper will examine
the traditional comics tropes that are used to make this difficult subject more
accessible without losing academic rigor, proving that the law can be as
beautiful as the art it seeks to both nurture and protect.
Lisa Macklem is a PhD Candidate in Law at the University of
Western Ontario, Lisa’s Canadian JD is with a specialization in Intellectual
Property and Information Technology. Her American LLM is with a specialization
in Entertainment and Media law. Lisa holds an MA in Media Studies, and is on
the editorial board of The Journal of Fandom Studies and previously was a
student editor and then a member of the alumni editorial board for the ABA
Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law.
Further Reading:
Aoki, Keith, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins. Tales From the
Public Domain: Bound by Law? Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain,
2006, 2008. https://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital/
---. Tales From the Public Domain: Theft: A History of
Music. Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, 2017.
https://law.duke.edu/musiccomic/
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