Query: Constitutional Freedom in Film--two responses

From: Marilyn papayanis <[email protected]>

The People vs Larry Flint?   Am thinking of using it in a new law and the
humanities course I am teaching.
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From: Dicandeloro, Zachariah Joseph <[email protected]>

The HUAC is a solid topic in "constitutional freedom"; but HUAC is more
interesting as an exploration of what is not excluded as "constitutional
freedom" than what shall be included as an aspect of "constitutional
freedom." The HUAC was not unconstitutional. Freedom of association is not
a guaranteed right where the auctors will make laws against it (i.e. by
defining said association as "criminal") or where the sovereign declares a
legal exception (viz. by declaring "war" on certain associations and so
imposing executive controls "as if" the targets had no rights). And there
is little that can be done about this... I suppose that one could look at a
film that glorifies the function of Supreme Court decision, which decision
may or may not prove "constitutional freedom" as such (contingent on the
subject).

Something like Guilty by Suspicion casts the Constitution as a master
signifier in an emancipation metanarrative, which is more an exercise in
the existential reality of cultural fantasy than in the existential reality
of legal fiction. This idea that the Constitution is perfect and that we
are every day working to get closer to that ideal is only another ideology.
Constitutional freedom, I would claim, shall be present and immediate, not
historical-eschantonical.

And I misspelled Pirates of the Caribbean. I realize that now.

Joseph
Graduate in English
UW - Eau Claire