No habeas cases to be heard this week.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about whether any legal movies had won the Oscar for Best Picture. I found two of them (Chicago and Kramer vs. Kramer).
Here, I'll focus on whether the Oscar for Best Actor has ever been awarded to an actor playing a lawyer. It's actually happened a bunch of times. Of course, the one that immediately comes to mind is Gregory Peck in his role as Atticus Finch, probably the most famous fictional lawyer of all time.
And there have been several others. I am going to place them into three categories: (1) Lawyers; (2) Defense Attorneys; and (3) Characters Based on Real People Who Were Lawyers At Some Point in Their Career But Aren’t Really Known for Being Lawyers. I separated out defense attorneys since it just seemed appropriate for the blog.
A. LAWYERS
(1) Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark in All the King's Men
(2) Tom Hanks as Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia
B. DEFENSE ATTORNEYS
(1) Lionel Barrymore as Stephen Ashe in A Free Soul
(2) Maximillian Schell as Hans Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg
(3) Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
C. REAL PEOPLE WHO WERE LAWYERS
(1) George Arliss as Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli
(2) Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons
(3) Ben Kingsley as Gandhi in Gandhi
(4) Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune
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