By Drew Carroll

Sunday, October 16, 5:00 p.m.

As protestors continued to rage against corporate greed by occupying the streets of downtown New York, a few miles uptown an audience is buzzing in Fordham Law School’s McNally Theatre. A large projection screen has faded to black at the end of the iconic 1980’s film that gave a face to corporate greed, Wall Street. While most movie audiences would be filing towards the doors by now, this one sits in hushed anticipation. The evening’s main attraction is yet to come, as Thane Rosenbaum, a professor at Fordham University School of Law and director of the Forum Film Festival, assures the gathering that his guest of honor is only moments away. With longish, flowing light hair, Professor Rosenbaum projects the image of ringmaster, a learned version of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka.

Professor Rosenbaum directs our attention to the double doors across the room, from where we can now see the burly and imposing figure of Oliver Stone.

“Good movie,” he says, settling into his chair.

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By Jason Rindenau

Last week I was fortunate to attend a screening and panel discussion at Fordham Law School’s Forum on Law, Culture, and Society.

Hosted by essayist, writer, and Fordham Law professor Thane Rosenbaum, the sixth annual Forum served up a timely collection of law-related films and post-screening discussions with the talented individuals who made them possible. This year’s selections included HBO’s film about the 2008 financial meltdown, Too Big To Fail, with featured appearances by the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker; the 1983 film, Daniel, which brought to Fordham Law the real-life sons of the film’s subjects, accused spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg; and Wall Street, with special guests director Oliver Stone and film producer Edward Pressman.

I went to Wednesday evening’s screening of 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer, starring Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, because I hadn’t seen the film; I chose well. It is a classic that has held up beautifully since its release over 30 years ago,  and a must-see for anyone interested in family law. After the screening, the panelists, writer/director Robert Benton, the author of the novel on which the film was based, Avery Corman, and famed divorce attorney Raoul Felder participated in a panel discussion moderated by Professor Rosenbaum.   Read more »

The LASIS Staff

Director Sidney Lumet, director of such films as Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Network died yesterday at the age of eighty-six.  Last year, LASIS looked at how young audiences today react to his legal masterpiece, Twelve Angry Men.

By Tara Krieger

More than just a controversial figure who helped over 130 terminally ill patients end their lives in the mid-1990s, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is also a respected pathologist, an accomplished jazz musician, a talented artist, a whimsical poet, and a dilettante in the classics. So we learn from his HBO biopic “You Don’t Know Jack,” which opened the Fordham Law Film Festival, where Dr. Kevorkian was the guest of honor on Oct. 15. He said that the movie starring Al Pacino still “brings tears to my eyes – and I lived through it.”

Dr. Kevorkian’s wide range of knowledge may ultimately have gotten the best of him, as the film reveals. Having escaped imprisonment after four lawsuits challenged his assisted suicide activities, the Detroit area native, who once appeared in court in a powdered wig and buckle shoes in protest of antiquated common law practices, believed he could take on the justice system solo. But knowledge of a few basic legal principles does not a qualified attorney make, and an Oakland County (Mich.) Circuit Court found him guilty of second-degree murder and delivery of a controlled substance in 1999.

He spent eight years and two months in prison.

Why does he believe he was so demonized?
“They gotta create the enemy, so they made me the enemy,” he said to the rapt audience at the law school. “The more dangerous you are, the more they make you the enemy.”

“They,” being the religious right (“Why do we have religion? We don’t know what’s coming … so we invent this mythology”) and the “political hacks who call themselves doctors” in the American Medical Association.

Although he has legally sworn off helping to end lives as a condition of his parole, the man known as “Dr. Death” is crusading on in the three years since his release, which included a run for Congress on an independent ticket in 2008. Dressed in a gray suit over his trademark Columbia blue sweater, the slight, bespectacled 82-year-old informed a packed audience of his new mission.

Dr. Kevorkian is preaching the gospel of the Ninth Amendment. Read more »

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was invited to present and discuss a film of her choice at Fordham Law School.  She chose “12 Angry Men.”  Yesterday, she discussed her feelings about the film.

Compare her thoughts to those of inner city youths who saw the film for the first time.