Courtroom dramas have captivated audiences for over a century. Edward Laemmle’s 1929 legal thriller The Drake Case is widely considered to be one of the genre’s founders, and its release would lead to the genre’s sustained popularity throughout the twentieth century. However, since the turn of the millennium, aside from a few notable exceptions, audiences’ audiovisual interest appears to be less legally bound to the courtroom drama. Why is this, and what have we lost from not giving this genre its well-deserved justice?

The 1950s was the height of the genre’s golden age, with releases like Sidney Lumet’s phenomenal 12 Angry Men in 1957, as well as Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory in the same year. Paths of Glory is a personal favourite of mine, a court-martial drama that highlights the abject horrors and needless suffering of World War I. In this way, it excels not only as a well-constructed drama, but also as an incredible work of anti-war cinema. Other honourable mentions include John Grisham’s The Firm (1993) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957).

“Short form, sensationalist, true crime series appear to be more captivating to the contemporary viewer”

However, in the past decade, few courtroom dramas have been released in the anglophone world. But why exactly is this once beloved genre fading into obscurity? This year, Clint Eastwood’s fantastically innovative courtroom drama Juror #2 (2024) was screened in less than 50 cinemas in the US, despite its phenomenal cast and nuanced direction. While it is certainly not the case that audiences have lost their appetite for legal thrillers or dramas, the interest in the legal genre appears to have changed as a result of the rise of streaming services. Nowadays when you scroll through Netflix, new true crime ‘documentaries’ or dramatised series looking at the hunt for real life killers reign supreme. Short form, sensationalist, true crime series like Dahmer (2022) and The Menendez Brothers (2024) appear to be more captivating to the contemporary viewer than the filmography of John Grisham.

While this could be considered to be the legal drama’s natural evolution, many valuable components of the courtroom drama are lost in the process. Namely, its more complex and philosophical approach to justice. Like in 12 Angry Men, in which the case of a working-class, 18-year-old boy accused of murdering his father appears at first to have a simple ‘guilty’ verdict. However, as the film progresses, Juror 8 (played magnificently by Henry Fonda), showcases each man’s personal biases that influence their quick, prejudiced conclusions: Juror 10’s racism, Juror 3’s own strained relationship with his son. This questioning of the law and justice system is the principal strength of the courtroom drama. For, in refusing to centre the intrigue around finding the ‘truth’ (the ‘guilty’ person/people), like in the true crime series The Disappearance of Madeleine Mccann (2019), the viewer is encouraged to problematise what factors influence the justice system’s construction of a plausible verdict, rather than readily accept this verdict as an ‘absolute truth’.

Nonetheless, dear law students and courtroom drama enthusiasts, do not fret, hope is not entirely lost. If we look a little further afield from Netflix’s often limited movie selection, the 2020s appear to be a promising time for courtroom dramas. Especially in France, where the genre seems to be going from strength to strength. With releases like Anatomy of a Fall (2023), which has been met with great audience enthusiasm (the film has a 4.1 star rating on Letterboxd) and critical acclaim. No doubt, due to a career-best performance from Sandra Hüller and the dog Snoop (one of the Academy’s major snubs for Best Supporting Actor). Other examples are François Ozon’s hilarious, screwball 1930s Parisian court case The Crime Is Mine (2023), Alice Diop’s more subdued Saint Omer (2022), and Cédric Kahn’s political The Goldman Case (2023). In short, the genre’s most recent evolution suggests filmic justice will perhaps have to be served beyond the mainstream.