Skip to main content

Superheroes and the Law

By


Is Batman a state actor for constitutional law purposes? Can the IRS tax Superman for squeezing coal into diamonds and not paying taxes? Can Ben Grimm sue Reed Richards for turning him into The Thing?  Important legal questions like these are addressed in one of the library’s newest books The Law of Superheroes by James Daily and Ryan Davidson. 

The Law of Superheroes takes a large chunk of the law, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Evidence, Tort, and Administrative Law and applies it to the “facts” of the world of comic book superheroes and supervillains with interesting results. Super-characters have all sorts of adventures and applying legal analysis to those adventures makes for not only interesting context but is also instructive in teaching how the law works. I ask you, isn’t analyzing Superman’s immigration status (he’s an alien!) more interesting than reading some dry old Supreme Court case on immigration? While this volume is not a marriage of case book and comic book it does make for stimulating, yet light, legal reading. 

To answer the questions posed above:  Batman: Yes, see Edmonson v. LeesvilleConcrete Co., Inc. 500 US 614 (1991), Superman:  In the comic a senior IRS agent argues that since Superman had saved the world he could declare everyone as a deduction (doubtful), The Thing: No, Ben Grimm assumed the risk knowing that space exploration was dangerous.

The Law of Superheroes by James Daily and Ryan Davidson. K487 .L38 D35 2012
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

By
Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le...
1 comment
Read more

Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

By Anonymous
“Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.” –Martin Luther King Jr.   Last week, I had the pleasure of attending  Professor Zachary D. Kaufman ’s presentation on  Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda  hosted by the  Johannesburg Holocaust & Geno cide Ce ntre . Among the many takeaways highlighted by Professor Kaufman and drawn from  Lessons from Rwanda: Post-Genocide Law and Policy   were ten simple yet profound lessons:   Lesson #1: Hate speech is dangerous.   To illustrate the role that hate speech played in the Rwandan genocide, Professor Kaufman discussed multiple forms of  propaganda , such as Kangura, Radio Rwanda, and RTLM “hate radio.”   He concludes that we must have limits, including with respect to social media, and further asserts that social media must do a better jo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Texas Subsequent History Table Ceases Publication

By
This week, Thomson Reuters notified subscribers that publication of the Texas Subsequent History Table will be discontinued and no further updates will be produced, due to “insufficient market interest.” Practitioners have been extracting writ (and since 1997, petition) history from the tables since their initial publication in 1917 as The Complete Texas Writs of Error Table . The tables, later published by West, have been used for nearly a century to determine how the Texas Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals disposed of an appeal from an intermediate appellate court. The purpose of adding this notation to citations is to indicate the effect of the Texas Supreme Court’s action on the weight of authority of the Court of Appeals’ opinion.  For example, practitioners may prefer to use as authority a case that the Texas Supreme Court has determined is correct both in result and legal principles applied (petition refused), rather than one that simply presents no error that requ...
Post a Comment
Read more