Joseph W. Dellapenna, Villanova University Using Movies to Teach Comparative Law and Other Courses One of the more difficult aspects of teaching comparative law is that students in an American law school typically have no idea what a legal proceeding from a non-common law setting even looks like, let alone any idea of the different suppositions that suffuse a non-common law courtroom. I have found that movies make a great way of introducing the students in to the style and feel of a civil law proceeding than simply reading about it or listening to me or someone else talk about it. A major difference between the civil law and the common law systems is the relatively less central role that courts play in the live of the societies. This manifests itself in the fact that “courtroom dramas” are a distinctly common-law phenomenon, and are particularly concentrated in the United States. While movies involving police investigations are a staple of non-common-law societies, and many of those societies also make good movies that turn upon the interplay of law and society (See, e.g., Jean de Floret and Manon of the Spring), films in which anyone is actually seen in court are rare. I have been able to locate four good films over the years that serve to introduce the students to various aspects of the course on Comparative Law. There are a few more out there, but the four I have selected are the best of a limited choice. The attached handout summary describes the films, and also films that I use in my seminar on Chinese Law and my course on Managing the Water Environment. The latter two courses are also courses in which students usually have little or no background and thus cannot provide their own context for what they are studying. Using films is not for everyone. First of all, it takes time. I believe that law must be seen in context, and the best context is the entire movie. That means about two-hours of class time for each film. Second, I must provide a more discursive context by reminding students that these are meant as dramas, not as documentaries (except for one I use in Chinese Law-and that one is not a courtroom drama). Students should no more accept each detail of the movie as accurate than they would in watching a courtroom drama from the United States. Nonetheless, they get a good sense of the look and feel of the particular proceeding and of popular perceptions of the roles of courts and lawyers in the particular society. Finally, we have to take more time to consider how what the students have seen in the movie to what they are reading in their texts. How does it support what they read, how does it expand on it, and how does it contradict it? Altogether, I have found that this approach works quite well, particularly in a course or seminar in which one of the major goals is to provide students with a broad perspective on law and its role in a society as much or more as a technical understanding of a particular body of legal doctrine or theory. The theory comes as well, but the students now can put it in a meaningful context.