The fan-judges: Clues to a jurisculture of Sherlockian fandom

Authors

  • Ross Davies

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.0944

Keywords:

Conan Doyle, Courts, Holmes, Judicial, Law, Literature, Posner, Role-playing

Abstract

American judges sometimes encourage other participants in the legal system to behave like Sherlock Holmes. They are relying on a shared culture that both appreciates a literary figure and recognizes a human capacity to emulate an imaginary creature (here, Sherlock) outside the context in which it was created. Consciously or not, the judges are tapping into classic fandom, but do they think of it that way, and should they?

Color image in the style of STRAND magazine cover

Downloads

Published

2017-03-15

Issue

Vol. 23 (2017)

Section

Symposium

License

TWC Nos. 25 onward are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC by 4.0). For an explanation of the journal's reasoning, see the TWC editorial Copyright and Open Access. TWC Nos. 1 through 24 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, with TWC, not the author, retaining copyright.

Presses whose policies require written permission for reproduction should contact the TWC Editor; such permission is routinely given for no fee.