Stanley Fish is one of the most renowned American academics of the last half century, we all know.

He's a leading scholar of Milton, among the most prominent purveyors of high theory

during those very exciting years, in 1965 to 1980. I guess those are the high theory years.

A central figure also in the campus culture wars of the late 1980s, early 90s, columnist at New York Times,

professor at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke, University of Illinois, Chicago, and now New College of

Florida. Recently, he's turned his attention to the more popular genres of TV and movies.

A few years back, he wrote a book on the 1960s

TV show The Fugitive, which I've recommended often for boys and their fathers to watch.

The TV show, which was much better than that later movie with Harrison Ford. Stanley, I hope you agree. Now he has a book

on Hollywood films. The book's entitled Law at the Movies, turning legal doctrine into art.

That's our topic today. Welcome, Professor Fish. Thank you, Mark.

First question, you're a literary theorist and scholar.

What is your, tell us about your experience with the law, legal matters.

Well, I became interested in the law in the middle 70s, and I had a friend who was at the University of

Maryland Law School and we would talk together about issues of interpretation and discovered that

there was a great overlap between interpretive questions in the law and in literature.

And so with a third friend, Walter Michaels of John Stockton's University,

we began to teach courses together, bringing together legal questions and literary questions.

And I found that I really took to the legal milieu,

and after that particular arrangement was over, I stuck with it and started more and more to write on the law

and when I got to Duke University in 1985

to be a member of the law faculty.

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