'lance
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1064
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posted 09 June 2004 09:58 PM
Hurrah for Canadian skepticism? We won't get fooled again, reckons Dahlia Lithwick quote: One of the paradoxes of the O.J. Simpson criminal trial is that, contrary to the predictions of some legal scholars, the cultural force of the event has not really diminished in the intervening years. The other paradox of the O.J. Simpson trial is that the widespread predictions that every trial thereafter would be "worse"—a greater spectacle, a madder circus—have also proven wrong. The whole thing was really just an outlier; a blip. It's hard to know what makes one trial a "trial of the century" while another is just interesting legal news. But in 10 years, there hasn't been another O.J. And while some pundits speculate that the upcoming Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson trials will rival it for mayhem, my prediction is they will not. They'll be nuts, to be sure. But they won't be O.J. ... Literally dozens of law review articles have been written on the significance of the O.J. trial: the role played by race; the ethics of the attorneys; the meaning of jury nullification; the significance of domestic violence; and the meaning of forensic evidence. But none of that is the real legacy of O.J. It's just an attempt to find meaning in a trial that should have meant very little. The truth about O.J. is that for one brief moment, the law and the media went crazy and had a lot of sex, and gave birth to a vast sprawling beast that ate us all. With the trial over, life, law, and television returned us to our previously scheduled broadcast. It was all just a mistake, really. Let's keep it that way.
From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001
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