How would you sum up the first 20 years of Law and Popular Culture as Essay

How would you sum up the first 20 years of Law and Popular Culture as a focus for scholarship in Law Schools and beyond - Essay Example Scholarship in â€Å"Law and Popular Culture’ uses this aspect of the discipline to educate attorneys in public awareness of the consequences of their actions. In critically evaluating the scholarship and impact of the last 20 years of â€Å"Law and Popular Culture† studies in Law Schools, the importance of image and appearance in constructing public opinion is made evident, as well as the popularity of legal themes in mainstream culture itself. Academic studies have drawn comparisons to the way media stereotypes of law and legal issues can frame public awareness of themes in ways that may be prejudicial to jury selection or point to biases that might influence juror opinions subliminally on technical legal issues of great importance. There has been an awareness of the importance of accuracy in legal representations in mass media, but also in the importance for lawyers to be aware of the social context when practicing law. In drawing legal issues through media stories in broad dualities, fictional programs such as film, video, television, and literary depictions represent the dynamic processes of law in the prosecutor and defence attorney. However, in painting the broader social context of these stories, and the personalities of the heroes and anti-heroes of law, thematic content can be noted to constellate around two primary archetypes as a fundamental division, 'the activist lawyer' and 'the corrupt lawyer'. As Richard Sherman writes in Symposium: Law and Popular Culture: Nomos and Cinema, â€Å"Law lives in images. We make sense of reality by drawing upon the stories and storytelling modes that are most familiar to us. And these days, television and film are by far the most popular sources of the stories and story forms that we all know. It should hardly prove surprising to find trial lawyers importing popular film stories and characters as well as familiar cinematic styles into their courtroom performances.†1 ‘Law and Popular Cul ture’ studies can draw upon groundbreaking work such as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Masks Of God: Creative Mythologies to assist with the methodology of media interpretation through psychology. In understanding how the mind relates to ideas formed in popular culture through media, the assumption is that the unconscious and subconscious forces, emotions, and biases all act to build sentiment and identity in the individual as part of personal identity, as well as the more conscious and ego-driven goals. In pointing to the unconscious nature of crowd behaviour as it is reflected in public opinion in mass-media based societies in post-modernism, ‘Law and Popular Culture’ studies returns to its early roots and definitions, as posited by Lawrence Friedman in the 1980’s. For example, in Total Justice, written in 1985, Lawrence Friedman defines legal culture as "ideas, attitudes, values, and opinions about law held by a society.â₠¬ 2 However, he takes this definition further in Law, Lawyers, and Popular Culture, and essay published in the Yale law Journal in 1989. There he writes: "Legal culture refers to those ideas and attitudes which are specifically legal in content - ideas about courts, justice, the police, the Supreme Court, lawyers, and so on... the term popular culture, on the other hand, refers first, and more generally, to the norms

Finance - Audit and Assurance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Finance - Audit and Assurance - Essay Example Thus, this difference in the interest of the auditors and the clients makes it tough for the auditors to remain ethical while dealing with the clients (Rennie & et. al., 2006). Accountancy and auditing have been referred as complicated as well as practical procedures. In comparison to these characteristics, ethics could be considered to be far less complicated. Ethics can be described to be the honest, loyal, truthful and reliable way of performing an action. It is considered to be significantly important for auditors to perform their actions and their ways of working in an ethical manner. Ethics is required to be paid attention in case of auditing for the reason of reducing risk with regard to grave illegal actions (Campbell & Houghton, 2005). Auditing is concerned with dealing with financial statements and accounts of an organisation. Therefore, this process needs adequate compliance with ethical manners or specification. This is important as this would help to keep away the audito r from getting involved into any kind of legal liabilities or earn a bad reputation (Campbell, 2004). Unethical dealing by an auditing firm named Arthur Andersen gave rise to the scandal of Enron who was one of the firm’s client. The revelation of the corruption and the deliberate fraud proved fatal for both the company, Enron as well as for Arthur Andersen. The company was compelled to declare itself to be a bankrupt and the subsistence of the ace auditing firm came to an end with the exposure of this scandal (Cunningham & Harris, 2006). Difference of Interest in the Auditing Profession It has been already mentioned earlier that corruption is considered to be a result of difference of interest between the clients and the auditors. However, it requires to be mentioned in this context that there could be various kinds of differences of interest in the profession of auditing. A proper analysis of the Enron case would assist in providing a lucid understanding of this fact. The b usiness model of Enron was stated to be quite complicated as it involved a broad range of products from trading functions, physical assets as well as going beyond the national borders. All these factors extended the boundaries of accounting. Enron took the opportunity of exploiting these accounting boundaries to the maximum in controlling its revenues along with its balance sheet so as to depict a favourable performance scenario. However, in this case two matters emerged out to be extremely problematic for the company. The company’s transactions related to trading engaged complicated contracts which involved extended time period. The form of accounting followed by the company compelled the management of the company to predict its future prices related to the energy operations along with the rates of interest. It was also found that the company depended broadly on the financial dealings that were considered to be quite controlled and engaged in developing or creating ‘sp ecial purpose entities’. These particular dealings involved sharing the possession of particular flows of cash as well as risks with lenders as well as investors from outside. The