This land is Your Land: Judicial Interpretation Illustrated #2

In an earlier post, I advanced the position that the process and results of judicial interpretation can be illustrated by making analogy to the process of music interpretation. Popular music can be a particularly effective device to illustrate complex legal principles. Since students already know and understand popular music and how it works, making proper analogy between what is well understood and what needs to be learned promotes understanding.

Below are six videos of the song, This Land is Your Land, beginning with a version by author/composer/performer, Woody Guthrie. If Guthrie's version is "the law," then what happens when the law is interpreted by other judges.  The song maintains certain consistency of melody and lyrics, but problematic verses are removed and tempo, arrangement and overall effect vary significantly.

This progression of videos may also be used to illustrate, more specifically, the topic of statutory interpretation along the lines as described in this earlier post.
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Click on the image below to view the energetic performance of the Fabulous Echoes:

The Right to Keep and Bear Cellphones

Many times since the Supreme Court’s decision in DC v. Heller, I have found myself mulling over the ramifications of the following quote:

If, as they believe, the Second Amendment right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as a member of an organized militia, it does not assure the existence of a “citizens’ militia” as a safeguard against tyranny.

- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)

Although the quote applies directly to the constitutional language referring to the right to “keep and bear arms,” what are the broader implications? Is there a citizen’s right to other means of safeguarding against tyranny?  For instance, this article documents the governmental practice of prosecuting persons who use their cell phones to videotape police officers publicly performing their duties. In some instances, the language of statutes designed to combat wiretapping or voyeurism is tortured to the extreme to support a prosecution. If the right to bear arms is a personal right in order to guard against tyranny, then can it not also be argued that there is a right to record allegedly tyrannical conduct for the same purpose? When a citizen is faced with conduct from a government official that the citizen believes is dangerously tyrannical, which response contributes more effectively to an orderly society; the citizen organizing a militia to start a revolution, or the citizen recording the allegedly wrongful conduct on her cell phone for later use in legal proceedings or for media scrutiny?

Inescapable Logic and a "Fair Cop"

A trial, medieval style.  In what ways has the trial process changed since then? 

Note the inescapable logic leading up to the determination of guilt. The accused ultimately admits it was a "fair cop."

Counteroffer: From My Cousin Vinny

Rarely is real life contract negotiation as stilted and mechanical as a formal offer, rejection, counterofffer, acceptance, etc.. Students have to sift through the way people actually communicate to identify the language, conduct, or other expressions of intent that make up the necessary elements of mutual assent for contract formation.  The following clip from the movie My Cousin Vinny includes a comical "contract" negotiation including, as Vinnie points out, a counteroffer.

Click on the image below to go to the video site:


Another option:

Statutory Interpretation Illustrated

I frequently use music in class to illustrate a legal principle.  My theory is generally that students understand how music "works." Therefore, music can be used as a scaffold to assist understanding of more complex principles.

I assign the videos below, all of various versions of the song, The First Cut is the Deepest, to illustrate the concept of statutory interpretation. Start with the performance of the composer/lyricist, Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam).  He wrote "the law" as expressed in the melody, lyrics, tempo, arrangement and overall feeling of his performance. Next, PP Arnold interprets the law by adding an R&B tempo and arrangement. Linda Ronstadt’s version tracks close to Arnold’s precedent, but adds energy and richness. In the chorus of Ronstadt’s version, there is a slight but noticeable change in the lyrics of the chorus, transferring focus from the “other” in the story to the “self” and, thereby, altering the meaning. Rod Stewart’s performance slows the tempo, stylistically shifting the feel of the song to more of an acoustic rock ballad and makes two notable textual and substantive changes.  In the third line of the first verse Stewart changes the word “got” to “have.” The word change does not affect the meaning of the sentence and is arguably a grammatical improvement.  However, the change destroys the three-line rhyming scheme of the verse as composed and falls more clumsily on the ear of the audience.  Even more notably, Stewart truncates the chorus, bringing it to a close after only two lines of the original three-line rhyming scheme and abandoning the reiteration of the “first cut” reference.  Sheryl Crow’s popular version matches Stewart’s version, embracing and solidifying in audience memory both the clumsiness of the first verse and the truncated, unfinished sounding chorus over the composer’s own aesthetic.  Crow has confirmed in interviews that she did not return to the original text in arranging her version because she knew Stewart’s version as precedent and “heard” the song principally in that way. Ultimately, she recorded the song as it sounded right to her, regardless of the composer’s intent.  Finally, Papa Dee’s version bears the least resemblance to the Cat Steven’s original despite similarity in melody and lyrics.  Each interpretation of the original (the statute) results in different meaning while retaining some measure of fidelity to the original composition. 

A tip of the hat should go to Ken Schneyer from Johnson and Wales who has suggested that a better example may be found by using a song that was composed but never performed by the composer.  (More like a legislature which must leave "performance" of the staute to the courts.)  He has suggested using Over the Rainbow.  I think that is also an excellent example.

Law Music Video - Who Put The Benzadrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?

This week's installment in the "Law Music Videos" series is Who Put The Benzadrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? by the Chevalier Brothers. Certainly this is tortious conduct! 

Law music videos played before your class starts will positively contribute to learning.

Trial By Jury

From the Georgia Civil Justice Foundation comes this video on Trial by Jury. 

Click on the image below to start the video: