One of the most important legal developments in the last half of the twentieth century was the
change from criminal justice policies shaped primarily by liberal ideas to those shaped
primarily by conservative ideas. This book examines images of law in Hollywood films and
television crime dramas to better understand this conservative revolution in thinking about
crime. The crime stories depicted in popular legal fiction provide interesting as well as
insightful perspectives on law in American society particularly changing images of justice and
its administration as well as individual rights.
