The relationship between law and popular culture is a complex and multi-faceted one. The essays in this special issue examine this relationship from different angles, and at the same time seek to sharpen our sense of “popular justice.”

The lead article by Alan Hunt traces the attitudes of Europe's governing elites to the culture of the masses from the 1400s on, and shows how law has traditionally been used to “reform” popular culture—or in other words, to contain and neutralize its perceived threat to the established order. Yet popular culture may also contribute to the maintenance of the established order, precisely because of the way it diverts the masses, as Anne Warner La Forest shows in her analysis of the way the film The Piano was received by critics. “Law and order” may also serve as the subject or source of popular culture, as in the case of the American television programme called “Law & Order,” or the numerous reflections of law and lawyers in Canadian television drama discussed by Mary Jane Miller.