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Ordinary Heroes vs. Failed Lawyers—Public Interest Litigation in Erin Brockovich and Other Contemporary Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Michael McCann  and
William Haltom
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Abstract

Although feature films may overpraise lawyers and civil courts as means of securing justice, they caricature lawyers and litigation. Analysis of Erin Brockovich (directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by Danny DeVito, et al., 2000) reveals four motifs—two favorable and two unfavorable to public‐interest litigants and litigation—that characterize similar films in the last decades: Class Action (1991), The Rainmaker (1997), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), A Civil Action (1998), The Insider (1999), Runaway Jury (2003), and North Country (2005). These filmic populist romances promote ordinary heroines (mostly) who redeem a problematic system through common sense and everyday virtue rather than through laws, lawyers, and litigation.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Fall 2008 , pp. 1043 - 1070
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2008 

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Footnotes

Movie Reviewed: Erin Brockovich 2000. (Director: Steven Soderbergh. Produced by Danny DeVito, John Hardy, Gail Lyon, Carla Santos Shamberg, Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher.)

The authors wish to thank Steve Melli, Thomas Hilbink, Laura Beth Nielsen, and Richard Sherwin for comments on variants of this manuscript.

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