This week American Bar Association President Karen J. Mathis is presenting the Association’s 50th annual Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts. In 1958 ABA President Charles S. Rhyne presented the first Silver Gavels “to recognize outstanding contributions to public information and understanding of the roles of law and courts in our society.” In this post, I’m taking a selective look back at 50 years of Silver Gavel Awards, focusing on the category of legal drama from the media of film and television. Taken together, the set of Silver Gavel Award-winning dramas presents quite a fascinating history of popular culture. They can offer us insights into prevailing attitudes towards law and lawyers during the past half-century. Moreover, they also reveal something about the changing video culture through which legal issues have been dramatized since the late 1950s.
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