Is the Legal Institution Just Copying Hollywood?

Apparently the New York Times Magazine just came out with its 7th annual Year in Ideas feature. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog notes two legal ideas that made the list:

1) Nebraska state legislator Ernie Chambers suing God to prove some point about ridiculous lawsuits while bringing a ridiculous lawsuit.

2) The idea, championed by Eugene Volokh in a recent law review article, that terminally ill patients should be allowed to try experimental drugs that have passed preliminary FDA tests.

These are the two ideas that are worth talking about in 2007? If you can't tell by the italic emphasis on the word "these" that begins this sentence, I scoff at this.

It's not that they're not great ideas, because I happen to think that they both are. Especially the God one. I've had enough of floods, droughts, locusts and whatever, and I'm not ever going to be ready to give up pre-marital relations. Let's just call it a truce now Big Guy. How about it? I'm prepared to litigate to bring an end to it.

No, the problem is that if the point of the feature article is to "trawl the oceans of ingenuity" and snag the many "curious, inspired. . . innovations of the past 12 months," (NYTimes language, not mine), then surely the legal institution can do a lot better than this.

The items above may be curious, but they surely aren't ingenious. As for the suing God thing, hilarious Scotsman Billy Connolly did exactly that in a movie that came out in 2001 (a full six years ago!) called, appropriately, The Man Who Sued God. As far as I know, neither the Wall Street Journal Law Blog nor Congressman Ernie Chambers have properly cited this source.

As for the experimental drugs thing, that's not new either. How do I know? Because I've personally been saying the same thing now for years to anyone who will listen. I thought that the moral ambiguity involved with this idea kept The Constant Gardener, a great film, from being a super great film. The fact that they didn't delve into the idea that if the success rate of the drugs was 90%, as one of the corporate lackies suggested, then maybe it is a risk that people afflicted with terminal illnesses are willing to take.

I don't have the motivation to do any research on this right now (especially because finals begin tomorrow), but I assume humanity has been having this argument since we've had sick people and we've had experimental drugs.

Check in to the NY Times list in 2020, where they will finally get around to addressing email and grunge music.