Research Handbook on Law and Popular Culture

This incisive Research Handbook explores how the intersection of law and popular culture shapes our understanding of justice, harm, and responsibility. Contributing authors employ theoretical frameworks to illustrate that law is not only found in courts and statutes, but is influenced by the images, narratives, and emotions that circulate in popular culture, which in turn, shape public expectations of legal systems.

From feminism to the cinematic portrayal of human rights and performance crime, this Research Handbook rigorously maps the possibilities and limits of law and popular culture, including films, television, music, and digital media. Underpinned by diverse case studies, the chapters demonstrate how the representation of violence in culture helps organise, justify, and challenge these harms, while revealing how violence is often embedded in institutions and everyday practices. Scholars across multiple regions pose the question: how can popular culture be reworked so that violence is no longer normalised, hidden, or aestheticised, but rendered contestable and accountable?

The Research Handbook on Law and Popular Culture is an essential resource for scholars and students of law and society, legal ethics, and legal literature. Encouraging readers to critically and imaginatively reassess law and culture, it is also useful for legal practitioners proposing new ways of understanding and responding to harm.