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One of the perennial challenges any teacher faces is to make our subject lively – even in classes that meet at sleep-inducing hours and even with respect to students juggling numerous readings for other courses, job interviews, clerkship applications, term time employment, family commitments, and/or busy social lives. In this endeavor, many of us, including this author, have at times turned to Hollywood. [2]
I have sometimes used films – shown, on rare occasion, during regularly scheduled class times or, most often, in optional movie and pizza evening “socializing” sessions. (While I know that some would find this tactic vaguely disreputable, we all do what we must to enhance our “curb appeal,” at least so long as our international law courses remain electives available only to jaded second and third year law students. Indeed, I once had a colleague who drew unprecedented numbers of students to his U.S. war powers course through the simple gambit of showing weekly Hollywood war movies (especially concerning Vietnam) and by re-titling the course “Home of the Brave.”) Like many, I have relied on well-known Hollywood favorites to elicit discussion and to encourage students to do independent reading and research. In my seminar on foreign investment, I have called students’ attention to various episodes in the first season of HBO’s (sadly off the air) series, Six Feet Under—which included a vivid depiction of some of the underlying facts surrounding the notorious NAFTA case (Loewen v. United States) about a U.S. funeral parlor threatened by a vast foreign conglomerate (although interspersed amid the sexual shenanigans of the series’ regulars). In that seminar, I regularly treat students to Bill Moyer’s Trading Democracy, a PBS special on NAFTA’s Chapter Eleven.
Given the fact that many of our students are historically challenged, there is a strong pedagogic case for visually reminding them (even through a Hollywood lens) of the horrors of the 20th century. To this send, stand-bys like Judgment at Nuremberg, Shoah, The Killing Fields, or Schlinder’s List can today be supplemented by more recent feature length examinations of mass atrocity, such as Sometimes in April, Hotel Rwanda, or The Devil Came on Horseback or less well known but shorter documentaries such as Never Again? Genocide Since the Holocaust[3]. Films such as these make visually and emotionally immediate what our (mostly privileged) students are lucky enough never to have experienced first hand. As we know from the numerous human rights film festivals regularly held throughout the world, the human rights foibles of regimes, from the right (Missing*; Death and the Maiden*; The Official Story*) to the left (The Lives of Others; Courage*) have long drawn the attention of both documentary filmmakers and others. Given Mariane Pearl’s ATCA/TVPA lawsuit against alleged members of Al Qaeda (growing out of the brutal torture and murder of her husband), I could see turning to A Mighty Heart to breathe some life into that portion of the casebook.
The perils of using military force as part of a ‘civilizing mission’ and the challenges posed by international humanitarian law can now usefully contrast classics like The Battle of Algiers* with the recently released No End in Sight (about U.S. missteps after Operation Iraqi Freedom). Of course, many of us will be tempted to supplement classroom discussions of prominent multilateral treaty making efforts with showings of Ridding the World of Landmines* or An Inconvenient Truth. And even broader jurisprudential inquires may benefit from engaging our students’ visual sensibilities. There are cinematic attempts to deal with such matters as the nature of sovereignty, the impact of technology, or the impact of media and NGOs, such as Get Up, Stand Up: Problems with Sovereignty* (about Jamaica and Colombia’s respective struggles to assert their respective sovereign rights), Little Brother Watches Back* (about technology and privacy and the use of technology by human rights groups), or Only the News That Fits* (looking at the news media in the context of Nicaragua). Those seeking cinematic treatments of some of the distinct approaches to accountability for international crimes may want to turn to Long Night’s Journey Into Day* (about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission) or Rape: A Crime of War* (about the ICTY). Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women*, listed, like many of the films identified above in the University of Washington’s marvelous Human Rights Film Directory, promises to offer a visual depiction of what the absence of such formal mechanisms may mean for victims.
The use of such movies in the classroom inevitably raises the question of whether the medium is appropriate for a law school classroom. Even widely praised documentaries or cinematic treatments of “real” events rarely offer “balanced” accounts; often, these films receive praise precisely because they are the personal statements of filmmakers who are emotionally caught up with their subject. The risk that such prize-winning films may unduly skew classroom discussion should not be routinely dismissed. In my experience, the visual medium is exceptionally (and perhaps inordinately) powerful. Used on its own, Bill Moyer’s one-sided take on the Loewen, Metalclad and Methanex cases under the NAFTA in his Trading Democracy may make students prematurely skeptical of the benefits of that agreement and overly susceptible to accepting Moyer’s tenuous claims that venues for international arbitration “trade away” our democracy. But the biases of filmmakers can be overcome. One year I showed Trading Democracy but invited one of the principal negotiators for the NAFTA and ASIL member Daniel Price (who has likened that PBS documentary to a “drive-by shooting of the NAFTA”) for acidic commentary -- before, during, and after. I still cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Moyers or Mr. Price carried off that round but I can say with some assurance that the students who came to the screening/commentary emerged with a more vivid sense of the NAFTA (and its political stakes) than most.
Although there are no scarcity of films or television documentaries that expose the foibles of the UN (see, for example, Cambodia: The Betrayal), it may be true that filmmakers, especially those who make documentaries, are most often associated with the political left. My informal survey of the incredibly vast depositary of films in the University of Washington’s Human Rights Film Directory (which include short descriptions and even some relevant related readings) does suggest something of “liberal” (or should I use Hilary Clinton’s preferred “progressive” label?) bias in many of the “human rights” films listed. Certainly if one turns to that Directory’s “subject list” and clicks “globalization” or “international organizations,” the films that appear (e.g., New Rulers of the World*, Breaking the Bank*, The Cost of Living*, Deadly Embrace: Nicaragua, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund*, Free Trade Slaves*), attack (often with one-sided zeal worthy of Michael Moore) free trade and/or the international financial institutions. Documentarians interested in the less cinematic success stories of World Bank infrastructure projects have, I think, gone the way of those who once depicted, at stupefying length, Soviet socialist “realism.” Still, I am confident that conscientious teachers can find ways to provide counterweights to the power of cinema without forging this powerful teaching tool – now more available than ever thanks to the compact disc, web directories, and ready distributors.
What is clear is that the Human Rights Film Directory provides a treasure trove for the law professor who seeks to expose his or her students to ‘the other,’ whether through classics such as Luis Bunuel’s expose of the plight of street kids (Los Olvidados*) or more recent work dealing with immigration (e.g., The Boxer[4] (see also http://imdb.com/title/tt0118760/)) or through films concerned with what Karen Engle’s famously termed the “exotic” other female such as Behind the Veil: Afghan Women Under Fundamentalism*, Crimes of Honour*, Perfumed Garden*, Keep Her Under Control: Law’s Patriarchy in India*, and Not Without My Veil: Women in Oman.* If, as many suggest, ultimate success in overcoming the challenges of the post-9/11 world is likely to turn on our ability to enter the minds and worlds of others, including those engaged in a jihad against the West, films offer one possible (if imperfect) way to begin such journeys.
In addition, film offers numerous possibilities for bridging the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ -- and not only be offering the usual Hollywood bromide that despite differences, we all share ‘common values.’ Numerous challenging films bridge that divide in a different manner: by showing how even “exemplars” of the rule of law, like the United States, sometimes fall short of achieving common standards of decency, such as human rights. Cinematic indictments of U.S. law or foreign policy that offer such possibilities include Scottsboro, An American Tragedy, Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins*, Coca Mama: The War on Drugs*, Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq*, or Panama Deception.* Those seeking to counter or balance the perspectives offered in such films can readily find guest commentators or at least readings that would provide a different slant from those of the filmmakers.
As all of this suggests, it is not hard to use film to appeal to students who tend to more comfortable in front of a video screen than a book. A seminar on “international law in film” would, I suspect, draw standing room crowds at many of our schools – albeit some disapproving looks from some academic colleagues. (Warning: do not attempt this while still pre-tenure.) It would also not be hard, so long as intellectual property rights are respected, to use public screenings of such films, with commentaries by ASIL members, as vehicles to educate the broader public about international law.
Other Relevant Websites[5]
Footnotes:
[2] See also Michael Scharf and Lawrence Roberts, “The Interstellar Relations of the Federation: International Law and Star Trek: The Next Generation,” 25 Univ. Toledo L. Rev. 577 (1994).
[5] Readers should feel free to submit additional suggestions for other relevant film sources..
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