Richard K. Sherwin

SSRN (papers); ResearchGate; Google Scholar

http://www.visualpersuasionproject.com

rsherwin@nyls.edu

Academic Positions:

1988-present               NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL                             New York, NY

2022-present               Wallace Stevens Professor of Law Emeritus

1988-2022                   Wallace Stevens Professor of Law;

Director, Visual Persuasion Project;

Inaugural Dean for Faculty Scholarship

Courses taught include: Criminal Procedure and Torts. Courses designed and taught: Visual Persuasion in the Law, Information Law, Advanced Jurisprudence: Studies in Legal Discourse, Law & Popular Culture, and Lawyering (required for all first-year students Fall 1991-2010).

2018 (spring)              UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.               Cambridge, England

Visiting Fellow, Fitzwilliam College, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge University;

2014 (summer)           AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY     Canberra, Australia                                  

Visiting Research Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, The Research School of Humanities and the Arts, College of Arts and Social Sciences, (Humanities Research Centre Fellowship Award).

2014 (spring)              McGILL UNIVERSITY                                          Montreal, Canada

Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair in Law and Literature, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, gave lectures, led workshops, and taught seminar entitled: The Experience of Justice, (American Fulbright Scholar Award 2013-14)

2009 (Spring)             NEW YORK UNIVERSITY                                    New York, NY

Visiting Professor. Co-taught with University Professor Richard Schechner, “Law and Popular Culture” (cross-registered in NYU’s Law School and the Tisch School’s Performance Studies Program).

2006 (July)                  UNIV OF MELBOURNE SCHOOL OF LAW     Melbourne, Australia

Visiting Professor. Lecture series on the impact of digital communication technologies on the practice and teaching of law.

1992-1997                  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL        New York, NY

Adjunct Professor of Law.  Teaching in the

Inter-American Law Institute, Institute of Comparative Law.

1996 (December)        UNIVERSITÉ DE POITIERS                                Poitiers, France

Guest Lecturer, on media and the Anglo-American common law tradition, at the Media Center, Université de Poitiers.

1985-1988                   NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL     New York, NY

 Coordinator of the Lawyering Program 

Taught, administered, and assisted (together with University Professor Anthony G. Amsterdam) in the creation of materials for NYU's first-year lawyering program.

Book Series Advisory Board Member, Controcampi (Mimesis Edizioni) 2024 – present;

Book Series Advisory Board Member, Law, Justice, and Visual Studies (Edinburgh University Press) 2020 – present;

Book Series Advisory Board Member, TechNomos (Routledge), 2020 – present;

Editorial Board member: Law, Technology and Humans (interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal based at Queensland University of Technology), 2019 – present;

Editorial Board member: "Law and Visual Jurisprudence," law book series (Springer), 2018 – present.

Member of Board of Trustees and Editorial Board Member, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law & International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law (Springer), 2008 – present.

Publications:

Books:                       

A Cultural History of Law in the Modern Age (co-editor, with Danielle Celermajer, & contributor) Bloomsbury (2019) (paperback edition 2023);

Law, Culture & Visual Studies (co-editor, with Anne Wagner), author of introductory chapter (Springer 2014) [over 100,000 chapter downloads as of 2021];

Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque: Arabesques & Entanglements (Routledge: 2011);

Popular Culture and Law, [volume editor & contributor (introductory essay & chapter six)], Dartmouth/Ashgate - The International Library of Law and Society (2006);

When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line between Law and

Popular Culture, paperback edition, (University of Chicago Press, 2002);

When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line between Law and Popular Culture, (University of Chicago Press: 2000) [Popular Culture Association: Ray and Pat Browne Award, Short Listed].

Chapters and Articles:

[papers (SSRN)]           

“Presence and Obligation: Why techno-spectacle cannot legitimate law’s claim to power," in Anne Wagner (ed.,) International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: from text to semiotics (forthcoming); 

“On Constitutional Over-Beliefs,” chapter in Martin Belov (ed.,) Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear (forthcoming);

“Reflections on Tomoo Otaka’s Foundation of a Theory of Social Organization,” Global Intellectual History (Special Issue on Otaka’s Foundation of a Theory of Social Association (forthcoming);

“The Politics of Memory: Richard Sherwin Reviews Ways of Remembering,” Socio-Legal Review (SLR Forum) National Law School of India University, Bangalore (forthcoming);

“Character as Sacred Bond: Branded Identity Transvalued,” in Zeitschrift fur Semiotik (2025);

“Law and Visual Culture” in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture (2025);

“Visual Literacy: law’s screen life,” Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, Robert Spoo and Simon Stern (eds.) Elgar Publishing (2025);

“Living in Constitutional Moments,” in Philosophy as a Way of Life, a blog of the American Philosophy Association (January 23, 2025);

“Escalus’s Dream: Re-Imagining Shakespeare’s States,” chapter in Literature and the Legal Imaginary: Knowing Justice (Subha

Mukherji, et. al. ed.,) Palgrave Macmillan (2025);

Review of Gephart & Witte’s “Communities and the(ir) Law,” in the Journal of Comparative Legal History (2024);

“Performance Capital: Retailing Myth, Identity, and the Practices of Governance,” TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 67, Issue 4 (Winter 2023) 181-191;

“Law’s Tacit Dimension: Audiovisual Proof of Incitement in the   Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Special Issue ("Global Semiotics, Intercultural Legal Space and the Interplay between ‘Facticity’ and         ‘Normativity’") (2022);

“Anti-speech Acts and the First Amendment,” Harvard Law and Policy Review vol. 16:2 (2022);

“Sovereign Imaginaries: Visualizing the Sacred Foundation of Law’s  Authority,” chapter in Benjamin Porat and David Flatto, Law as Religion, Religion as Law, Cambridge University Press (2022).

“Post-secular Jurisprudence: A Visual Semiotics of the Sacred Source of Law’s Authority,” chapter in Robert Yelle, Massimo Leone, and Jenny Ponzo (editors), Mediation and Immediacy: A Key Issue for the Semiotics of Religion,” De Gruyter Press (2021);

“Who Am I Now? Identity in the Age of the Digital Baroque,” essay commissioned for ‘Identity Card: Materre's Blog’ - to accompany   law/poetry film collaborations (on the meaning of identity) produced for Matera’19 culture festival, Matera, Italy (2019);

“Character is a Sacred Bond: Reflections on Sovereignty, Grace, & Resistance,” Special issue on ‘Institutions, Embodiment and Affect,’ ANGELAKI: Journal of the theoretical humanities (2019);

 Review of Jeffrey C. Alexander’s “The Drama of Social Life,” TDR: The Drama Review, Cambridge University Press, Volume 62, Number 4, (Winter 2018) (T240);

“Visual Literacy for the Legal Profession,” Journal of Legal Education (symposium issue on visual imagery and pop culture in

legal education) (2018);

“What Authorizes the Image? The Visual Economy of Post- Secular Jurisprudence,” chapter in Desmond Manderson, ed., Lawand the Visual: Representations, Technologies, and Critique, University of Toronto Press (2018);

“Law and the Poetic Imagination,” New York Law School Law Review (2016-2017);

“Vico’s Providence Today,” Teoria critica della regolazione sociale (prominent Italian journal of legal theory and semiotics) (2017);

“Too Late for Thinking: The Curious Quest for Emancipatory Potential in Meaningless Affect and Some Jurisprudential Implications,” Law, Culture & the Humanities, vol. 15, Issue 1 (online, 2015) (in print, February 2019); (in Italian translation, Pierangelo Sequeri & Paolo Heritier, Antropologia ed Estica giurdica (eds), “Troppo tardi per pensari ,” (G. Giappichelli Editore, Turin 2017);

“Law in the Flesh: Tracing Legitimation’s Origin to ‘The Act of Killing,’” No Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice No. 11 (June 2014);

“Visual Literacy for Lawyers,” American Psychology-Law Society (April 2014);

“Performer la Loi. Présences et simulacres, sur scène et au tribunal.” [“Law as Performance: Presence and Simulation Inside the Theater/Courtroom”] Revue Communications, Paris, No. 92 (2013);

“Visual Jurisprudence,” New York Law School Law Review Symposium Issue on “Visualizing Law in the Digital Age,” vol. 57/1 (Fall 2012);

“Constitutional Purgatory: Shades and Presences Inside the Courtroom,” in Leif Dahlberg, ed. Visualizing Law and Authority (Walter de Gruyter 2012);

“Law’s Life on the Screen,” in Sara Steinert-Borella’s and Caroline Wiedmer’s Intersections of Law and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan Socio-Legal Studies 2012);

“Screening the Law,” in A. Sarat ed. Imagining Legality (University of Alabama Press, 2011);

“Imagining Law as Film: Representation without Reference?” chapter in Introduction to Law and the Humanities, (Austin Sarat, Matthew Anderson, Catherine Frank eds., Cambridge University Press 2010);

“What Screen Do You Have in Mind? Contesting the Visual Context of Law and Film Studies,” chapter in Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (A. Sarat ed., Elsevier 2009);

“Sublime Jurisprudence: On the Ethical Education of the Legal Imagination in Our Time,” [Vico Symposium], Chicago-Kent Law Review 83:3 (2008);

“Law, metaphysics, and the new iconoclasm,” in Law Text Culture volume 11, pp. 70 – 105 (Andrew T. Kenyon and Peter D. Rush ed., 2007);

“Thinking Beyond the Shown,” (co-authored with Neal Feigenson) Law Probability Risk, Volume 6, Number 1-4 (March/December 2007) 295-310 (Oxford University Press);

“What is Visual Knowledge, and What is it Good for? Potential Ethnographic Lessons from the Field of Legal Practice,” Visual Anthropology, vol. 20: 1–36, (2007);

“A Manifesto for Visual Legal Realism” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, volume 40, issue 3 (2007);

“Law in the Age of Images,” chapter in James Elkins, ed., Visual Literacy in Action (Routledge 2007);

Foreword to Shulamit Almog, How Digital Technologies are Changing the Practice of Law (Edwin Mellen Press, 2007);           

"Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law," (co-authored with Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel), lead article in the Boston University Journal of Law, Technology, and Science, (2006);

“Law’s Enchantment: The Cinematic Jurisprudence of Krzysztof Kieslowski,” chapter in Michael Freeman, ed., Law and Popular Culture (Oxford University Press, 2005);

“Anti-Oedipus, Lynch: Initiatory Rites and the Ordeal of Justice,” chapter in Austin Sarat, ed., Law on the Screen (Stanford University Press, 2005);

“The Challenge of Visual Literacy: Law in the Age of Images,” (with Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel), in Contemporary Issues in the Semiotics of Law, (Oñati International Series in Law and Society; Hart Publishers, 2005);

"Law in Popular Culture," chapter in The Oxford Companion to American Law (Oxford University Press, 2004);

 “Law’s Beatitude: A Post-Nietzschean Account of Legitimation,”   

 Cardozo Law Review (2003);

“Celebrity Lawyers and the Cult of Personality,” New York Law School Law Review New York Law School Law Review (2003);

"Nomos and Cinema," UCLA Law Review (2001);

"The Jurisprudence of Appearances," New York Law School Law Review (1999) in annual symposium issue ["Law/Culture/Media: Legal Meaning in the Age of Images," (Richard K. Sherwin, editor and conference organizer)];

“Framed” in Law Unreeled: Movies as Legal Texts, (University of Illinois Press 1996);             

(Symposium Issue) "Foreword: Picturing Justice - Images of

Law and Lawyers in the Visual Media," University of San

Francisco Law Review (1996);

"Cape Fear: Law's Inversion and Cathartic Justice,"University of San Francisco Law Review (1996);

“Law and the Myth of the Self in Mass Media Representations,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Vol. VIII no. 24 (1995);

 "Law Frames: Historical Truth and Narrative Necessity in a Criminal Case," Stanford Law Review (1994) [re-published in: Popular Culture and Law, (R.K. Sherwin, ed. (2006); Trials (M. Umphrey ed., 2008); and Law and Popular Culture (David Papke, ed., 2012);

"The Narrative Construction of Legal Reality," 18 Vermont Law Review 681 (1994), [re-published in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (JALWD), Portuguese translation published in Revista Direito e Humanidades (2025);

"Foreword: Lawyering Theory Symposium," New York Law School Law Review (1992):

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Law," (lead article) New York Law School Law Review (1992);

"A Response to Aaron Wildavsky's Review of Jerome S. Bruner's Acts of Meaning," The Responsive Community, January 1992;

"Rhetorical Pluralism and the Discourse Ideal:  Countering Division of Employment v. Smith--A Parable of Pagans, Politics and Majority Rule," Northwestern Law Review (1991);

"Law, Violence and Illiberal Belief," (lead article) Georgetown Law Journal (1990);

“A Matter of Voice and Plot: Belief and Suspicion in Legal Storytelling,” (lead article) Michigan Law Review (1988);

"Dialects and Dominance: A Study of Rhetorical Fields in the Law

of Confessions, "University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1988);

"Opening Hart's Concept of Law," (lead article) Valparaiso University Law Review (1986).

Organizer, Principal Speaker or Participant:

(selected)

Invited keynote lecture: “Presence and Obligation: Can techno-spectacle legitimate law’s claim to power?” 25th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (“Legal Evidence in the Age of Techno-Societies and Visual Jurisprudence”) University of Coimbra, Portugal (May 2025);

Invited lecture: “Constitutional Over-belief: Feeling Abundance as a Function of Legitimation,” conference on ‘Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear’, University of Sofia, Bulgaria, November 8-10, 2024;

Invited lecture: “The Challenge of Legal Chorology: Rethinking Political Theology,” for panel on “Political theology, interreligious dialogue and legal chorology,” 25th World Congress of Philosophy Rome, La Sapienza University, August 8, 2024;

Invited lectures: “Prolegomenon to a Chorological Jurisprudence,” for panel on ‘Semiotic Chorologies: Critical and Generative Spaces in an Intercultural World’; “Sacred Bonds: Toward Eudaimonic Transvaluation of Identity Economics,” for panel on ‘the role of exemplary characters in the interreligious translations of norms and religious practice’); “Social Media and the Public Good” (workshop on ‘Re-constituting digital publics’) at the 23rd International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL), Pontifical University, Rome, (May 24-27, 2023);

Invited lecture, “Performing Popular Sovereignty: Where, When, How – and Who Gets to Say?” Les Doctorales Européennes, Nantes (Arts Lettres Langues), Paris (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcité), Turin University (Law and Institutions) FINO (Philosophy in North West), UPO (Cultural and Institutional Systems Ecology), May 27, 2022;

Invited lecture, “In the Shadow of Violence: The Riddle and the Paradox of Law’s Sovereignty,” conference: ‘The Life and Work of Robert Cover,’ Touro Law Center, October 4, 2021;

Invited Lecture: “Law’s Tacit Knowledge: A Case Study of Competing Videos in Donald J. Trump’s Impeachment Trial,” [webinar, Turin] on "Global Semiotics, Intercultural Legal Space and the Interplay between ‘Facticity’ and ‘Normativity’" September 16, 2021; 

Invited lecture, “Legitimating Law in a Digital State,” conference on Presence & Simulation: Law, Emotion and Social Bonding in the Age of Cybernetic Reproduction, Kyoto University, June 2, 2019;

Invited lecture, “Escalus’s Dream: Re-Imagining Shakespeare’s States,” conference: ‘Law and Poetics in Early Modern England and Beyond,’ organized by Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature, based in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and the Department of English (‘CRASSH’), University of Cambridge, July 2, 2018;

Chair, Round Table & Performance Event – ‘Staging Trials’ (created script for stage production of the Chicago 7 trial at conference on ‘Law and Poetics in Early Modern England and Beyond’), organized by Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature, based in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Department of English, University of Cambridge, July 4, 2018;

Fellows Work-in-Progress Seminar Series, “Law’s Sovereignty,” CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) University of Cambridge, June 18, 2018; 

Invited lecture: "Law and the Visual Imagination" Fondazione Premio Napoli Palazzo Reale di Napoli, Naples, Italy, May 11, 2018;

Fellows' Lecture: "Blind Spots in Law and Literature," Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, May 4, 2018;

Invited lecture: 12 seconds later, Freefall Lecture Series, “On law and visual culture,” Architectural Association, School of Architecture, London, February 1, 2018;

Invited lecture series: “Vico’s Providence Today,” “Sublime Jurisprudence,” and “New Methodological Frontiers in Clinical Legal Studies,” University of Nice, European Law and Humanities Project (Nice), June 26-30, 2017;

Invited lecture: “Five Images: Visualizing the Sacred Source of Law’s Authority,” ‘Law as Religion, Religion as Law’ conference, Hebrew University, June 5 – 7, 2017;

Plenary Speaker, “Sovereign Imaginaries: The Visual Foundation of Law’s Authority,” 48th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association, October 6-9, 2016, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada;

Invited lecture, “Post-secular jurisprudence and the visual semiotics of presence,” Mediation and Immediacy: The Semiotic Turn in the Study of Religion, International conference, June 8-10, 2016, Turin University;

Invited lectures, ‘Vico’s Providence Today’ and ‘Visual Literacy for Jurists: On the Ethical Education of the Legal Imagination in Our Time,’ June 6-7, 2016, Mario Einaudi Center, Dogliani, Italy;

Invited Lecture, “Visual Literacy for Jurists: How Visual Evidence and Visual Storytelling Are Changing the Practice of Law in the Digital Age,” NYC Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) (Administrative law judges from NYC and throughout the state), May 17, 2016;

Invited lecture, “The Visual Economy of Post-Secular Jurisprudence,” Change and Exchange Conference, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) Cambridge University, April 28-29, 2016; 

Invited lecture, “Visual Literacy for Lawyers,” Fitzwilliam College Law Society, Cambridge University, April 26, 2016;

Invited presenter and symposium honoree: “Visualizing Law,” Academia Europaea and AIDEL sponsored international law conference (keynote talk entitled: “What Authorizes the Image?”) University of Verona, November 11-13, 2015;

Invited lecture: “Visualizing Law: Presence and Simulation Inside the Courtroom,” Conference on Law & Theater, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, June 9-12, 2015;

 Wallace Stevens Investiture Lecture: “Law and the Poetic Imagination,” New York Law School, April 22, 2015;

Chair, “Ethics and Aesthetics in Cinematic and Theatrical Responses to Atrocity and Poverty”; discussant, “Meta-Aesthetics of Law and Justice”; invited panelist, “Author Meets Reader: Maria Aristodemou’s Law, Psychoanalysis, Society,” Law, Culture and Humanities conference, Washington, DC, March 6 -7, 2015.

Invited lecture: “What is Visual Jurisprudence?” Osgoode Hall Law School, Law.Art.Culture seminar series, September 26, 2014;

Plenary Speaker, “What Authorizes the Image?: Visualizing Law as Imitation and Event,” for the conference on Law and the Visual—Transitions & Transformations, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 7 - 8 July 2014.

Invited Presentation: “Law in the Flesh: A Genealogy of the Political Unconscious with Specific Reference to Joshua Oppenheimer’s ‘The Act of Killing’” for university roundtable entitled, “Law in the Flesh: Feelings, Publics, and Popular Culture,” April 2, 2014, sponsored by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Invited Presentation: Roundtable – On Peter Goodrich’s “Legal Emblems and the Art of Law,” chair and presenter, University of Virginia, Law, Culture and the Humanities annual meeting, March 11, 2014;

Public Lecture: Great Trials Series – “The Rodney King Case” (February 12, 2014, Westmount Library, Montreal, Canada).

Workshop: “Virtual and Actual Performance: Film, Theater, and Social Media,” Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, February 7, 2014.

Invited Speaker, “Visual Literacy for Lawyers,” Indiana University – Bloomington, law faculty workshop, and “Law as Performance,” Indiana University – Bloomington, cultural and communications studies workshop, September 19, 2014.

Plenary Speaker, “Visual Semiotics and Law,” at the Third International Conference on Law, Language and Discourse, 3-6 June 2013, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Plenary speaker at the Third International Conference on Law, Translation and Culture  (30 May- 2 June, 2013) at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in Hangzhou, China; and Plenary speaker at the 14th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (25-29 May, 2013) at Zhejiang Police College, Hangzhou, China.

Panel organizer and presenter, “Virtual Bodies in Court,” annual Law, Culture & Humanities conference, School of Law, Birkbeck College, London, England (March 23, 2013);

Invited critical commentary, “On the Representational Economy of Torture,” Northeast Law & Society Conference, Amherst College, January 12, 2013;

Invited lecture, “Law as Performance,” [“Performer la Loi”] at the Institute for Advanced Studies (‘HESS’) Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre, May 29, 2011, interdisciplinary conference on performance theory;

Organized international conference (with Peter Goodrich of Cardozo Law School) on “Visualizing Law in the Digital Age” (based largely on my recent book) at Cardozo Law School on October 19, 2011, and at New York Law School, on October 21, 2011; presented paper on “Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque”;

Commemorative talk on 9/11 (“The Wild Image”) for the “Visualizing 9/11” conference at Cardozo Law School, on September 8, 2011; the event featured a number of documentary filmmakers as well as documentary footage by Jules and Gedeon Naudet and my own original footage of the burning towers and their collapse [excerpts of my video appear in Spike Lee’s documentary series ‘NYC Epicenters 9/11→2021½,’ the National Geographic Series ‘One Day in America,’ and Marilyn Berger’s documentary film, “Out of the Ashes: 9/11” (2011)];

Invited Speaker, “When Law Goes Pop,” Law and Humanities Graduate Summer Workshop, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI), McGill University, May 25, 2010;

Panel presentations: “Film in Law: Exploring Genres, Disciplines and Actors”; Round Table discussion focusing on Marilyn Berger’s documentary, Out of the Ashes: 9/11 (featuring original 9/11 footage shot by Richard Sherwin), Brown University, March 18-19, 2010;

Beatty Lecture: “Legitimatrix: Law, Ethics, and the Digital Neo-Baroque,” February 17, 2010 (public lecture) McGill University;

Keynote Speaker: “Intersections of Law and Culture,” October 2 – 4, 2009, Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland;

Faculty, Persuasion Institute Narrative Trainer Conference (Office of US Defender Services), trainer in Habeas Corpus workshop for federal defenders in capital cases, Cornell University, September 11-13, 2009;

Keynote Speaker: "Imagining Legality: Where Law Meets Popular Culture," University of Alabama Law School, September 25, 2009;

Invited panelist: “On cognitive neuro-imaging and the cultural construction of meaning,” [panel 1]; “Therapeutic justice and the mediatization of criminal typecasting,’ [panel 2], Congress on Cognitive Neuroscience and the Preventive State, International Academy of Law and Mental Health, June 27 – July 4, 2009, New York University Law School;

Invited panelist: “Re-Describing the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Legal Story (The Baldy Center) Buffalo Law School, May 30 – June 3, 2009;

Invited panelist: “Legitimatrix,” Cardozo Law School, “In Flagrante Depicto: Film in Law/Law in Film," May 8, 2009;

Panel organizer and presenter: “Visuality and the Law: An Interdisciplinary Approach,” (with Barbara Maria Stafford, Hassan Fancy, and Bruce Hay), annual meeting of Law, Culture & Humanities, Suffolk Law School, April 2-3, 2009;

Paper presentation: “Heidegger 2.0: ‘Onto-cybernetics,’” conference on Technovisuality and the Re-enchantment of Culture, University of Hong Kong, November 20 – 22, 2008;

Invited Moderator/Presenter: “Technology and Its Impact on Decision Making and the Law,” Appellate Judges Summit (national seminar for appellate judges, attorneys, and court clerks) Scottsdale, Arizona, November 14, 2008;

Invited panelist: “Re-Describing the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Legal Story (The Baldy Center) SUNY-Buffalo Law School, March 27 – 29, 2008;

Invited lecture: “Visual Persuasion in the Law,” Civil Justice Workshop, University of California – Berkeley (Boalt Hall) Law School, February 7, 2008;

Invited presentation: “Visual Persuasion at Trial,” Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor of New York, January 24, 2008;

Founding member of the Persuasion Institute: Advanced Training Program Workshop in Narrative Construction for Post-conviction Litigators, (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Office of Defender Services and Habeas Assistance and Training Program), Cornell Law School, Ithaca, NY (September 28-30, 2007);

Panel organizer and presenter: “Rethinking the Secular / Sacred Divide: Law, Metaphysics, and the Digital Neo-Baroque,” annual Law & Society Association, Berlin, Humboldt University, July 29, 2007;

Invited presentation: "Thinking Beyond the Shown: Implicit

Inferences in Visual Evidence and Argument," Cardozo Law

School, January 28-29, 2007, Conference on Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence & Inference in Legal Settings; 

Keynote speaker: “A Manifesto for Visual Legal Realism,” A Civil Justice Program Symposium at Loyola Law School, Friday, September 29, 2006 (“How Americans Learn About Our Civil Justice System”);

Invited panelist: “Levinas and the New Metaphysics of Law,” Centennial Conference on Levinas and Law, McGill University Faculty of Law (September 17-18, 2006)

Lawyering trainer: The Persuasion Institute, Federal Defenders death penalty narrative training colloquium, Philadelphia, Pa (September, 2006);

Keynote address, “Law, Metaphysics and the New Iconoclasm,” Passages: law, aesthetics and politics, 13th International Conference of the Law and Literature Association of Australia at the University of Melbourne Law School, (July 13-14, 2006);

“Law, Metaphysics and the New Iconoclasm,” paper presented at the annual Law & Society Association meeting, Baltimore, Maryland (July 7-8, 2006);

Keynote address, “Law in the Digital Age,” University of Maryland Law School’s symposium on “The Impact of Film on Law, Lawyers and the Legal System, (March 31 – April 1, 2006);

 “Law, Metaphysics, and the New Iconoclasm,” annual Law, Culture and Humanities conference, Syracuse University College of Law (March 2006)

“Law and Popular Culture,” Tel Aviv University, (November 2005);

Lawyering trainer: The Persuasion Institute, Federal Defenders death penalty narrative training colloquium, Philadelphia, Pa (September, 2005);

“What is visual knowledge and what is it good for?” Frontiers of Visual Ethnography,” Oxford University, (September 2005);

“Practicing Law in the Digital Age,” lecture to the entering class of 2008, at Syracuse University College of Law (August 2005);

“Fighting For Time: Immanentist ethics and the lure of cinematic spectacle,” ‘Sixty years after the war’ conference, University of Haifa, Israel (June 1, 2005);

“Law in the Age of Images: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy,” Syracuse University, College of Law (April 2005);

“Visual Literacy in Action: Law in the Age of Images,” First International Conference on Visual Literacy, (Prof. James Elkins, organizer), University College Cork, Ireland (April 2005);

“Law of the Image & the Image of Law,” Law, Culture, and the Humanities (paper presentation and panel organizer), Austin, Texas, March 12, 2005;

“Derrida/America” Conference, Chair, ‘Politics/Aesthetics’ panel, Cardozo Law School, February 20, 2005;

“State of Play 2 – ‘Reloaded’: ‘Teaching Law on the Screen’” (workshop on interactive, digital teaching; co-author [with David Johnson] of prototype multimedia teaching tool), New York Law School and the Information Society at Yale Law School, October 31, 2004;

“The Law/Media/Culture Project and its Implications for Legal Theory,” International Law & Semiotics conference, Université de Lyon, Lyon, France, July 7 – 12, 2004;

“Law on the Screen,” panel presentation, Yale Law School, March 30, 2004;

“On Being Among Friends: A Response to Eugene Garver’s For the Sake of Argument,” panel presentation, annual Law, Culture and the Humanities conference, University of Connecticut Law School, March 10, 2004; 

“Legal Mind / Digital World: Law’s Adaptation to the Information Society,” panel presentation, annual Law, Culture and the Humanities conference, University of Connecticut Law School, March 10, 2004;

“Society and Games,” panel moderator & co-organizer of “The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds,” a conference on virtual worlds and legal culture, sponsored by New York Law School and the Information Society at Yale Law School, November 13-15, 2003;

“Law's Enchantment: the Cinematic Jurisprudence of Krzysztof Kieslowski,” Law and Film conference, (invited speaker), University College London, (June 30, 2003);

“Presidential Panel: Law on Film, On the Politics and Political Significance of Film Spectatorship,” annual Law & Society Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (June 7, 2003);

“Oedipus, Lynch: Re-initiating the Ordeal of Justice,” Law’s Moving Image conference, (invited speaker), Amherst College (April 11-12, 2003);

“Democracy in the Digital Age,” moderator, Yale Law School (April 5, 2003);

“Visual Spin and Legitimation Crisis,” annual Law, Culture & the Humanities conference, Cardozo Law School (March 8, 2003);

“Reception, Spectatorship and the Image of the Extraordinary: Televising Legitimation Crisis in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election (Bush v. Gore),” Visual Evidence X, Marseille, France (December, 2002);

“`Visual Spin’: Bush v. Gore, A Case Study In Litigation Public Relations,” and “Law in the Age of Images,” paper presentations at the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, Vancouver, Canada (May 30-June 1, 2002);

“Law in the Age of Images,” paper presentation at the Contemporary Issues in the Semiotics of Law conference, Onati Institute, Onãti, Spain (May 15-17, 2002);

Invited Lecture, Fairleigh Dickinson University, “Law in Popular Culture,” April 15, 2002;

Scholar-in-Residence, Catholic University School of Law, “Visual media and the law: trends in technology and trial practice,” (November 29-30, 2001);

"Nietzsche and Legal Theory: `Law’s Beatitude’," Cardozo Law Review Symposium, New York, NY, (October 21, 2001);

"Representing the American Lawyer as Celebrity," American Bar Association, The Leon Jaworski Public Program Series (principal essayist and panelist), Chicago, Illinois (August 4, 2001);

"Law in the Image" (paper presentation), annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, (July 5, 2001);

"Author Meets Reader," a round table discussion of When Law Goes Pop, Law & Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, (July 6, 2001);

"On Postmodern Freedom: The Matrix in Popular Culture," annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 13, 2001;

"Law After Postmodernism," annual meeting of Law, Culture and Humanities, Austin, Texas, March 9, 2001;

"Nomos and Cinema: A Study of Kieslowksi's Red," Law and Popular Culture Symposium, UCLA School of Law, February 23, 2001;

 "Ethnography of the Eye: Theory in Visual Practice," annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, California, (November 15-19, 2000);

"Law and Popular Culture," talks sponsored by the Center for the Americas, the Literature and Society Center, and the Baldy Center at SUNY-Buffalo School of Law, October 20, 2000;

"A Case Study in Litigation Public Relations," Visual Evidence VIII Conference (annual film studies symposium), The Netherlands, August 17-20, 2000;

"Book Round: WHEN LAW GOES POP: The Vanishing Line between Law and Popular Culture," (author meets reader) Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Miami Beach, Florida (May 26-28, 2000);

"Visual Images and Persuasion at Trial," Law, Culture, and Humanities annual meeting, Washington, D.C. (March 11, 2000);

"The Jurisprudence of Appearances," Visual Evidence VII (annual film studies symposium), Los Angeles, California (August 1999);

“Images and the Law” (theme panel), Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, (May 27-30, 1999);                 

"Imagining the Law in Popular Culture,” Law, Culture, & the Humanities, Wake Forest School of Law, (March 13, 1999);

“Law/Media/Culture: Legal Meaning in the Age of Images” (principal organizer), sponsored by the New York Law School Law Review, (March 5, 1999);         

"Law and Popular Culture: The Jurisprudence of Appearances,” Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, June 4-7, 1998;                        

“Post-Print Mass Culture and Contemporary Legal Practice,” Law, Culture, and the Humanities, March 27, 1998;

Chair and discussant, “Law in the Public Eye: Media Images of Violence and Justice,” Law & Society Association, St. Louis, Missouri, May 31, 1997;

"Picturing Justice: Images of Law & Lawyers in the Visual Media," symposium (with John Osborne, David Papke, Charles Musser, Bill Nichols, and others), organized inter-disciplinary conference devoted to examining the complex role of movies and television in shaping society's images of lawyers and law), University of San Francisco School of Law, March 22-23, 1996;

“On the Interpenetration of Law and Popular Culture,” The New York Museum of Modern Art (sponsored by the Department of Film Studies, Columbia University), October 2 or 3, 1996;                            

“Shaping Realities: Language, Media, Computers & Cyberspace," Law & Society Association conference, Toronto, Canada, June 4 1995;

“Critical Networks” conference at the Georgetown Law Center, March 11, 1995;           

“Lawyers as Storytellers,” symposium sponsored by the Vermont Law Review, November 6, 1993;

"Film, Television and Literature as Media of Identity,” panel sponsored by the Law & Society Association, Chicago, Illinois, May 27, 1993.

Invited lecture: “On Legal Storytelling,” Proof and Persuasion Seminar, The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University (Professor Natalie Zemon Davis, Director), April 9, 1993;

“Law Frames: Historical Truth and Narrative Necessity in a Criminal Case,” New York Law School Clinical Theory Workshop, February 12, 1993;

Organized and presented: "Lawyering Theory Symposium," interdisciplinary conference (featuring Anthony G. Amsterdam, Jerome Bruner, Richard Shweder, Sally Merry, Martha Fineman, Reid Hastie, and others) at New York Law School, March 6, 1992;

Organized and presented at the New York University School of Law "Lawyering Theory Colloquium," Fall 1991, 1992;

Invited paper: "Systematic Pluralism: An Interdisciplinary Conference,"Rhetorical Pluralism: Stories that Legitimate Power"), The University of Nebraska at Lincoln, April 12 - 14, 1990.

Op-Ed Essays:

(selected)

Trump’s Tariffs and the Will to Power Project Syndicate (April 7, 2025); King Trump on Trial Project Syndicate (May 17, 2024);

Tramp’s Enablers on the Supreme Court Project Syndicate (April 29, 2024);

What Fundamentalist Christians See in Trump Project Syndicate (Mar 7, 2024 );

Biden Begs the Question Baltimore Sun (January 19, 2024);

Do we have to think the unthinkable about a second Trump presidency? Baltimore Sun (December 2023);

Will Trump Be on the Ballot? Project Syndicate (December 2023); Trump’s Hollow Free Speech Defense (August 2023);

Patriots in Name Only (January 2023);

Elon Musk’s Covert War on Free Speech (January 2022);

America’s Dangerous Descent Into Violence (July 2022);

“Trump’s Hollow Free-Speech Defense,” Project Syndicate (global op-ed platform) (August 14, 2023);

“Patriots in Name Only,” Project Syndicate (Jan. 25, 2023);

“Elon Musk’s Covert War on Free Speech,” Project Syndicate  (Oct 13, 2022);

“Personhood and the great American rift.” NY Daily News (June 23, 2022);

“Memo to Musk: Free Speech is not Absolute,” NY Daily News (April 26, 2022);

“Democracy Under Siege in America,” Project Syndicate (July 7, 2020);

“Democracy’s Missing Meaning, Project Syndicate (May 15, 2015); “The Visual Politics of Terror,” Project Syndicate (Sept. 23, 2014); “The Digital Trial” Project Syndicate (Oct. 12, 2011);

“Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis,” (review) New York Law Journal, (November 23, 2004);

"Does the public have the right to watch?" (interview regarding public viewing of the Timothy McVeigh execution) Christian Science Monitor, (June 12, 2001); "The Ultimate Reality TV Show," (discussing televising executions) Boston Globe, Sunday Focus Section, (April 1, 2001); “Legal storytelling & truth,” The New York Times, (September 7, 2000);  “What declaring war on drugs really means,” The New York Times (November 25, 1996).       

Book Reviews & Interviews:

(selected):

TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 58, Number 1, Spring 2014 (T221), pp. 171-173 (essay on my book, Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); Polemos, (Jan. 2011) (review of Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, (Jan. 2012) (review of Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); New York Law School Law Review (2012/2013 (review essays on Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); The New Republic (2002) (review of my book, When Law Goes Pop; National Law Journal (September 2002); Journal of American & Comparative Cultures (2002); Stay Free! Magazine (featured interview) (August, 2001); Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture  (2001); Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (December 12, 2000); The New York Times Book Review Section (November 10, 2000); Law and Politics Book Review (October 2000);  San Francisco Life (September 27, 2000); Brill's Content; Slate (August 21, 2000); Kultur (in Swedish) (August 9, 2000); Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 21 (2000), Klaus F. Röhl und Stefan Ulbrich: Visuelle Rechtskommunikation  Rechtssoziologie  (2000) (in German); Prawo i Życie (2000) (in Polish); The Financial Times (London) (July 13, 2000); jurist.law.pitt.edu; findlaw.com; Amazon.com; WIRED; The Chronicle of Higher Education; The Times Literary Supplement (June 16, 2000); Library Journal; and Publishers' Weekly (May 14, 2000).

Mass Media:             

(selected)

Interview regarding the firing of FBI Director James Comey, TELERAMA (June 2017); “The future of the rule of law in America,” Sirius Radio interview;

"The Dean Obeidallah Show" (February 2017);

Chief commentator in “Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart” (HBO documentary, dir. Jeremiah Zagar 2014) [‘desperate love’ defense]; radio interview with director Jeremiah Zagar;

ABA Journal’s “Law in Film Project” (August 2008); ABC (Australian National Public Radio), (interviewed on the topic of cameras in the courtroom and the impact of popular culture on law) July 2007; March 2007);

MSNBC, “The Abrams Report” (segment on celebrity lawyers) (June 17, 2005);

RTE Radio 1 (Irish National Public Radio), interviewed by Miles Dungan on the topic of visual literacy, (April 14, 2005);

The New Republic, featured in cover story (“Trial by Fury”), March 14, 2005;

St. Petersbugh Times, interview quoted in “The Erin Brockovich effect: influence, inference,” (April 11, 2004);

C-SPAN, Law Day 2003: “The Appearance of Justice: Television Cameras in the Courts,” (May 2, 2003);

NPR, National public radio piece and Connecticut Public Television piece on seminar, Visual Persuasion in the Law, (October 23, 2002); Illinois Public Radio (WILL), interview on When Law Goes Pop, (September 20, 2002);

NBC, "The Today Show" (April 13, 2001), interviewed by Matt Lauer on whether executions should be televised;

Minnesota Public Broadcasting, (April 13, 2001), hour-long talk show interview on televising executions;

KPFK (Los Angeles) radio interview, February 6, 2001;

CSPAN, televised lecture (from State University of New York, Buffalo) on WHEN LAW GOES POP, November 22, 2000, (multiple rebroadcasts);

WNYC, "On the Line" (with Brian Lehrer), July 18, 2000, author interview on WHEN LAW GOES POP;

CNN, Broadcast from Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. (November 19, 1999), "Changing Media Portrayals of the Criminal Practice of Law," Criminal Practice Institute;

Court TV moderator, the Louise Woodward ("nanny homicide") trial, October 21, 1997;

National Law Journal, February 17, 1997, interview discussing the emerging field of law and popular culture;

PBS (“Inside the Law”), nationally syndicated law program broadcast February 8, 1997 panel discussion with Alan Pakula, film director and producer (To Kill A Mockingbird, Presumed Innocence, The Pelican Brief) and others on the relationship between law, culture, and film;

Association of the Bar of the City of New York, June 3, 1996, (“Cameras in the Courtroom”) (guests included: Steve Brill, President of Courtroom Television, Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder, Defense attorney Barry Slotnick, and Columbia University Professor Richard Uviller);

The Denise Richardson Show, Talk Television, April 4, 1995 (“Cameras in the Courtroom”);

“Trial by Television,” assisted in the production of this nationally syndicated PBS program on media coverage of high profile trials (November 17, 1995).

Legal Practice:

1981-1984                   DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK                New York, NY

Assistant District Attorney 

Responsible for numerous criminal and civil cases before the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department; Appellate Term, First Department; Federal District Court for the Southern District; United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and for one case before the United States Supreme Court, (New York v. Ferber, October Term, 1981).

Education:

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL         New York, NY Received J.S.D. degree in January 1988, (dissertation chair: Professor Bruce Ackerman).

Received LL.M. degree in June 1985. Thesis title:  "Publics, Experts and the Language of Democracy." 

1978-1981 BOSTON COLLEGE LAW SCHOOL    Newton, MA Received J.D. degree in June 1981. Executive and Co-Founding Editor of the Boston College Third World Law Journal. 

1971-1975   BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY    Waltham, MA. Received Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude with highest departmental honors Philosophy in June 1975.

                                    Advanced studies in Philosophy, Université

                                    de Paris, IV (Sorbonne) in 1973-1974.

Richard K. Sherwin

SSRN (papers); ResearchGate; Google Scholar

http://www.visualpersuasionproject.com

rsherwin@nyls.edu

[917-886-9055]

Academic Positions:

1988-present NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL New York, NY

2022-present Wallace Stevens Professor of Law Emeritus

1988-2022 Wallace Stevens Professor of Law;

Director, Visual Persuasion Project;

Inaugural Dean for Faculty Scholarship

Courses taught include: Criminal Procedure and Torts. Courses designed and taught: Visual Persuasion in the Law, Information Law, Advanced Jurisprudence: Studies in Legal Discourse, Law & Popular Culture, and Lawyering (required for all first-year students Fall 1991-2010).

2018 (spring) UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. Cambridge, England

Visiting Fellow, Fitzwilliam College, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge University;

2014 (summer) AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Canberra, Australia

   Visiting Research Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, The Research

School of Humanities and the Arts, College of Arts and Social Sciences, (Humanities Research Centre Fellowship Award).

2014 (spring) McGILL UNIVERSITY Montreal, Canada

Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair in Law and Literature, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, gave lectures, led workshops, and taught seminar entitled: The Experience of Justice, (American Fulbright Scholar Award 2013-14)

2009 (Spring) NEW YORK UNIVERSITY New York, NY

Visiting Professor. Co-taught with University Professor Richard Schechner, “Law and Popular Culture” (cross-registered in NYU’s Law School and the Tisch School’s Performance Studies Program).

2006 (July) UNIV OF MELBOURNE SCHOOL OF LAW Melbourne, Australia

Visiting Professor. Lecture series on the impact of digital communication technologies on the practice and teaching of law.

1992-1997 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL New York, NY

Adjunct Professor of Law. Teaching in the

Inter-American Law Institute, Institute of Comparative Law.

1996 (December) UNIVERSITÉ DE POITIERS Poitiers, France

   Guest Lecturer, on media and the Anglo-American common law

Tradition, at the Media Center, Université de Poitiers.

1985-1988 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL New York, NY

Coordinator of the Lawyering Program

Taught, administered, and assisted (together with University Professor Anthony G. Amsterdam) in the creation of materials for NYU's first-year lawyering program.

Book Series Advisory Board Member, Controcampi (Mimesis Edizioni) 2024 –

present;

Book Series Advisory Board Member, Law, Justice, and Visual Studies

(Edinburgh University Press) 2020 – present;

Book Series Advisory Board Member, TechNomos (Routledge), 2020 – present;

Editorial Board member: Law, Technology and Humans (interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal based at Queensland University of Technology), 2019 – present;

Editorial Board member: "Law and Visual Jurisprudence," law book series (Springer), 2018 – present.

Member of Board of Trustees and Editorial Board Member, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law & International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law (Springer), 2008 – present.

Publications:

Books: A Cultural History of Law in the Modern Age (co-editor, with Danielle Celermajer, & contributor) Bloomsbury (2019) (paperback edition 2023);

Law, Culture & Visual Studies (co-editor, with Anne Wagner), author of introductory chapter (Springer 2014) [over 100,000 chapter downloads as of 2021];

Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque: Arabesques & Entanglements (Routledge: 2011);

Popular Culture and Law, [volume editor & contributor

(introductory essay & chapter six)], Dartmouth/Ashgate - The International Library of Law and Society (2006);

When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line between Law and

Popular Culture, paperback edition, (University of Chicago Press, 2002);

When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line between Law and Popular Culture, (University of Chicago Press: 2000) [Popular Culture Association: Ray and Pat Browne Award, Short Listed].

Chapters and Articles:

[papers (SSRN)]

“Presence and Obligation: Why techno-spectacle cannot legitimate law’s claim to power," in Anne Wagner (ed.,) International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: from text to semiotics (forthcoming);

“On Constitutional Over-Beliefs,” chapter in Martin Belov (ed.,) Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear (forthcoming);

“Reflections on Tomoo Otaka’s Foundation of a Theory of Social Organization,” Global Intellectual History (Special Issue on Otaka’s Foundation of a Theory of Social Association (forthcoming);

“The Politics of Memory: Richard Sherwin Reviews Ways of Remembering,” Socio-Legal Review (SLR Forum) National Law School of India University, Bangalore (forthcoming);

“Character as Sacred Bond: Branded Identity Transvalued,” in Zeitschrift fur Semiotik (2025);

“Law and Visual Culture” in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture (2025);

“Visual Literacy: law’s screen life,” Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, Robert Spoo and Simon Stern (eds.) Elgar Publishing (2025);

“Living in Constitutional Moments,” in Philosophy as a Way of Life, a blog of the American Philosophy Association (January 23, 2025);

“Escalus’s Dream: Re-Imagining Shakespeare’s States,” chapter in Literature and the Legal Imaginary: Knowing Justice (Subha

Mukherji, et. al. ed.,) Palgrave Macmillan (2025);

Review of Gephart & Witte’s “Communities and the(ir) Law,” in the Journal of Comparative Legal History (2024);

“Performance Capital: Retailing Myth, Identity, and the Practices of

Governance,” TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 67, Issue 4 (Winter 2023) 181-191;

“Law’s Tacit Dimension: Audiovisual Proof of Incitement in the Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Special Issue ("Global Semiotics, Intercultural Legal Space and the Interplay between ‘Facticity’ and ‘Normativity’") (2022);

“Anti-speech Acts and the First Amendment,” Harvard Law Policy Review vol. 16:2 (2022);

“Sovereign Imaginaries: Visualizing the Sacred Foundation of Law’sAuthority,” chapter in Benjamin Porat and David Flatto, Law asReligion, Religion as Law, Cambridge University Press (2022).

“Post-secular Jurisprudence: A Visual Semiotics of the Sacred Source of Law’s Authority,” chapter in Robert Yelle, Massimo Leone, and Jenny Ponzo (editors), Mediation and Immediacy: A Key Issue for the Semiotics of Religion,” De Gruyter Press (2021);

“Who Am I Now? Identity in the Age of the Digital Baroque,” essay commissioned for ‘Identity Card: Materre's Blog’ - to accompany law/poetry film collaborations (on the meaning of identity) produced for Matera’19 culture festival, Matera, Italy (2019);

“Character is a Sacred Bond: Reflections on Sovereignty, Grace, & Resistance,” Special issue on ‘Institutions, Embodiment and Affect,’ ANGELAKI: Journal of the theoretical humanities (2019);

Review of by Jeffrey C. Alexander’s “The Drama of Social Life,”TDR: The Drama Review, Cambridge University Press, Volume 62,Number 4, (Winter 2018) (T240);

“Visual Literacy for the Legal Profession,” Journal of Legal Education (symposium issue on visual imagery and pop culture in legal education) (2018);

“What Authorizes the Image? The Visual Economy of Post-Secular Jurisprudence,” chapter in Desmond Manderson, ed., Law and the Visual: Representations, Technologies, and Critique, University of Toronto Press (2018);

“Law and the Poetic Imagination,” New York Law School LawReview (2016-2017);

“Vico’s Providence Today,” Teoria critica della regolazio sociale (prominent Italian journal of legal theory and semiotics) (2017);

“Too Late for Thinking: The Curious Quest for Emancipatory Potential in Meaningless Affect and Some Jurisprudential Implications,” Law, Culture & the Humanities, vol. 15, Issue 1 (online, 2015) (in print, February 2019); (in Italian translation, Pierangelo Sequeri & Paolo Heritier, Antropologia ed Estica giurdica (eds), “Troppo tardi per pensari ,” (G. Giappichelli Editore, Turin 2017);

“Law in the Flesh: Tracing Legitimation’s Origin to ‘The Act of Killing,’” No Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice No. 11 (June 2014);

“Visual Literacy for Lawyers,” American Psychology-Law Society (April 2014);

“Performer la Loi. Présences et simulacres, sur scène et au tribunal.” [“Law as Performance: Presence and Simulation Inside the Theater/Courtroom”] Revue Communications, Paris, No. 92 (2013);

 “Visual Jurisprudence,” New York Law School Law Review Symposium Issue on “Visualizing Law in the Digital Age,” vol. 57/1 (Fall 2012);

“Constitutional Purgatory: Shades and Presences Inside the Courtroom,” in Leif Dahlberg, ed. Visualizing Law and Authority (Walter de Gruyter 2012);

 “Law’s Life on the Screen,” in Sara Steinert-Borella’s and Caroline Wiedmer’s Intersections of Law and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan Socio-Legal Studies 2012);

 “Screening the Law,” in A. Sarat ed. Imagining Legality (Alabama, 2011);

 “Imagining Law as Film: Representation without Reference?” chapter in Introduction to Law and the Humanities, (Austin Sarat, Matthew Anderson, Catherine Frank eds., Cambridge University Press 2010);

“What Screen Do You Have in Mind? Contesting the Visual Context of Law and Film Studies,” chapter in Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (A. Sarat ed., Elsevier 2009);

“Sublime Jurisprudence: On the Ethical Education of the Legal Imagination in Our Time,” [Vico Symposium], Chicago-Kent Law Review 83:3 (2008);

“Law, metaphysics, and the new iconoclasm,” in Law Text Culture volume 11, pp. 70 – 105 (Andrew T. Kenyon and Peter D. Rush ed., 2007);

“Thinking Beyond the Shown,” (co-authored with Neal Feigenson) Law Probability Risk, Volume 6, Number 1-4 (March/December 2007) 295-310 (Oxford University Press);

 “What is Visual Knowledge, and What is it Good for? Potential Ethnographic Lessons from the Field of Legal Practice,” Visual Anthropology, vol. 20: 1–36, (2007);

“A Manifesto for Visual Legal Realism” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, volume 40, issue 3 (2007);

“Law in the Age of Images,” chapter in James Elkins, ed., Visual Literacy in Action (Routledge 2007);

Foreword to Shulamit Almog, How Digital Technologies are Changing the Practice of Law (Edwin Mellen Press, 2007);

"Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law," (co-authored with Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel), lead article in the Boston University Journal of Law, Technology, and Science, (2006);

“Law’s Enchantment: The Cinematic Jurisprudence of Krzysztof Kieslowski,” chapter in Michael Freeman, ed., Law and Popular Culture (Oxford University Press, 2005);

“Anti-Oedipus, Lynch: Initiatory Rites and the Ordeal of Justice,” chapter in Austin Sarat, ed., Law on the Screen (Stanford University Press, 2005);

“The Challenge of Visual Literacy: Law in the Age of Images,” (with Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel), in Contemporary Issues in the Semiotics of Law, (Oñati International Series in Law and Society; Hart Publishers, 2005);

"Law in Popular Culture," chapter in The Oxford Companion to American Law (Oxford University Press, 2004);

 “Law’s Beatitude: A Post-Nietzschean Account of Legitimation,”

 Cardozo Law Review (2003);

“Celebrity Lawyers and the Cult of Personality,” New York Law School Law Review New York Law School Law Review (2003);

"Nomos and Cinema," UCLA Law Review (2001);

"The Jurisprudence of Appearances," New York Law School Law Review (1999) in annual symposium issue ["Law/Culture/Media: Legal Meaning in the Age of Images," (Richard K. Sherwin, editor and conference organizer)];

“Framed” in Law Unreeled: Movies as Legal Texts, (University of Illinois Press 1996);

(Symposium Issue) "Foreword: Picturing Justice - Images of

Law and Lawyers in the Visual Media," University of San

Francisco Law Review (1996);

"Cape Fear: Law's Inversion and Cathartic Justice," University of San Francisco Law Review (1996);

“Law and the Myth of the Self in Mass Media Representations,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Vol. VIII no. 24 (1995);

"Law Frames: Historical Truth and Narrative Necessity in a Criminal Case," Stanford Law Review (1994) [re-published in: Popular Culture and Law, (R.K. Sherwin, ed. (2006); Trials (M. Umphrey ed., 2008); and Law and Popular Culture (David Papke, ed., 2012);

"The Narrative Construction of Legal Reality," 18 Vermont Law Review 681 (1994), [re-published in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (JALWD), Portuguese translation published in Revista Direito e Humanidades (2025);

"Foreword: Lawyering Theory Symposium," New York Law School Law Review (1992):

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Law," (lead article) New York Law School Law Review (1992);

"A Response to Aaron Wildavsky's Review of Jerome S. Bruner's Acts of Meaning," The Responsive Community, January 1992;

"Rhetorical Pluralism and the Discourse Ideal: Countering Division of Employment v. Smith--A Parable of Pagans, Politics and Majority Rule," Northwestern Law Review (1991);

"Law, Violence and Illiberal Belief," (lead article) Georgetown Law Journal (1990);

“A Matter of Voice and Plot: Belief and Suspicion in Legal Storytelling,” (lead article) Michigan Law Review (1988);

"Dialects and Dominance: A Study of Rhetorical Fields in the Law

of Confessions, "University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1988);

"Opening Hart's Concept of Law," (lead article) Valparaiso University Law Review (1986).

Organizer, Principal Speaker or Participant:

(selected)

Invited keynote lecture: “Presence and Obligation: Can techno-spectacle legitimate law’s claim to power?” 25th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (“Legal Evidence in the Age of Techno-Societies and Visual Jurisprudence”) University of Coimbra, Portugal (May 2025);

Invited lecture: “Constitutional Over-belief: Feeling Abundance as a Function of Legitimation,” conference on ‘Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear’, University of Sofia, Bulgaria, November 8-10, 2024;

Invited lecture: “The Challenge of Legal Chorology: Rethinking Political Theology,” for panel on “Political theology, interreligious dialogue and legal chorology,” 25th World Congress of Philosophy, Rome, La Sapienza University, August 8, 2024;

Invited lectures: “Prolegomenon to a Chorological Jurisprudence,” for panel on ‘Semiotic Chorologies: Critical and Generative Spaces in an Intercultural World’; “Sacred Bonds: Toward a Eudaimonic Transvaluation of Identity Economics,” for panel on ‘the role of exemplary characters in the interreligious translations of norms and religious practice’); “Social Media and the Public Good” (workshop on ‘Re-constituting digital publics’) at the 23rd International  Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL), Pontifical University, Rome, May 24-27, 2023;

Invited lecture, “Performing Popular Sovereignty: Where, When, How – and Who Gets to Say?” Les Doctorales Européennes, Nantes (Arts Lettres Langues), Paris (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcité), Turin (Law and Institutions) FINO (Philosophy in North West), UPO (Cultural and Institutional Systems Ecology), May 27, 2022;

Invited lecture, “In the Shadow of Violence: The Riddle and the Paradox of Law’s Sovereignty,” conference: ‘The Life and Work of Robert Cover,’ Touro Law Center, October 4, 2021;

Invited Lecture: “Law’s Tacit Knowledge: A Case Study of Competing Videos in Donald J. Trump’s Impeachment Trial,” [webinar, Turin] on "Global Semiotics, Intercultural Legal Space and the Interplay between ‘Facticity’ and ‘Normativity’" September 16, 2021;

Invited lecture, “Legitimating Law in a Digital State,” conference on Presence & Simulation: Law, Emotion and Social Bonding in the Age of Cybernetic Reproduction, Kyoto University, June 2, 2019;

Invited lecture, “Escalus’s Dream: Re-Imagining Shakespeare’s States,” conference: ‘Law and Poetics in Early Modern England and Beyond,’ organized by Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature, based in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and the Department of English (‘CRASSH’), University of Cambridge, July 2, 2018;

Chair, Round Table & Performance Event – ‘Staging Trials’ (created script for stage production of the Chicago 7 trial at conference on ‘Law and Poetics in Early Modern England and Beyond’), organized by Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature, based in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Department of English, University of Cambridge, July 4, 2018;

Fellows Work-in-Progress Seminar Series, “Law’s Sovereignty,” CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) University of Cambridge, June 18, 2018;

Invited lecture: "Law and the Visual Imagination" Fondazione Premio Napoli Palazzo Reale di Napoli, Naples, Italy, May 11, 2018;

Fellows' Lecture: "Blind Spots in Law and Literature," Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, May 4, 2018;

Invited lecture: 12 seconds later, Freefall Lecture Series, “On law and visual culture,” Architectural Association, School of Architecture, London, February 1, 2018;

Invited lecture series: “Vico’s Providence Today,” “Sublime Jurisprudence,” and “New Methodological Frontiers in Clinical Legal Studies,” University of Nice, European Law and Humanities Project (Nice), June 26-30, 2017;

Invited lecture: “Five Images: Visualizing the Sacred Source of Law’s Authority,” ‘Law as Religion, Religion as Law’ conference, Hebrew University, June 5 – 7, 2017;

Plenary Speaker, “Sovereign Imaginaries: The Visual Foundation of Law’s Authority,” 48th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association, October 6-9, 2016, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada;

Invited lecture, “Post-secular jurisprudence and the visual semiotics of presence,” Mediation and Immediacy: The Semiotic Turn in the Study of Religion, International conference, June 8-10, 2016, Turin University;

Invited lectures, ‘Vico’s Providence Today’ and ‘Visual Literacy for Jurists: On the Ethical Education of the Legal Imagination in Our Time,’ June 6-7, 2016, Mario Einaudi Center, Dogliani, Italy;

Invited Lecture, “Visual Literacy for Jurists: How Visual Evidence and Visual Storytelling Are Changing the Practice of Law in the Digital Age,” NYC Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) (Administrative law judges from NYC and throughout the state), May 17, 2016;

Invited lecture, “The Visual Economy of Post-Secular Jurisprudence,” Change and Exchange Conference, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) Cambridge University, April 28-29, 2016;

Invited lecture, “Visual Literacy for Lawyers,” Fitzwilliam College Law Society, Cambridge University, April 26, 2016;

Invited presenter and symposium honoree: “Visualizing Law,” Academia Europaea and AIDEL sponsored international law conference (keynote talk entitled: “What Authorizes the Image?”) University of Verona, November 11-13, 2015;

Invited lecture: “Visualizing Law: Presence and Simulation Inside the Courtroom,” Conference on Law & Theater, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, June 9-12, 2015;

Wallace Stevens Investiture Lecture: “Law and the Poetic Imagination,” New York Law School, April 22, 2015;

Chair, “Ethics and Aesthetics in Cinematic and Theatrical Responses to Atrocity and Poverty”; discussant, “Meta-Aesthetics of Law and Justice”; invited panelist, “Author Meets Reader: Maria Aristodemou’s Law, Psychoanalysis, Society,” Law, Culture and Humanities conference, Washington, DC, March 6 -7, 2015.

Invited lecture: “What is Visual Jurisprudence?” Osgoode Hall Law School, Law.Art.Culture seminar series, September 26, 2014;

Plenary Speaker, “What Authorizes the Image?: Visualizing Law as Imitation and Event,” for the conference on Law and the Visual—Transitions & Transformations, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 7 - 8 July 2014.

Invited Presentation: “Law in the Flesh: A Genealogy of the Political Unconscious with Specific Reference to Joshua Oppenheimer’s ‘The Act of Killing’” for university roundtable entitled, “Law in the Flesh: Feelings, Publics, and Popular Culture,” April 2, 2014, sponsored by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Invited Presentation: Roundtable – On Peter Goodrich’s “Legal Emblems and the Art of Law,” chair and presenter, University of Virginia, Law, Culture and the Humanities annual meeting, March 11, 2014.

Public Lecture: Great Trials Series – “The Rodney King Case” (February 12, 2014, Westmount Library, Montreal, Canada).

Workshop: “Virtual and Actual Performance: Film, Theater, and Social Media,” Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, February 7, 2014.

Invited Speaker, “Visual Literacy for Lawyers,” Indiana University – Bloomington, law faculty workshop, and “Law as Performance,” Indiana University – Bloomington, cultural and communications studies workshop, September 19, 2014.

Plenary Speaker, “Visual Semiotics and Law,” at the Third International Conference on Law, Language and Discourse, 3-6 June 2013, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Plenary speaker at the Third International Conference on Law, Translation and Culture (30 May- 2 June, 2013) at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in Hangzhou, China; and Plenary speaker at the 14th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (25-29 May, 2013) at Zhejiang Police College, Hangzhou, China.

Panel organizer and presenter, “Virtual Bodies in Court,” annual Law, Culture & Humanities conference, School of Law, Birkbeck College, London, England (March 23, 2013);

Invited critical commentary, “On the Representational Economy of Torture,” Northeast Law & Society Conference, Amherst College, January 12, 2013;

Invited lecture, “Law as Performance,” [“Performer la Loi”] at the Institute for Advanced Studies (‘HESS’) Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre, May 29, 2011, interdisciplinary conference on performance theory;

Organized international conference (with Peter Goodrich of Cardozo Law School) on “Visualizing Law in the Digital Age” (based largely on my recent book) at Cardozo Law School on October 19, 2011, and at New York Law School, on October 21, 2011; presented paper on “Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque”;

Commemorative talk on 9/11 (“The Wild Image”) for the “Visualizing 9/11” conference at Cardozo Law School, on September 8, 2011; the event featured a number of documentary filmmakers as well as documentary footage by Jules and Gedeon Naudet and my own original footage of the burning towers and their collapse [excerpts of my video appear in Spike Lee’s documentary series ‘NYC Epicenters 9/11→2021½,’ the National Geographic Series ‘One Day in America,’ and Marilyn Berger’s documentary film, “Out of the Ashes: 9/11” (2011)];

Invited Speaker, “When Law Goes Pop,” Law and Humanities Graduate Summer Workshop, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI), McGill University, May 25, 2010;

Panel presentations: “Film in Law: Exploring Genres, Disciplines and Actors”; Round Table discussion focusing on Marilyn Berger’s documentary, Out of the Ashes: 9/11 (featuring original 9/11 footage shot by Richard Sherwin), Brown University, March 18-19, 2010;

Beatty Lecture: “Legitimatrix: Law, Ethics, and the Digital Neo-Baroque,” February 17, 2010 (public lecture) McGill University;

Keynote Speaker: “Intersections of Law and Culture,” October 2 – 4, 2009, Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland;

Faculty, Persuasion Institute Narrative Trainer Conference (Office of US Defender Services), trainer in Habeas Corpus workshop for federal defenders in capital cases, Cornell University, September 11-13, 2009;

Keynote Speaker: "Imagining Legality: Where Law Meets Popular Culture," University of Alabama Law School, September 25, 2009;

Invited panelist: “On cognitive neuro-imaging and the cultural construction of meaning,” [panel 1]; “Therapeutic justice and the mediatization of criminal typecasting,’ [panel 2], Congress on Cognitive Neuroscience and the Preventive State, International Academy of Law and Mental Health, June 27 – July 4, 2009, New York University Law School;

Invited panelist: “Re-Describing the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Legal Story (The Baldy Center) Buffalo Law School, May 30 – June 3, 2009;

Invited panelist: “Legitimatrix,” Cardozo Law School, “In Flagrante Depicto: Film in Law/Law in Film," May 8, 2009;

Panel organizer and presenter: “Visuality and the Law: An Interdisciplinary Approach,” (with Barbara Maria Stafford, Hassan Fancy, and Bruce Hay), annual meeting of Law, Culture & Humanities, Suffolk Law School, April 2-3, 2009;

Paper presentation: “Heidegger 2.0: ‘Onto-cybernetics,’” conference on Technovisuality and the Re-enchantment of Culture, University of Hong Kong, November 20 – 22, 2008;

Invited Moderator/Presenter: “Technology and Its Impact on Decision Making and the Law,” Appellate Judges Summit (national seminar for appellate judges, attorneys, and court clerks) Scottsdale, Arizona, November 14, 2008;

Invited panelist: “Re-Describing the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Legal Story (The Baldy Center) SUNY-Buffalo Law School, March 27 – 29, 2008;

Invited lecture: “Visual Persuasion in the Law,” Civil Justice Workshop, University of California – Berkeley (Boalt Hall) Law School, February 7, 2008;

Invited presentation: “Visual Persuasion at Trial,” Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor of New York, January 24, 2008;

Founding member of the Persuasion Institute: Advanced Training Program Workshop in Narrative Construction for Post-conviction Litigators, (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Office of Defender Services and Habeas Assistance and Training Program), Cornell Law School, Ithaca, NY (September 28-30, 2007);

Panel organizer and presenter: “Rethinking the Secular / Sacred Divide: Law, Metaphysics, and the Digital Neo-Baroque,” annual Law & Society Association, Berlin, Humboldt University, July 29, 2007;

Invited presentation: "Thinking Beyond the Shown: Implicit

Inferences in Visual Evidence and Argument," Cardozo Law

School, January 28-29, 2007, Conference on Graphic and Visual

Representations of Evidence & Inference in Legal Settings;

Keynote speaker: “A Manifesto for Visual Legal Realism,” A Civil Justice Program Symposium at Loyola Law School, Friday, September 29, 2006 (“How Americans Learn About Our Civil Justice System”);

Invited panelist: “Levinas and the New Metaphysics of Law,” Centennial Conference on Levinas and Law, McGill University Faculty of Law (September 17-18, 2006)

Lawyering trainer: The Persuasion Institute, Federal Defenders death penalty narrative training colloquium, Philadelphia, Pa (September, 2006);

Keynote address, “Law, Metaphysics and the New Iconoclasm,” Passages: law, aesthetics and politics, 13th International Conference of the Law and Literature Association of Australia at the University of Melbourne Law School, (July 13-14, 2006);

“Law, Metaphysics and the New Iconoclasm,” paper presented at the annual Law & Society Association meeting, Baltimore, Maryland (July 7-8, 2006);

Keynote address, “Law in the Digital Age,” University of Maryland Law School’s symposium on “The Impact of Film on Law, Lawyers and the Legal System, (March 31 – April 1, 2006);

“Law, Metaphysics, and the New Iconoclasm,” annual Law, Culture and Humanities conference, Syracuse University College of Law (March 2006)

“Law and Popular Culture,” Tel Aviv University, (November 2005);

Lawyering trainer: The Persuasion Institute, Federal Defenders death penalty narrative training colloquium, Philadelphia, Pa (September, 2005);

“What is visual knowledge and what is it good for?” Frontiers of Visual Ethnography,” Oxford University, (September 2005);

“Practicing Law in the Digital Age,” lecture to the entering class of 2008, at Syracuse University College of Law (August 2005);

“Fighting For Time: Immanentist ethics and the lure of cinematic spectacle,” ‘Sixty years after the war’ conference, University of Haifa, Israel (June 1, 2005);

“Law in the Age of Images: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy,” Syracuse University, College of Law (April 2005);

“Visual Literacy in Action: Law in the Age of Images,” First International Conference on Visual Literacy, (Prof. James Elkins, organizer), University College Cork, Ireland (April 2005);

“Law of the Image & the Image of Law,” Law, Culture, and the Humanities (paper presentation and panel organizer), Austin, Texas, March 12, 2005;

“Derrida/America” Conference, Chair, ‘Politics/Aesthetics’ panel, Cardozo Law School, February 20, 2005;

“State of Play 2 – ‘Reloaded’: ‘Teaching Law on the Screen’” (workshop on interactive, digital teaching; co-author [with David Johnson] of prototype multimedia teaching tool), New York Law School and the Information Society at Yale Law School, October 31, 2004;

“The Law/Media/Culture Project and its Implications for Legal Theory,” International Law & Semiotics conference, Université de Lyon, Lyon, France, July 7 – 12, 2004;

“Law on the Screen,” panel presentation, Yale Law School, March 30, 2004;

“On Being Among Friends: A Response to Eugene Garver’s For the Sake of Argument,” panel presentation, annual Law, Culture and the Humanities conference, University of Connecticut Law School, March 10, 2004;

“Legal Mind / Digital World: Law’s Adaptation to the Information Society,” panel presentation, annual Law, Culture and the Humanities conference, University of Connecticut Law School, March 10, 2004;

“Society and Games,” panel moderator & co-organizer of “The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds,” a conference on virtual worlds and legal culture, sponsored by New York Law School and the Information Society at Yale Law School, November 13-15, 2003;

“Law's Enchantment: the Cinematic Jurisprudence of Krzysztof Kieslowski,” Law and Film conference, (invited speaker), University College London, (June 30, 2003);

“Presidential Panel: Law on Film, On the Politics and Political Significance of Film Spectatorship,” annual Law & Society Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (June 7, 2003);

“Oedipus, Lynch: Re-initiating the Ordeal of Justice,”

Law’s Moving Image conference, (invited speaker), Amherst College (April 11-12, 2003);

“Democracy in the Digital Age,” moderator, Yale Law School (April 5, 2003);

“Visual Spin and Legitimation Crisis,” annual Law, Culture & the Humanities conference, Cardozo Law School (March 8, 2003);

“Reception, Spectatorship and the Image of the Extraordinary: Televising Legitimation Crisis in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election (Bush v. Gore),” Visual Evidence X, Marseille, France (December, 2002),;

“`Visual Spin’: Bush v. Gore, A Case Study In Litigation Public Relations,” and “Law in the Age of Images,” paper presentations at the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, Vancouver, Canada (May 30-June 1, 2002);

“Law in the Age of Images,” paper presentation at the Contemporary Issues in the Semiotics of Law conference, Onati Institute, Onãti, Spain (May 15-17, 2002);

Invited Lecture, Fairleigh Dickinson University, “Law in Popular Culture,” April 15, 2002;

Scholar-in-Residence, Catholic University School of Law, “Visual media and the law: trends in technology and trial practice,” (November 29-30, 2001);

"Nietzsche and Legal Theory: `Law’s Beatitude’," Cardozo Law Review Symposium, New York, NY, (October 21, 2001);

"Representing the American Lawyer as Celebrity," American Bar Association, The Leon Jaworski Public Program Series (principal essayist and panelist), Chicago, Illinois (August 4, 2001);

"Law in the Image" (paper presentation), annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, (July 5, 2001);

"Author Meets Reader," a round table discussion of When Law Goes Pop, Law & Society Association, Budapest, Hungary, (July 6, 2001);

"On Postmodern Freedom: The Matrix in Popular Culture," annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 13, 2001;

"Law After Postmodernism," annual meeting of Law, Culture and Humanities, Austin, Texas, March 9, 2001;

"Nomos and Cinema: A Study of Kieslowksi's Red," Law and Popular Culture Symposium, UCLA School of Law, February 23, 2001;

"Ethnography of the Eye: Theory in Visual Practice," annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, California, (November 15-19, 2000);

"Law and Popular Culture," talks sponsored by the Center for the Americas, the Literature and Society Center, and the Baldy Center at SUNY-Buffalo School of Law, October 20, 2000;

"A Case Study in Litigation Public Relations," Visual Evidence VIII Conference (annual film studies symposium), The Netherlands, August 17-20, 2000;

"Book Round: WHEN LAW GOES POP: The Vanishing Line between Law and Popular Culture," (author meets reader) Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Miami Beach, Florida (May 26-28, 2000);

"Visual Images and Persuasion at Trial," Law, Culture, and Humanities annual meeting, Washington, D.C. (March 11, 2000);

"The Jurisprudence of Appearances," Visual Evidence VII (annual film studies symposium), Los Angeles, California (August 1999);

“Images and the Law” (theme panel), Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, (May 27-30, 1999);

"Imagining the Law in Popular Culture,” Law, Culture, & the Humanities, Wake Forest School of Law, (March 13, 1999);

“Law/Media/Culture: Legal Meaning in the Age of Images” (principal organizer), sponsored by the New York Law School Law Review, (March 5, 1999);

"Law and Popular Culture: The Jurisprudence of Appearances,” Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, June 4-7, 1998;

“Post-Print Mass Culture and Contemporary Legal Practice,” Law, Culture, and the Humanities, March 27, 1998;

Chair and discussant, “Law in the Public Eye: Media Images of Violence and Justice,” Law & Society Association, St. Louis, Missouri, May 31, 1997;

"Picturing Justice: Images of Law & Lawyers in the Visual Media," symposium (with John Osborne, David Papke, Charles Musser, Bill Nichols, and others), organized inter-disciplinary conference devoted to examining the complex role of movies and television in shaping society's images of lawyers and law), University of San Francisco School of Law, March 22-23, 1996;

“On the Interpenetration of Law and Popular Culture,” The New York Museum of Modern Art (sponsored by the Department of Film Studies, Columbia University), October 2 or 3, 1996;

“Shaping Realities: Language, Media, Computers & Cyberspace," Law & Society Association conference, Toronto, Canada, June 4 1995;

“Critical Networks” conference at the Georgetown Law Center, March 11, 1995;

“Lawyers as Storytellers,” symposium sponsored by the Vermont Law Review, November 6, 1993;

"Film, Television and Literature as Media of Identity,” panel sponsored by the Law & Society Association, Chicago, Illinois, May 27, 1993.

Invited lecture: “On Legal Storytelling,” Proof and Persuasion Seminar, The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University (Professor Natalie Zemon Davis, Director), April 9, 1993;

“Law Frames: Historical Truth and Narrative Necessity in a Criminal Case,” New York Law School Clinical Theory Workshop, February 12, 1993;

Organized and presented: "Lawyering Theory Symposium," interdisciplinary conference (featuring Anthony G. Amsterdam, Jerome Bruner, Richard Shweder, Sally Merry, Martha Fineman, Reid Hastie, and others) at New York Law School, March 6, 1992;

Organized and presented at the New York University School of Law "Lawyering Theory Colloquium," Fall 1991, 1992;

Invited paper: "Systematic Pluralism: An Interdisciplinary Conference,"Rhetorical Pluralism: Stories that Legitimate Power"), The University of Nebraska at Lincoln, April 12 - 14, 1990.

Op-Ed Essays:

(selected)

Trump’s Tariffs and the Will to Power Project Syndicate (April 7, 2025); King Trump on Trial Project Syndicate (May 17, 2024);

Trump’s Enablers on the Supreme Court Project Syndicate (April 29, 2024);

What Fundamentalist Christians See in Trump Project Syndicate (Mar 7, 2024 );

Biden Begs the Question Baltimore Sun (January 19, 2024);

Do we have to think the unthinkable about a second Trump presidency? Baltimore Sun (December 2023);

Will Trump Be on the Ballot? Project Syndicate (December 2023); Trump’s Hollow Free Speech Defense (August 2023); Patriots in Name Only (January 2023); Elon Musk’s Covert War on Free Speech (January 2022); America’s Dangerous Descent Into Violence (July 2022); “Trump’s Hollow Free-Speech Defense,” Project Syndicate (global op-ed platform) (August 14, 2023); “Patriots in Name Only,” Project Syndicate (Jan. 25, 2023); “Elon Musk’s Covert War on Free Speech,” Project Syndicate (Oct 13, 2022); “Personhood and the great American rift.” NY Daily News (June 23, 2022); “Memo to Musk: Free Speech is not Absolute,” NY Daily News (April 26, 2022); “Democracy Under Siege in America,” Project Syndicate (July 7, 2020); “Democracy’s Missing Meaning, Project Syndicate (May 15, 2015); “The Visual Politics of Terror,” Project Syndicate (Sept. 23, 2014); “The Digital Trial” Project Syndicate (Oct. 12, 2011);

“Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis,” (review) New York Law Journal, (November 23, 2004);

"Does the public have the right to watch?" (interview regarding public viewing of the Timothy McVeigh execution) Christian Science Monitor, (June 12, 2001); "The Ultimate Reality TV Show," (discussing televising executions) Boston Globe, Sunday Focus Section, (April 1, 2001); “Legal storytelling & truth,” The New York Times, (September 7, 2000); “What declaring war on drugs really means,” The New York Times (November 25, 1996).

Book Reviews & Interviews:

(selected):

TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 58, Number 1, Spring 2014 (T221), pp. 171-173 (essay on my book, Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); Polemos, (Jan. 2011) (review of Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, (Jan. 2012) (review of Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); New York Law School Law Review (2012/2013 (review essays on Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque); The New Republic (2002) (review of my book, When Law Goes Pop; National Law Journal (September 2002); Journal of American & Comparative Cultures (2002); Stay Free! Magazine (featured interview) (August, 2001); Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture (2001); Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (December 12, 2000); The New York Times Book Review Section (November 10, 2000); Law and Politics Book Review (October 2000); San Francisco Life (September 27, 2000); Brill's Content; Slate (August 21, 2000); Kultur (in Swedish) (August 9, 2000); Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 21 (2000), Klaus F. Röhl und Stefan Ulbrich: Visuelle Rechtskommunikation Rechtssoziologie (2000) (in German); Prawo i Życie (2000) (in Polish); The Financial Times (London) (July 13, 2000); jurist.law.pitt.edu; findlaw.com; Amazon.com; WIRED; The Chronicle of Higher Education; The Times Literary Supplement (June 16, 2000); Library Journal; and Publishers' Weekly (May 14, 2000).

Mass Media:

(selected)

Interview regarding the firing of FBI Director James Comey,

TELERAMA (June 2017);

“The future of the rule of law in America,” Sirius Radio interview

"The Dean Obeidallah Show" (February 2017);

Chief commentator in “Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart” (HBO documentary, dir. Jeremiah Zagar 2014) [‘desperate love’ defense]; radio interview with director Jeremiah Zagar; ABA Journal’s “Law in Film Project” (August 2008); ABC (Australian National Public Radio), (interviewed on the topic of cameras in the courtroom and the impact of popular culture on law) July 2007; March 2007); MSNBC, “The Abrams Report” (segment on celebrity lawyers) (June 17, 2005); RTE Radio 1 (Irish National Public Radio), interviewed by Miles Dungan on the topic of visual literacy, (April 14, 2005); The New Republic, featured in cover story (“Trial by Fury”), March 14, 2005; St. Petersbugh Times, interview quoted in “The Erin Brockovich effect: influence, inference,” (April 11, 2004); C-SPAN, Law Day 2003: “The Appearance of Justice: Television Cameras in the Courts,” (May 2, 2003); NPR, National public radio piece and Connecticut Public Television piece on seminar, Visual Persuasion in the Law, (October 23, 2002); Illinois Public Radio (WILL), interview on When Law Goes Pop, (September 20, 2002); NBC, "The Today Show" (April 13, 2001), interviewed by Matt Lauer on whether executions should be televised; Minnesota Public Broadcasting, (April 13, 2001), hour-long talk show interview on televising executions; KPFK (Los Angeles) radio interview, February 6, 2001; CSPAN, televised lecture (from State University of New York, Buffalo) on WHEN LAW GOES POP, November 22, 2000, (multiple rebroadcasts); WNYC, "On the Line" (with Brian Lehrer), July 18, 2000, author interview on WHEN LAW GOES POP; CNN, Broadcast from Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. (November 19, 1999), "Changing Media Portrayals of the Criminal Practice of Law," Criminal Practice Institute; Court TV moderator, the Louise Woodward ("nanny homicide") trial, October 21, 1997; National Law Journal, February 17, 1997, interview discussing the emerging field of law and popular culture; PBS (“Inside the Law”), nationally syndicated law program broadcast February 8, 1997 panel discussion with Alan Pakula, film director and producer (To Kill A Mockingbird, Presumed Innocence, The Pelican Brief) and others on the relationship between law, culture, and film; Association of the Bar of the City of New York, June 3, 1996, (“Cameras in the Courtroom”) (guests included: Steve Brill, President of Courtroom Television, Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder, Defense attorney Barry Slotnick, and Columbia University Professor Richard Uviller); The Denise Richardson Show, Talk Television, April 4, 1995 (“Cameras in the Courtroom”); “Trial by Television,” assisted in the production of this nationally syndicated PBS program on media coverage of high profile trials (November 17, 1995).

Legal Practice:

 1981-1984 DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK, New York, NY

Assistant District Attorney

Responsible for numerous criminal and civil cases before the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department; Appellate Term, First Department; Federal District Court for the Southern District; United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and for one case before the United States Supreme Court, (New York v. Ferber, October Term, 1981).

Education:

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL New York, NY

Received J.S.D. degree in January 1988, (dissertation chair: Professor Bruce Ackerman).

Received LL.M. degree in June 1985. Thesis title: "Publics, Experts and the Language of Democracy."

1978-1981 BOSTON COLLEGE LAW SCHOOL Newton, MA

Received J.D. degree in June 1981. Executive and Co-Founding Editor of the Boston College Third World Law Journal.

1971-1975 BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY Waltham, MA

Received Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude with highest departmental honors in Philosophy in June 1975.

Advanced studies in Philosophy, Université de Paris, IV (Sorbonne) in 1973-1974.

Academic service & committees:

(selected):

Dean for Faculty Scholarship; Chair, Promotion & Tenure Committee; Chair, Appointments Committee; Chair, Instructional Technology Committee; Dean’s Committee on Committees; Executive Task Force Committee;

Academic service & committees:

(selected):                                           

Dean for Faculty Scholarship; Chair, Promotion & Tenure Committee; Chair, Appointments Committee; Chair, Instructional Technology Committee; Dean’s Committee on Committees; Executive Task Force Committee.