Top 20 movies for law students

Here's a list of the best legal movies every law student should see based on an informal survey of some law profs as published in the National Jurist Magazine:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Twelve Angry Men
3. Anatomy of a Murder
4. Kramer v. Kramer
5. Michael Clayton
6. The Accused
7. The Verdict
8. Inherit the Wind
9. The Paper Chase
10. Erin Brockovich
11. The Thin Blue Line
12. Murder in the First
13. And Justice for All
14. Presumed Innocent
15. Class Action
16. A Few Good Men
17. The Firm
18. My Cousin Vinny
19. A Time to Kill
20. North Country

One glaring ommission, IMHO, and a film I refer to in class to illustrate the policy underlying removal jurisdiction is Deliverance (although the entire film is a meditation on the "law of the of the jungle" versus "civlized" law, the "removal jurisdiction" scene occurs when, following the murder of Ned Beatty's rapist, Burt Reynolds tries to convince the others that reporting the murder and standing trial in rural Georgia would be a mistake because the judge, jury and witnesses are all likely related to the victim) .  And while I agree with Professor Bond's recommendation that the recent Batman movie, the Dark Knight, should be included on the list, unlike her I saw it as a defense of the Bush-Cheney administration's stance on terrorism rather than a defense of the rule of law.  Just goes to show that films about the law, like the law itself, are subject to wide interpretation.    

I am the scholarship dude.

(jbl)