| Summary: | As Fiss has put it, academics are in law schools, ‘to study law and teach their students what they happen to discover’ (‘‘Of Law and the River,’ and Nihilism and Academic Freedom’ (1985) 35 Journal of Legal Education 1 at p 26). The idea that all questions about legal phenomena that can be asked should be asked, that nothing should remain unexplored, is slowly being accepted in modern university law schools. Institutions that were once the repositories of ephemeral case-notes and palimpsest textbooks are now beginning to bulge with extended analyses of an ever-increasing range of areas. Legal academics who were scribes have become explorers. Each day in the law school brings a new subject for enquiry and a new methodology to use in that enquiry. In this context an edited collection of essays on law and popular culture, one example amongst a number of recent or forthcoming publications on this subject, occasions surprise only at that the time that it has taken for law schools to turn their gaze in this particular direction. The 36 essays in this volume, together with Freeman’s introduction, testify to the intellectual depth, vitality and diversity that are already to be found in this area. At the same time they also serve to underscore the work that still needs to be done. Popular culture is franchising and with McDonaldization (Ahdar), Sendak’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (Manderson), the outlaw country music of Johnny Cash (Ball), the cinema of Kiesloswski (Sherwin), the novels of JG Ballard (Williams and, separately, Gearey) and much more the essays range far and wide.
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