‘Shall James K. Hardy be renominated for District Judge?’: classical jurisprudence, politics, and patriarchy in A Family Affair

This article examines the treatment of questions of jurisprudence, and its social and political connotations, in Hollywood cinema against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the New Deal, with a focus on one specific film: A Family Affair, made by MGM in 1937. It centred on a small-town judge who incurs the wrath of a wealthy developer when he blocks a lucrative aqueduct project due to his doubts over its propriety, turning the town against him and his family in the process. While the film advocates for the classical jurisprudence that came under heavy criticism from contemporary legal scholars and was heavily associated with conservatism, A Family Affair's political and social vision are rather more complex and contested in the way it addresses the economic environment of the 1930s and its implications for intergenerational and familial relationships.