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FULL-TIME FACULTY
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Jessica Silbey |
Associate Professor of Law
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| S H O R T B I O G R A P H Y |
Professor Silbey’s scholarship engages in a cultural analysis of law. One of her interests is in the interdiscipline of law and film, exploring how film is used as a legal tool and how it becomes an object of legal analysis in light of its history as a cultural object and art form. How does automated surveillance film become testimony in a court of law? How do cultural perceptions about film affect its evaluation by jurors, advocates and judges? How might legal actors and lay citizens mobilize the audiovisual technology of our twenty-first century to further the promises of our justice system? Professor Silbey is also currently working on a series of articles about intellectual property law, investigating common and conflicting narratives within legal institutions and private organizations that explain intellectual property protection in the United States. She is especially interested in the connections between cultural narratives of creation, discovery, incentive and labor and their legal counterparts in cases, statutes and litigation. The empirical dimension of this project (conducting and analyzing interviews with intellectual property professionals) is on-going. Professor Silbey teaches courses in constitutional law, trademarks and copyrights.
Professor Silbey received her B.A. from Stanford University and her J.D. and Ph.D. (Comparative Literature) from the University of Michigan. Before joining the faculty of Suffolk University Law School, Professor Silbey litigated at the law firm of Foley Hoag LLP in Boston. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and to the Honorable Levin Campbell on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Degrees:
BA, Stanford University; JD, PhD, University of Michigan
Bar Admittance:
MA, 1999; U.S.D.C. MA; US Court of Appeals 1st & Federal Circuit.
Subjects:
Constitutional Law, Intellectual Property, Cultural Analysis of Law
Professional Activities:
Program Chair (2009-2010), AALS Section on Law and the Humanities; Executive Committee (2009-2010), AALS Section on Art Law; Executive Committee (2009-2010), AALS Section on Law and Interpretation; Organizing Committee, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities.
| S E L E C T E D P U B L I C A T I O N S |
A Witness to Justice, in STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS AND SOCIETY: A SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM ISSUE ON LAW AND FILM (Austin Sarat ed., 2009) (Vol. 46, pp. 61-91)
Chapter: A History of Representations of Justice: Coincident Preoccupations of Law and Film, in A REPRESENTATIONS OF JUSTICE (A. Masson and K. O'Connor eds., 2007)
Comparative Tales of Origins and Access: A New Future for Intellectual Property (a discursive analysis of the Access Movements), (Work in progress)
Harvesting Intellectual Property (an empirical analysis of methods of managing and making intellectual property by legal professionals in for-profit and not-for-profit institutions), (Work in progress)
Evidence Verite and the Law of Film, CARDOZO L. REV. (forthcoming 2009) (Symposium Issue)
The Politics of Law and Film Study: An Introduction to the Symposium on Legal Outsiders in American Film, 42 SUFFOLK L. R. 755 (2009)
Cross-Examining Film, 8 U. MD. L.J. RACE, REL. GENDER & CLASS 17 (2008) (Symposium Issue) [view film clip](reprinted in Volume 1, 26th Annual Civil Rights Practicing Law Institute Handbook pp. 971-1004).
The Mythical Beginnings of Intellectual Property, 15 GEO. MASON L. REV. 319 (2008) (selected for re-publication by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology)
Justices Taken in By Illusion of Film, Opinion Editorial, BALTIMORE SUN MAY 13, 2007 (2007)
Truth Tales and Trial Films, 40 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 551 (2007)
Criminal Performances: Film, Autobiography and Confession, 37 NEW MEX. L. REV. 189 (2007)
Orit Kamir's Framed: Women in Law and Film, 17 :4 BIMONTHLY REVIEW OF LAW BOOKS 11 (July/Aug. 2006 ) (book review)
Videotaped Confessions and the Genre of Documentary, 16 FORDHAM INTELL. PROP. MEDIA & ENT. L.J. 789 (2006) (reprinted in LAW IN MEDIA, Amicus Books, India and in THE NEW DOCUMENTARY, Ifcai University Press, India, forthcoming 2009).
Filmmaking in the Precinct House and the Genre of Documentary Film, 29 COLUM. J.L. & ARTS 107 (2005)
Judges as Film Critics: New Approaches to Filmic Evidence, 37 U. MICH. J.L. REFORM 493 (2004)
What We Do When We Do Law And Popular Culture, 27 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 139 (2002)
Patterns of Courtroom Justice, 28 J.L. SOC'Y 97 (2001)
C O N T A C T I N F O  |
Prof. Jessica Silbey
Suffolk University Law School
120 Tremont Street
, Suite 250-D
Boston, MA 02108-4977
t. 617.305-6270
f. 617-305-3079
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FACULTY
