Television courtroom programs
Television courtroom programs are a prominent genre in American entertainment that reflect and influence public perceptions of the criminal justice system. Since their inception in the late 1940s, these programs have evolved alongside societal changes, often mirroring the cultural and political climate of their times. Early shows like "Perry Mason" offered simplified narratives of justice, while later series such as "The Defenders" and "L.A. Law" introduced more complex characters and storylines that dealt with contemporary legal and ethical dilemmas.
The relationship between these televised dramas and real-world events has grown increasingly intertwined, especially from the 1990s onward, as shows began to incorporate themes and cases inspired by current headlines. This evolution has not only entertained audiences but also educated them about significant legal issues, including civil rights and the intricacies of courtroom procedures. The genre continues to thrive, with programs such as "Law and Order" and dedicated platforms like Court TV, highlighting an enduring fascination with courtroom narratives and their impact on public understanding of the law.
Television courtroom programs
SIGNIFICANCE: Televised courtroom dramas reflect the changing attitudes of Americans toward their criminal justice system, even as they inform and shape those opinions.
Since the earliest days of American television programming during the late 1940s, courtroom dramas have been a staple of American entertainment, both in their own right and as a frequent element in such other genres as Westerns and science-fiction shows. Their appeal is not surprising. Perhaps because of the immense wealth of the American continent, the United States has been able to resolve through judicial hearings such seminal societal issues as corporate concentration of wealth (the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Supreme Court decisions based on it) and the exploitation of labor (through federal laws governing minimum wages and maximum hours of employment).
Likewise, from the days of the Salem witch trials, judicial proceedings have earmarked American history. Moreover, the search for the proper balance between individual liberty and the authority of the state—the issue in criminal proceedings—particularly touches that deeply ingrained part of the American political culture which reveres individualism but recognizes the state’s mandate to safeguard the interests of society.
Real World Versus Television Programming
Television, like all entertainment, unfolds in and reflects the popular culture of the time. Although in any given year numerous television shows can be found with a courtroom locale and with prosecutors as well as defense attorneys as their central characters, almost every decade has witnessed the emergence of a dominant legal drama in tune with the mood of the United States. During the 1950s, when television in general was simplifying life for a war-weary America seeking tidy solutions to complex problems, that drama was Perry Mason, the stories of an infallible defense attorney based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s popular series of novels. Mason not only successfully defended his innocent clients but also regularly unearthed the guilty in each weekly episode.
During the turbulent 1960s, when the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement called authority into question, the pat formula of Perry Mason gave way to the more complex world of The Defenders, an hour-long drama aimed at educated viewers and revolving around a father-son duo committed to protecting the innocent but not always successful in doing so.
By the 1980s, character development and interrelationships had become nearly as important as plot to success on television, and the subject of the decade’s premier legal drama became not a key lawyer but the McKenzie, Brackman firm of L.A. Law. Indeed, weekly shows often gave as much time to the legal work that goes on inside law offices as to the attorneys’ courtroom appearances—an approach which enabled their characters to focus frequently on civil as well as criminal law. Nonetheless, amid the office politics, romances, and in-office client negotiations, this drama offered its share of criminal proceedings, often revolving around the most controversial issues and events of the decade.
Defense attorneys operating in such shows as The Practice continued to do active business during the 1990s; however, rising crime rates and the resultant fears of urban America made an industry of the original and spinoff Law and Order series, which paired courtroom drama with police action. By then, the police dramas, too, had followed a similar path of evolution—from the tough-guy interrogation techniques of Joe Friday on Dragnet in the police-friendly 1950s to the precinct-lawyer-protecting-the-accused in the post-Miranda 1970s of Hill Street Blues to the slam-them-against-the-wall interrogations onscreen in Homicide and N.Y.P.D. Blue during the 1990s. The pairing of the Law and Order detectives with their soulmates in the district attorney’s office tapped deeply into the American psyche, and the spinoffs and original continued to dominate the airwaves during the early twenty-first century.
Courtroom Television and the Real World
Advertisements for Law and Order announcing the new weekly episodes as “ripped from today’s headlines” underscored the degree to which television drama had become linked to real-world events by the 1990s. That relationship, however, has by no means been one-sided. Beginning with the more controversial themes introduced in The Defenders, courtroom dramas have informed viewers and fleshed out their knowledge of such changing legal parameters as Miranda v. Arizona and its effect on police interrogations, Supreme Court guidelines governing capital punishment, mandatory sentencing, jury nullification, and the state’s police authority under 2001’s Patriot Act. The education process has also included civil law cases revolving around corporate liability, child custody issues, and the ability of minors to “divorce” their parents.
Fed by such shows and the media’s coverage of the occasional celebrity trial, the public has steadily increased both its knowledge of and its desire for more real-life dramas far removed from the courtroom world Perry Mason once inhabited. In turn, television programmers have responded with more offerings, including shows with novel focal points and an entire cable television channel, Court TV, devoted to its namesake.
Bibliography
Carlson, James M. Prime Time Law Enforcement Crime Show Viewing and Attitudes Toward the Criminal Justice System. New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1985.
Hetzel, Dennis and Ruth Ann Strickland. "Cameras in the Courtroom." Free Speech Center, 9 July 2024, firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/cameras-in-the-courtroom/. Accessed 11 July 2024.
Jacobs, Julia. "Reality TV or Courtroom? Lawsuits Test Limits of Outrageous." The New York Times, 9 June 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/arts/reality-tv-lawsuits.html. Accessed 11 July 2024.
Jancovich, Mark, and James Lyons, eds. Quality Popular Television: Cult TV, the Industry, and Fans. London: British Film Institute, 2003.
Jarvis, Robert M., and Paul R. Joseph, eds. Prime Time Law: Fictional Television as Legal Narrative. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1998.
Lenz, Timothy O. Changing Images of Law in Film and Television Crime Stories. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Rapping, Elayne. Law and Justice as Seen on TV. New York: New York University Press, 2003.