Law on Film

Souleymane's Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane), directed by Boris Lojkine, is anchored by the powerful performance of Abou Sangaré as a delivery worker from Guinea who is seeking asylum in France. What begins as a story of daily survival becomes a story about the legal and administrative processes governing asylum and the often fragile line between recognition and rejection. The film foregrounds questions of identity, performance, and translation, as Souleymane must shape his story to fit the expectations of the asylum system. More broadly, the film invites reflection on the gap between lived experience and legal categories—as well as what gets lost when human stories are filtered through bureaucratic judgment. The guest for this episode is Sharon Weill, who serves as Professor of International Law at the American University of Paris and teaches at Sciences Po in Paris. 

Time stamps:
0:00     Introduction
2:26      An urban story of 48 hours in a migrant’s life
9:45      Migrant housing
12:47     Separation from home             
14:38     The legal categories of asylum
20:38    The asylum hearing
25:10     Souleymane tells his story and closes the door
29:32     Enforcement of immigration law
34:37     Abou Sangaré: the actor who plays Souleymane
37:08     The appeals process and limits on asylum
44:15      Giving a human face to migration

Further reading: 
Akoka, Karen, Asylum and Exile: A History of the Refugee/Migrant Distinction (Éditions La Découverte, 2020)
Carpentier, Laurent, "Cannes 2024: Life imitates art for the star of ''L'Histoire de Souleymane,'" The Guardian (May 16, 2024)
Chang, Justin, "The Piercing Immigrant Drama of 'Souleymane's Story,'" The New Yorker (Aug. 6, 2025)
Dezalay, Sara & Weill, Sharon, Asylum Justice: Between Crisis and Crisis Routine: An Ethnography of the National Court of Asylum Law (June 17, 2026)
Kobelinsky, Carolina, The Reception of Asylum Seekers: An Ethnography of Waiting (Éditions du Cygne, 2010)
Lemercier, Fabian, "Interview with Boris Lojkine, Director of 'Souleymane's Story,'" Cineuropa (May 21, 2024)
Weill, Sharon et al., Terror on Trial: An Ethnography of French Courts (2026)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. 
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz 
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

The Alabama Solution is a searing documentary about Alabama’s prison system and the broader crisis of mass incarceration. Directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, the film draws on years of secretly recorded cell phone footage made by incarcerated people, offering an unusually intimate and unfiltered account of violence, isolation, resistance, and survival inside one of the harshest prison systems in the United States. The film shows how contraband cell phones transform incarcerated people from subjects of documentation into documentarians themselves, while prisoners’ families emerge as advocates, investigators, and conduits to the outside world.

Time stamps:
0:00   Introduction
3:48    Not an innocence movie
6:43    The cell phone footage
10:15    A system of dehumanization
17:37    The Free Alabama Movement
22:09   The declining federal presence and state prisons
25:48   "The Alabama Solution”
31:45     A legacy of slavery
38:30    The challenges of investigating abuses in prisons
42:26    The moral obligation of prison reform

Further reading:
Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010)
Foreman, James, Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (2017)
Lewis, Nicole, “‘The Alabama Solution’: A Humanitarian Crisis in Grainy Detail,” The Marshall Project (2025)
Margulies, Joseph, Cast Out: A Call for a Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (2026)
Parker, Anabelle, “‘Let’s just shut down’: an interview with Spokesperson Ray of the Free Alabama Movement,” San Francisco Bay View (Dec. 2, 2014)
Stevenson, Bryan, Just Mercy (2014)
U.S. Dep’t of Justice Civil Rights Division, Investigation of Alabama’s State Prison for Men (July 23, 2020)
Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. 
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz 
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), sets a murder story inside what seems the safest place imaginable: an ordinary American family in an ordinary American town. But as suspicion gathers around Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), the film slowly exposes something more unsettling than a single killer on the run. It reveals how charm, respectability, and social status can insulate wrongdoing from scrutiny — and how communities prefer comforting narratives to disruptive truths. The police investigate, but they move hesitantly; the town remains confident in its own innocence. The real drama unfolds not in the courtroom, but at the dinner table. The film explores law’s capacity — and its limits. How does misogyny operate not just as motive but as ideology? What happens when loyalty to family collides with loyalty to justice? And in a film released at the height of World War II, is Hitchcock warning that the most dangerous threats to democracy are not always foreign invaders, but may also be charismatic figures embedded within everyday life?
Timestamps:
0:00     Introduction
2:13     Teaching law students through film
5:54     Shadow of a Doubt and law’s inadequacies
11:11   The film’s setting and Santa Rosa, CA
14:54   Imagining the perfect crime
21:21   Misogyny in Shadow of a Doubt
27:48   Playing with crime genres and narrative structures 
32:58   Hitchcock’s cameo
35:16   Doubling and other filmic techniques
48:19   Complicity in covering up the evil
51:11   A critique of wartime idealism and the narrative of the enemy within
56:17   Questioning American institutions

Further reading:
Eggert, Brian, Shadow of a Doubt, Deep Focus Review (Mar. 2, 2013) 
Hughes, Rowland, “Shadows and Doubts: Hitchcock, Genre, and Villainy,” in The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film (Stacy Gillis & Philippa Gates eds. 2001)
Modleski, Tania, The Women Who Knew Too Much (1988)
Scovell, Adam, “Why the sinister Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock’s Favourite,” The Telegraph (Feb. 7, 2023)
Truffaut, Francois, Hitchcock (Simon & Schuster, 1985)
Wood, Robin, Hitchcock’s Films Revisited (2002)
Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. 
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz 
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

This episode we look at Blade Runner (1982) (dir. Ridley Scott) and its sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017) (dir. Denis Villeneuve), two films that imagine a world where the line between human and machine, creation and creator, has all but vanished. Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic depicted a rain-soaked dystopia where “replicants”—bio-engineered beings—fight for recognition, identity, and life itself. Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel deepens that vision. Law operates in the shadows across both films: as surveillance, classification, and control. The “blade runners” themselves enforce a form of administrative violence that exposes the limits of legal personhood. What does it mean to have rights without recognition, or to be alive without legal existence? And conversely, what are the implications of recognizing rights and legal personhood in robots? In this episode, we’ll examine these and other themes around artificial intelligence, migration, colonization, and bioethics as well as the way films themselves can contribute to and shape public perceptions about these issues. 
Timestamps:
0:00     Introduction
2:45      Emotion and memory in robots
8:08      Slave labor and robot rebellion
9:54      Generative AI and other changes since the first Blade Runner 
15:16      Robots giving birth
20:19     Robot rights
24:17      A new category of companion
32:56    Filmic depictions of AI
38:01     “Time to Die”
43:21     The political economy of AI development
47:22     A dystopian vision of data and surveillance
52:18     A positive post-human future?
57:58     Concepts of immortality

Further reading:
Almog, Shulamit, “When a Robot Can Love – Blade Runner as a Cautionary Tale on Law and Technology,” in Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice (Jan. 1, 2013)
Birhane, Abeba, van Dijk Jelle, and Pasquale, Frank, “Debunking Robot Rights Metaphysically, Ethically, and Legally,” 29(4) First Monday (2024)
Darling, Kate, The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots (2021)
Dick, Philip K., Do Androids Dream of Sheep (1968)
Lewis, C.S., Abolition of Man (1943)
Oliver, Kendra H., Higgs, Oliver S., and Clayton, J., “The End of Genetic Privacy in the Blade Runner Canon,” 14 (1/2) Journal of Literature and Science 108 (Dec. 2022)
Pasquale, Frank, “Cultural Foundations for Conserving Human Capacities Amidst Generative Artificial Intelligence: Toward a Philosophico-Literary Critique of Simulation,” in Being Human (B. Roessler & V. Steeves, eds, 2024)
 
Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. 
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz 
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

Erin Brockovich (2000) (directed by Steven Soderbergh) is based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a legal assistant without formal training, who uncovers one of the most significant environmental lawsuits in U.S. history: the case against Pacific Gas and Electric for contaminating groundwater in Hinkley, California. The film, which features an Oscar-winning performance by Julia Roberts in the title role, explores the role of lawsuits in exposing truth and gaining compensation for victims, the gendered dynamics of legal advocacy, and the challenges of taking on entrenched power structures in society.
Timestamps:
0:00     Introduction
1:59       Who is Erin Brockovich?
3:11       Obstacles to holding corporations accountable
5:49      How Erin Brockovich overcomes those obstacles
8:10      Imbalance of power and resources
14:40    Hinkley, California
18:00    Accessing records
21:16     Tort reform, punitive damages, and proportionality
27:10     States and environmental regulation
32:22    Causation and attribution science
37:30    Whistleblowers              
41:17      Finding the “smoking gun”
42:53    The practice of law and parenting

Further reading:
Banks, Sedina “The ‘Erin Brockovich Effect’: How Media Shapes Toxics Policy,” 26 Environs Env’t L. Poly’ J. 219 (2003)
Brockovich, Erin and Eliot, Marc, Take It from Me: Life’s a Struggle but You Can Win (2002)
Chen, Sarah Small, “Toxic Film: Analyzing the Impact of Films Depicting Major Contamination Events on the Regulation of Toxic Chemicals,” 35 Georgetown Env’t L. Rev. 561 (2023)
"'Erin Brockovich’ Made their Town Famous: They Still Don’t Have Clean Water,” Wash. Post (Dec. 27, 2024)
Martens, Daniel L. “Chromium, Cancer, and Causation: Has a Death-Blow Been Dealt Chromium Cases in California?” 16 Natural Resources & Env’t 264 (2002)
McCann, Michael McCann & Haltom, William, “Ordinary Heroes vs. Failed Lawyers – Public Interest Litigation in Erin Brockovich and Other Contemporary Films,” 33 Law & Soc. Inquiry 1045 (2008)
“Still Toxic After All These Years,” Grist (Jan. 29, 2019)
Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. 
For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.html
You can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.com
You can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz 
You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilm
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast