Introduction: Law and War in Popular Culture

Popular culture in its best moments captures the public’s imagination of war and the role of law within it. While it can only approximate the brutal reality of war, there is the chance to infuse the audience with liberal ideas of the rule of law even under the most adverse conditions. After all, the response to seeing injustice is likely to favour better institutions, better rules, better servants of the law and better practices. But products of popular cultural can also veil severe abuses of power and mythologise living and dying in war. In this case, law can become void or an auxiliary to crime.