Celebrity Jurisprudence: The New Legal Scholarship

Here's a fun topic for all you up and coming 3L's with a seminar due next academic year. There seems to be quite a bit of non-study on the topic of celebrity jurisprudence; what laws do and don't apply to the famous, and how they do and don't apply. I would say this is completely separate from the legal standards held to those who are just simply wealthy, as they are more often prosecuted for their crimes.

Just think about it. There could indeed be some fresh legal theory utilizing choice and conflicts of laws studies and how a non-celebrity defendent might argue that he or she is entitled to be adjudged under the same legal standards as those experiencing the benefits of the celebrity legal system.

Don't buy it? Well here are just a few basic lessons we can all learn from the law about the alternative standards of acceptablility for so-called "celebrities", (i.e. "Celebrity Jurisprudence"):

1. Celebrities are entitled to possessing child porn, and engaging in sexual activity with children (R. Kelly, 2004 & Michael Jackson 2005). The Kelly case actually looks like pretty good precedent for the Jackson case.

2. If you make a sexual assault, or any claim against any celebrity loved by the media, you, the victim, will be publicly disgraced (Kobe Bryant, 2004 & Bill Clinton, too numerous to name).

3. He who can portray his ex-wife as a whore, can just kill her as brutally as he chooses (OJ Simpson, 1995 & Robert Blake, 2005).

4. Professional Athletes can get away with damn near anything (Allen Iverson, 2002, Jayson Williams, Kobe Bryant, et. al.).

5. Celebrities can do just about anything and maintain custody of their children (Courtney Love, among others, ongoing).

6. A "right to privacy" only exists for celebrities with the "correct" point of view (Rush Limbaugh, 2005).

Hit the law libraries now, kiddies...