Up ] Doing Research in Law and Music ] Lawyers and Film ] Law and Science Fiction Page ] Law and Television Links ] Law and Literature ] Law and Art page ] Law and Drama page ] Law, the Humanities and Forensics ] Law and Humor in Popular Culture ] Law and Humanities Blogs ] Resources For Doing Law and the Humanities ] Law, the Humanities and Biological Sciences Page ] Law, the Humanities, and the Environment ] Law, Humanities and Medicine Page ] [ lawandmagicpage ] Law, the Humanities and the Social Sciences Page ] Law, Tax, Accounting and Popular Culture ] Law, the Humanities and the Media ] Law, Technology and the Humanities Page ] Law, the Humanities and the Physical Sciences ]

 

 

LAW AND MAGIC LINKS

Law and Magic Blog

last updated 03/12/2008

Under construction

LAW AND MAGIC IN LITERATURE

LAW AND MAGIC IN POPULAR CULTURE

FILMS

TELEVISION

DEFINITIONS OF MAGIC

LAW AND MAGIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE LAWS OF MAGIC

WEBSITES

LAW AND MAGIC IN THE NEWS

Magic Week

Relative Wants Houdini's Body Exhumed: Suspects Murder

Related Bibliography

William Kalush and Larry Sloman, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America First Superhero (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

Fox Plans Psychic Reality Show

According to this April 4, 2007 Hollywood Reporter story, the Fox News Network and a co-creator of the hit comedy series Friends are going ahead with a series to test applicants for the "most gifted" psychic. Perhaps they should start, though, by testing whether psychic ability really exists.

Read Joe Nickell's account of assisting with a new big screen film, The Reaping, here (from CSI Online).

A Texas appellate court has overturned the conviction for theft by coercion of fortune teller Jennifer Nicole Evans, ruling that the prosecution failed to show that Evans "never threatened to hurt anyone", a required element of the crime. The prosecution will appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Was the appropriate crime with which to charge Evans crime by deception? See an account of the appellate court's ruling at Maro Robbins, Tarot Card Reader Wins Appeal, San Antonio Express-News, Dec. 28, 2006, at 1B. The case is Evans v. State, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 11016.

 
Japanese Magicians Sue Television Networks

A group of Japanese magicians has sued two Japanese tv networks over what they say is essentially theft of intellectual property. Note that a US magician attempted to sue the Fox Network using a similar theory some years ago; he was unsuccessful. See Rice v. Fox Broadcasting.
 

 

 

LAW AND MAGIC IN LITERATURE

La Celestina

Allen, Charlotte Vale, Night Magic (New York: Atheneum, 1989).

Baum, L. Frank, The Wizard of Oz

Clarke, Susanna, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Bloomsbury, 2004).

Douglas, Carole Nelson (author website). Ms. Douglas writes books featuring a mystery solving cat. One of the human characters is a magician.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Faust

Gold, Glen David Carter Beats the Devil (2001). A novel featuring the (real life) magician Charles Carter ("Carter the Great"). Gold is married to the novelist Alice Sebold.

Hoffman, Alice, Practical Magic

Kelley, Patrick A.,

Rawson, Clayton

Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Magicians in Literature

Claxton, Michael Jay, The Conjurer Unmasked: Literary and Theatrical Magicians, 1840-1925 (Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2003). Discussion of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford; Robert Browning’s Mr. Sludge, the Medium; Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and their treatment of magicians.

Hoppenstand, Gary, Crime and the Magician Detective as Symbols in Patrick A. Kelley’s Sleightly Murder, 12(1) Clues: A Journal of Detection 57-72 (Spring/Summer 1991).

 

 

LAW AND MAGIC IN POPULAR CULTURE

FILMS

Hundreds of films have featured magicians as characters. Here is a sampling in which magicians, psychics, fortunetellers, astrologers, clairvoyants, palm readers, witches and wizards and spiritualists have played key roles.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948).  Turhan Bey is a medium who puts a widow in touch with her late husband. Many twists and turns in this low budget but well acted thriller.

The Clairvoyant (1934). Claude Rains is a fake clairvoyant whose predictions suddenly seem to come true.

Columbo Goes to the Guillotine (TVM 1989). Lieutenant Columbo (Peter Falk) deals with a psychic (Anthony Andrews) who murders a magician who could reveal his trickery (Anthony Zerbe).

Family Plot (1976). Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern as a hapless medium and her accomplice, a would-be actor, trying to find a missing heir (William Devane). Alfred Hitchcock's last film. Both Family Plot and The Amazing Mr. X reveal how mediums conduct seances.

The Great Houdini (TVM 1976). Paul Michael Glaser as the fabled magician and Sally Struthers as his faithful wife Bess.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001). The first of a string of films based on the J. K. Rowling fantasies, this movie plays the magic "for real."

Houdini (1953). The classic biopic starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

The Illusionist (2006). Edward Norton as a magician in turn of the century Vienna. Based on a Steven Millhauser short story, "Eisenheim the Illusionist."

New York Stories (1989). Three short films about the city. One, "Oedipus Wrecks", directed by and starring Woody Allen, features Allen as a lawyer whose magic trick goes awry.

Practical Magic (1998). Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as two sisters with magical powers who discover that love has powers greater than their own.

The Prestige (2006). Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and Michael Caine star in this film about competing magicians in turn of the century London.

Smokin' Aces (2006). Hired killers chase after a third-rate Lake Tahoe magician.

Scoop (2006). Woody Allen is a third rate magician and Scarlett Johanssen is an aspiring journalist on the trail of a serial killer in this comedy drama set in London.

The Wizard of Oz (1939). Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Frank Morgan, Bert Lahr, and Jack Haley star in this classic, an adaptation of L. Frank Baum's novel about a little girl's trip to a fantastic land populated by witches, Munchkins, flying monkeys, and a wizard who can make dreams come true.

TELEVISION

Shows

Episodes

Columbo Goes to the Guillotine. Psychic Elliott Blake (Anthony Andrews) murders magician Max Dyson (Anthony Zerbe). Columbo enlists the assistance of a magic shop owner and a young magician to help him figure out the trick and trap the killer. First telecast February 6, 1989. Available on DVD in the US.

Columbo: Now You See Him.The "Great Santini" (Jack Cassidy) murders Jesse Jerome (Nehemiah Persoff). Columbo is soon on Santini's trail. First telecast February 29, 1976. Available on DVD in the US.

 

 

DEFINITIONS OF MAGIC

 

Many practicing magicians and theorists have explained the philosophy of magic. See the following books and articles for clarification of the principles of magic.

Lamont, Peter, and Richard Wiseman, Magic in Theory (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999; reprinted 2005).

Mauss, Marcel, A General Theory of Magic

 

LAW AND MAGIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

Comparisons of Law and Magic

In General

Baird, Peter, Corpus Juris Hocus Pocus, Arizona Attorney, October 1989, at 23. Peter Baird is one of the attorneys who was involved in the Miranda case (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), after which the "Miranda warning" was named). He is also a noted novelist (Beyond Peleliu).

Pradell, Steve, Family Law: Magic in the Courtroom, 26 Alaska Bar Rag 27 (September/October 2002).

 

 

History

General

 

 

Cotterill, Roger, Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain 96-99. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998) Discussing the intersection between law and magic.

Gurvitch, Georges, La magie et le droit (Paris: Dalloz, 2004). Reprint.

Gurvitch, Georges, La magie, la religion, et le droit, in 2 La Vocation Actuelle de la Sociologie (Paris: PUF, 1963).  

Huvelin, P., La magie et le droit individuel, 10 Annee sociologique 1-47 (1905-1906).

Lee, Blewett, The Conjurer, 7 Virginia Law Review 370 (1921).

Lee, Blewett, The Fortune Teller, 9 Virginia Law Review 249 (1923).

Lee, Blewett, Psychic Phenomena and the Law, 34 Harvard Law Review 625 (1921).

Lee, Blewett, Spiritualism and Crime, -- Columbia Law Review 439 (1922).

Peters, Edward, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978). Essential to a study of this topic. Extensive bibliographies after each chapter.

Woodhall, Edwin T., Crime and the Supernatural (Kessinger Publisher, 2003). Reprint of the 1935 publication.

Roman Period

Geoffrey MacCormack, Formalism, Symbolism and Magic in Early Roman law, 37 Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 439 (1969).

Pharr, Clyde, The Interdiction of Magic in Roman Law, 63 Transactions of the American Philological Association  269-295 (1932).

Rives, James B., Magic in Roman Law: The Reconstruction of a Crime, 22(2) Classical Antiquity 313-339 (October 2003). (abstract only).

Byzantine Period

Marie-Theres Fögen, Balsamon on Magic: From Roman Secular Law To Byzantine Canon Law (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995).

Magic and Intellectual Property Law

Pierre Fleury-Legros, La protection du secret de l'oeuvre de magie par le droit de la propriété intellectuelle, Chroniques, 10 Novembre 2005, at 2808.

Pierre Fleury-Legros, Si j'avais un piano...., Jurisprudence, 2004, at 1589-1591.

Jacob Loshin, Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property Without Law

 

 

WEBSITES

Magicians

International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM)

Society of American Magicians (SAM)

Scientists, Skeptics, Researchers, Research Organizations, and Skeptical Organizations

CSI

Henri Broch, Professor at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis

James Randi

The Judge as Gatekeeper

 

Back to the Law and the Humanities Website

 

Hit Counter

Since April 10, 2007

 © Copyright Christine Corcos 2007