Academic literature on the topic 'American Legal drama'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the lists of relevant articles, books, theses, conference reports, and other scholarly sources on the topic 'American Legal drama.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Journal articles on the topic "American Legal drama"
1
Bainbridge, Jason. "‘Rafferty's Rules’: Australian Legal Dramas and the Representation of Law." Media International Australia 118, no. 1 (February 2006): 136–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1329878x0611800116.
Full textAbstract:
This paper explores the problems involved in representing the Australian legal system on film and television, how these problems are addressed, and what commentary these texts are making about the practice of law in Australia. It is suggested that the formal and dress requirements of the Australian legal system make the trial process a ritual based around the reification of the lawyer and the stigmatisation of the accused — in short, a degradation ceremony — and that Australian legal dramas reflect this. But because of this lack of dynamism in the courtroom, Australian legal dramas must seek alternative sits of drama — often domestic, and invariably outside the courtroom. In this way, they present a more holistic view of the lawyer/judge's life, reinterpreting court proceedings (and the institution of law itself) as a repressed set-up by actively displacing dramatic tension outside the courtroom, thus denying the courtroom the centrality it occupies in American representations and, by extension, American culture.
2
Coetser, J. L. "Die dieper reg (N.P. van Wyk Louw): Royce, regsidee, resepsie." Literator 15, no. 2 (May 2, 1994): 35–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/lit.v15i2.662.
Full textAbstract:
In an archival document playwright N.P. van Wyk Louw recognizes the influence of the American philosopher Josiah Royce (I855-I916) on his choral drama, Die dieper reg. Louw specifically attends to the explanation of Royce's concept of loyalty to loyalty - a concept which was initially used in The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908). Royce's concept has a direct bearing on the legal and ethical stance implied in the drama. The concept may also be related to the article "Die ewige trek", which Louw published in 1938. Literary critics such as Opperman, Van Rensburg and Olivier have directed their attention to the legal and ethical stance in Die dieper reg. However, until now, no attention has been paid to the influence Royce had on Die dieper reg. This article traces part of the influence Royce exerted on the work.
3
Ahmed, Assist Instructor Shirin Kamal. "The Spousal Abuse of Women in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles." ALUSTATH JOURNAL FOR HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 224, no. 1 (October 24, 2018): 101–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.36473/ujhss.v224i1.251.
Full textAbstract:
This research plans to focus on the spousal abuse of women in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) is one of the remarkable American female playwrights whose main literary concern is focusing on women issues. The drama of Trifles is considered her master piece in which she sympathises with the American abused women and speaks up for them. American woman is still suffering from spousal abuse but in the early 20thcentury this problem was ignored, excused or denied because women did not have their legal rights and were treated as being inferior than men. The system then gave men the authority over women in all aspects of society even at home. When speaking about abused women, critics’ main concern is the physical effects of the abuse ignoring other types of the spousal abuse, their impacts and consequences. Through her realistic drama of Trifles, Glaspell exposes different types of spousal abuse which are important as the physical onesince they have bad impact on the victims. This research will analysethe types of spousal abuse in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, their impact and consequences.
4
Zottola, Angela. "Legal Drama and Audiovisual Translation: The Role of Legal English in the Construction of Stereotyped Representations." Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 49, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 247–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/slgr-2017-0015.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractConsidering the overwhelming amount of media products that we are subjected to in the 21stcentury and the way in which those inevitably influence our perception of reality, this research pays specific attention to the role of the media in the construction and enhancement of stereotypes in everyday life, via the language or, more specifically, specialized languages. In particular, this paper aims to investigate an American legal TV series in order to analyze the way in which legal English is used in dialogues. The major research questions are: to what extent such a kind of specialized discourse may be really understood by the greater audience? How does legal drama participate in the shaping of stereotypes relating to the legal environment in the country where it is produced, and cross-culturally, bearing in mind the prominence of “made in the USA” products in the television programming across the world? Ultimately, in the light of the previous questions, should the growing field of research in audiovisual translation extend its investigation into the area of legal English? Taking into consideration the seminal work of Pedersen (2008) and Diaz Cintas (2008) in the field of Audiovisual Translation (AVT), the study will examine the subtitling techniques employed for this atypical genre. Through the analysis of a corpus comprising several dialogues from a collection of episodes of the legal show Reckless, the paper will mostly focus on gender representations and their most common linguistically enhanced stereotypes.
5
Klapper, Melissa R. "The Drama of 1916: The American Jewish Community, Birth Control, and Two Yiddish Plays." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 12, no. 4 (October 2013): 502–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1537781413000340.
Full textAbstract:
Jewish women played important roles in many aspects of the birth control movement, as activists, consumers, and distributors. Yet just as the legal system was not yet sure what to make of contraception, neither was the American Jewish community. While hundreds of thousands of Jewish women clearly limited their family size, both ambivalence toward birth control and pockets of outright opposition also persisted. This essay briefly examines the developments in the birth control movement during the pivotal year of 1916 in which Jewish women played important roles. The essay then turns to analysis of two Yiddish plays on the topic written that year. Neither play has ever before been translated in full. Because the Yiddish theater was a central American Jewish cultural institution, the production of plays on the subject of birth control in 1916 dramatized the importance of the issue within the American Jewish community. Though the plays quite possibly loom larger in retrospect than they did at the time and are notable more for content than literary merit, they nonetheless provide a critical lens through which to explore the complex relationship between American Jewry and the birth control movement.
6
Fadhillah, Mutia Siti. "Movie Review "The Rainmaker (1997)" Produced by American Zoetrop Constellations Films." Semarang State University Undergraduate Law and Society Review 2, no. 1 (January 30, 2022): 115–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.15294/lsr.v2i1.54926.
Full textAbstract:
The Rainmaker is a 1997 American legal drama film based on John Grisham's 1995 novel of the same name, and written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, Roy Scheider,Mickey Rourke, Virginia Madsen, Mary Kay Place and Teresa Wright in her final film role. Differences from the novel. The film follows the book in most details, but changes the order of events: in the book, the confrontation ending with Rudy's self-defense killing of Kelly's abusive husband occurs after the end of the trial, not during. Also, the film leaves out an important piece of information from the book that was a central point of Rudy's case: the fact that the leukemia victim had an identical twin, which would have made a transplant virtually certain to work as it would have been a perfect genetic match.
7
Kubisz, Marzena. "Kobieta przy (filmowym) stole. Wegetarianizm, polityka mięsa i płeć kulturowa." Kultura Popularna 2, no. 56 (June 29, 2018): 40–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0012.1135.
Full textAbstract:
The article explores cinematic representations of vegetarianism and meat-eating in the context of the blockbuster British romantic comedy Notting Hill (1999) and one of the episodes of the American legal drama The Good Wife, entitled The Red Meat. The article approaches the acts of meat consumption and its refusal performed by female characters from the perspective the sexual politics of meat whose major principles have been analyzed by Carol J. Adams in her 1990 work. The analysis of the representation of the relation between meat (consumed or rejected) and gender proposed in the article displays a twofold function it may perform in a cultural text: it may be used as a narrative strategy which helps complete a psychological portrait of a character and as a starting point to explore a changing status of vegetarianism in contemporary culture. Suspended between rejection and desire, animal meat served, as food becomes a focus of gender and identity inscribed in a broader context of the question of subjectivity of non-human animals.
8
Pradella, Geoffrey. "Substituting a Judgment of Best Interests: Dignity and the Application of Objective Principles to PVS Cases in the U.K." European Journal of Health Law 12, no. 4 (2005): 335–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157180905775088577.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractThe mêlée that surrounded the last days of Terri Schiavo's life was reminiscent of a classical Greek tragedy. Much like Antigone, Ms. Schiavo became enmeshed in irresistible and opposite forces, resolved to use her situation as an arena for the determination of political and legal issues as diverse as the exercise of states' rights, the extent of individual rights, the role of the judiciary, the re-opening of the abortion debate, and the regulation of stem cell research. As Europeans watched the drama unfold, the forces at play in the United States clashed head-on, in a rhetorically inflammatory spectacle which, on this side of the Atlantic, left many aghast. Most unsettling was the prospect of individuals wielding the power of state and national legislatures in what was, ultimately, an intensely personal affair.In the United Kingdom, the struggle was a stark reminder of the differences, not only between British and American political culture, but between our approaches to legal issues which present themselves at the end of life. The existence of well-established procedures and principles, and the extensive involvement of neutral third parties and the courts in pursuit of an objective determination of an individual patient's 'best interests', are key to the conclusion that Terri Schiavo's case would have been handled at least as effectively and efficiently as it was by the courts in Florida and the United States. That issues of consent and capacity can be determined by British courts on the basis of generally applicable principles leads to the subsequent conclusion that a 'best interests' determination leaves significantly less scope for conflict than the individualistic, much more personal and determinative construct of the 'substituted judgment' test in the United States.
9
Zapata Ferreira, Miguel. "La casa grande en la construcción de la historia de Colombia." Estudios de Literatura Colombiana, no. 16 (November 1, 2013): 181–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.17533/udea.elc.17357.
Full textAbstract:
El presente artículo propone el estudio de La casa grande de Álvaro Cepeda Samudio como novela del Boom más que como novela de la violencia. El autor se apoya en el hecho de que la obra habla de la época de la matanza de las Bananeras (1928), periodo anterior al llamado de la violencia y en que varios elementos de escritura de la novela anuncian el arribo del Boom (personajes innominados, diversos narradores, mezcla de géneros, abundancia de documentos). Tales elementos anteriores son propios del "modernism" norteamericano y anglo-europeo que el Boom adopta y adapta a la situación histórica colombiana y a una visión más compleja del fenómeno socio-histórico-sicológico de varias violencias, las cuales actúan como eco de la labor del historiador que trate de explicar el fenómeno de las Bananeras. Descriptores: Cepeda Samudio, Álvaro; La casa grande; Violencia; Matanza de las Bananeras; Modernism norteamericano; Boom literario. Abstract: This article proposes to study Álvaro Cepeda Samudio's novel La casa grande, as a product of the literary Boom instead of a Colombian novel of violence as it has been considered so far. The novel´s historical background does not strictly comprehend the so called Period of Violence but a previous one: the mass killings at the banana plantations in 1928. Another characteristic of this novel is its display of a narrative technique that announces the Boom when this movement adopts and adapts North American and Anglo European Modernism to the Colombian historical situation to offer a more complex view of the social, historical and psychological phenomena of several instances of violence. The fragmented technique of the novel, the various unnamed characters, the collage of legal documents, of other genres such as drama, and other experimental techniques, all of these are possibly an echo of the work of the historian trying to account for the massacre at the Bananeras. Key words: Cepeda Samudio, Álvaro; La casa grande; Violencia; Banana Plantation Masacre; North American Modernism; Literary Boom.
10
Amicelle, Anthony. "Big data surveillance across fields: Algorithmic governance for policing & regulation." Big Data & Society 9, no. 2 (July 2022): 205395172211124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20539517221112431.
Full textAbstract:
While the academic separation of policing and regulation is still largely operative, points of convergence are more significant than ever in the digital age, starting with concomitant debates about algorithms as a new figure of power. From the policing of illegal activities to the regulation of legal ones, the algorithmization of such critical social ordering practices has been the subject of growing attention. These burgeoning discussions are focused on one common element: big data surveillance. In accordance with such similarities and paralleled developments in policing and regulation, the article aims to further bridge the gap between literatures to respond to the calls for studying big data surveillance across institutional domains and social fields. To do so, it is focused on one case study that articulates algorithmic policing and regulation domains, in-between security and economic fields. This is the fight against illicit finance, i.e. ‘the global action against the financial flows that fuel crime and terrorism’. To what extent does big data surveillance make a difference in the main global policy of crime-fighting and financial regulation? Drawing on a fieldwork in a large North American bank, the present article takes stock of the algorithmic overlap between policing and regulation. It argues that the final result is policing and regulation of neither too much nor too little, which gives rise to automated and everyday mass surveillance while remaining as far removed from regulatory and crime-fighting ambitions as it is from dystopian visions of big data and algorithmic drama.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "American Legal drama"
1
Kanzler, Katja. "Of Legal Roulette and Eccentric Clients - Contemporary TV Legal Drama as (Post-)Postmodern Public Sphere." Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2015. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-164051.
Full textAbstract:
This article explores the specific capacity of TV courtroom drama to dramatize civic issues and to seduce viewers to an active engagement with such issues. I argue that television series of this genre eyploit the apparent theatricality of their subject matter-trials-to invite their audiences to the deliberation of social or political issues, issues that they negotiate in their courtroom plots. contemporary courtroom dramas amend this issue orientation with a self-reflexive dimension in wich they encourage viewers to also reflect on how the dramatic construction of 'issues' shapes their civic debate. I unfold this argument through a reading of episodes from two very different legal dramas, Boston Legal (2004-2008) and The Good Wife (2009-).
2
Kanzler, Katja. "Of Legal Roulette and Eccentric Clients - Contemporary TV Legal Drama as (Post-)Postmodern Public Sphere." Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2012. https://tud.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A28633.
Full textAbstract:
This article explores the specific capacity of TV courtroom drama to dramatize civic issues and to seduce viewers to an active engagement with such issues. I argue that television series of this genre eyploit the apparent theatricality of their subject matter-trials-to invite their audiences to the deliberation of social or political issues, issues that they negotiate in their courtroom plots. contemporary courtroom dramas amend this issue orientation with a self-reflexive dimension in wich they encourage viewers to also reflect on how the dramatic construction of 'issues' shapes their civic debate. I unfold this argument through a reading of episodes from two very different legal dramas, Boston Legal (2004-2008) and The Good Wife (2009-).
3
George, Merlene Adina. "Black skin, black robes ... white justice? reality courtroom productions and the black presence /." 2005. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/eir/EIRdetail.cfm?Resources__ID=370174&T=F.
Full textBooks on the topic "American Legal drama"
4
Ballantyne, J. E. Specter of treason: The Oswald trial : the complete theatrical script. [Youngstown, Ohio: Desktop Enterprises, 1997.
Find full text
7
Johnson, Jesse J. Court-martial in the shadow of the trees: Blacks in the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1934 : time 1934, location Pennsylvania. Hampton, VA: J.J. Johnson, 1994.
Find full text
8
Lawrence, Jerome. Inherit the wind. New York, N.Y. (440 Park Ave., S., New York 10016): Dramatists Play Service, 1986.
Find full text
10
Lawrence, Jerome. Inherit the wind. New York, N.Y. (440 Park Ave., S., New York 10016): Dramatists Play Service, 1986.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "American Legal drama"
1
McPherson, Lionel K. "Slavery Subcaste Drama." In The Afterlife of Race, 135–36. Oxford University PressNew York, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197626849.003.0022.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract As descendants of American slavery, Black Americans typically have substantial mixed African and European ancestry. The English legal doctrine partus sequitur ventrem (“that which is born follows the womb”) determined the “Free” versus “Slaves” status of American children and eventually morphed into a “race” rule. This case study of “mixed race” is about a slavery society that later invested in race ideology-rhetoric to mystify and distract from gross injustice. The foundational color-conscious division in America was between Europe-identified “Free White” persons and Africa-identified “Slaves.” After the Civil War, the “Slaves” caste was relabeled by “color” on the US census, with a “race” category alone not appearing until 1950. Except for the period 1930 to 1990, the United States always officially recognized persons of Afro-Anglo descent: “black” or “mulatto” was the standard description.
2
Fish, Stanley. "Natural Law versus Positive Law." In Law at the Movies, 63–80. Oxford University PressOxford, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198898726.003.0006.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Judgment at Nuremberg is structured by the age-old opposition between natural law—the law of an abiding morality—and positive law—the laws on the books in a particular precinct. The visual imagery (of concentration-camp films) and the emotionally charged occasion (the trial of Nazi jurists) tip the audience sympathy in favor of the United-States-led prosecution helmed by that most American of actors, Spencer Tracy. But the movie keeps giving renewed life to the position of the defense and its argument that the accused were faithful to the laws of their country. The legal drama is mirrored by the personal drama between the Tracy character and a German aristocrat played by the great German-born actress Marlene Dietrich, whose personal story repeatedly bleeds into the story of her character.
3
Lamberti, Edward. "The Ethical and the Juridical in Reversal of Fortune and Terror’s Advocate." In Performing Ethics Through Film Style, 105–28. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474444002.003.0008.
Full textAbstract:
Chapter 5 considers Barbet Schroeder’s English-language American true-life drama Reversal of Fortune (1990) and his French-language political documentary Terror’s Advocate (2007), two films about lawyers and legal systems. Desmond Manderson refers in his collection Essays on Levinas and Law: A Mosaic (2009) to the ‘mosaic’ of a Levinasian approach to the law, as, sceptical of legal systems but devoted to justice, Emmanuel Levinas posits an ethics that refuses to crystallise into a prescriptive view of how the law should work in respect of the Other. I argue that these two Schroeder films, with their multi-faceted, ‘mosaic-like’ styles and structures, perform this fractured Levinasian refusal to settle on a fixed, simplistic definition of the law’s purpose. I analyse Reversal of Fortune for its multiple story strands and the different visual styles Schroeder deploys to delineate them, along with elements of performance – especially from Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow – that complicate questions of otherness. In discussing the documentary Terror’s Advocate, I draw on Stella Bruzzi’s work on performative documentary (2006) to explore how Schroeder uses film style to perform both the bravado of the film’s protagonist, the real-life criminal lawyer Jacques Vergès, and the Levinasian ‘mosaic’ of the legal situations he surveys.
4
Rode, Alan K. "Hungarian in the Promised Land." In Michael Curtiz. University Press of Kentucky, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813173917.003.0010.
Full textAbstract:
Curtiz arrived in New York City via the ocean liner Leviathan on June 10, 1926; the story that his ship docked on July 4 and he thought the holiday fireworks were a celebration of his American arrival was a PR fiction that would be repeated for decades by Warner, Hal Wallis, and Curtiz. Curtiz arrived in Hollywood with his treatment of Noah’s Ark, but instead Jack Warner assigned him a crime drama, The Third Degree (1926), based on a 1908 stage play. He scrambled to learn about American criminal procedures by spending time in the L.A. County Jail and having the script translated into Hungarian. He added a great deal of unscripted material to the picture, a harbinger of future strife between him and the studio.As he completed more pictures for Warner Bros., including A Million Bid and The Desired Woman, he began his long association with Darryl F. Zanuck.He also met the screenwriter Bess Meredyth,who would become his second wife. His immigration status proved to be a problem, as it had to be extended each year by Warner Bros. until he could become a legal resident.
5
Miletsky, Zebulon Vance. "Boston, Not Birmingham." In Before Busing, 151–85. University of North Carolina PressChapel Hill, NC, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469662770.003.0007.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract This chapter examines and repositions the Boston busing crisis of the mid-1970s within the broader context of the long history of civil rights activism in the city. Instead of a narrative focused almost exclusively (and somewhat sympathetically) on white reaction, as has been the case in books like Common Ground or Boston Against Busing, here, African American agency and activism takes center stage, situating the busing program as the culmination of nearly three decades of consistent political organizing by black Bostonians. In addition to community organizing and protest politics, this is also the story of a decades long legal battle, pressed by community activists like Ruth Batson and championed by African American lawyers like Nathaniel Jones in the NAACP and their allies. The ultimate result was the historic Morgan vs. Hennigan (1974) decision, which defined the busing controversy in the city for the next decade and a half. In this light, black Bostonians were not merely pawns of Judge Garrity’s “judicial activism,” as is often suggested, but engaged participants in the unfolding drama. Finally, the chapter will also explore the underpinnings of white resistance as a more pervasive phenomenon than commonly thought.
6
Gutacker, Paul J. "Fighting for the Past." In The Old Faith in a New Nation, 122—C7.P60. Oxford University Press, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197639146.003.0008.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Chapter 7 continues the pre–Civil War historical drama begun in chapter 6. As the sectional crisis heated up, Christianity’s historic relationship to slaveholding became all the more controversial. Dozens of proslavery authors, including Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, employed tradition to defend the compatibility of Christianity and slavery, and by the 1850s Christian history was prominent in proslavery arguments put forward by legal scholars and social theorists. Conversely, both white and Black antislavery authors from a variety of denominations used religious history to bolster their cases against slavery. After the South seceded and the Civil War began, the meaning of the Christian past continued to matter for both North and South. For Confederates, church history proved useful in constructing white Christian nationalism, while, in the North, controversy and outrage followed a proslavery account of Christian history written by Episcopal bishop John Henry Hopkins. This chapter shows that the historical dimensions of the argument made it less likely to be resolved on theological grounds. American Protestants did not fail to avoid a bloody Civil War because they ignored history or tradition, but because their readings of the Christian past made them all more intransigent.
7
Hudson, Judith. "‘England’s rubidg’: Mary Carleton and the Early Use of Transportation." In Crime and Consequence in Early Modern Literature and Law, 168–203. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474454353.003.0006.
Full textAbstract:
Chapter Five asks how evolving literary modes (from pamphlet scandal to drama to the early novel) reflected and interacted with changing legal and cultural narratives regarding punishment. It considers a first step towards a new regime of sanction: the early use of transportation as a mechanism of conditional pardon. While the 1718 Transportation Act is often regarded as marking the inception of this practice, transportation to America was in fact current from the early seventeenth century on. This chapter examines that reality via an analysis of the scandalous career of Mary Carleton, the female adventurer, thief and polygamist. This discussion of Carleton examines what the texts that chronicle her exploits tell us about the use of transportation as a system of pardon and correction, marked by anxieties around verdicts and their consequences. It further explores how such texts (poetry, drama and fictional biography) performed an active role in shaping the direction of this system and how that influence was to continue, looking ahead to the novels and criminal biographies of the eighteenth century.
8
Sandrock, Kirsten. "Scotland’s Atlantic Visions, 1660–1691." In Scottish Colonial Literature, 80–129. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474464000.003.0003.
Full textAbstract:
This chapter focuses on Scottish Atlantic literature from the 1660s to the early 1690s. It explores how colonial utopian writing broadened in the mid-seventeenth century to include drama, life writing, legal sources, and abolitionist texts, including not only literature directly linked to Atlantic expansion but also texts usually associated with domestic Scottish literature, such as Thomas Sydserf's Tarugo's Wiles: Or, the Coffee-House (1668) or Archibald Pitcairne's The Assembly; Or, Scotch Reformation (1691). Engaging with recent works on Scotland's role in Atlantic slavery and the Black Atlantic, the chapter seeks to broaden understandings of how Scottish literature and culture participated in the development of the Black Atlantic and Eurocentric thought. The chapter further looks at legal and governmental sources relating to New Jersey and the Middle Colonies from the 1680s onwards, at abolitionist writings, and texts that pertain to the Six Nations and indigenous populations of the Americas. All of these bring out the paradoxes of possession versus dispossession and of freedom versus enslavement in Scottish colonial literature. They illustrate how aesthetic devices of utopianism work towards spatializing the colonial sphere and trying to stabilize boundaries between colonizing and colonized subjects.
9
Steinbock, Bonnie. "Abortion." In Life Before Birth, 43–88. Oxford University PressNew York, NY, 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195054941.003.0003.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Nearly two decades after the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade1 that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy, abortion remains one of the most divisive and emotionally charged issues in America. Pro-lifers march with posters of macerated fetuses; pro-choicers use a bloody coat hanger as their symbol of the days of illegal abortions. But behind the drama and the emotion are claims that can be subjected to philosophical scrutiny. Is the unborn a human being, with a right to life like any other human being, as pro lifers maintain? If it is, then very few abortions, if any, could be justified. For we do not generally think that it is morally permissible to kill children because they are unwanted or illegitimate or severely handicapped. On the other hand, if the fetus is not a child, but only part of the pregnant woman’s body, then restrictive abortion laws would be as difficult to justify in a pluralistic society as laws against contraception. For restrictive abortion laws impose enormous physical, emotional, and financial burdens on women. Even legal moralists, who hold that society has the right to enforce its moral beliefs through law, could not justify the imposition of such heavy burdens. Only the assumption that the unborn is a human being like any other, entitled to the law’s protection, could justify the prohibition of abortion. Thus, the moral status of the unborn is central to the abortion debate.