NY Daily Record Since 1908
Courtesy Justice Karen Morris
Brighton Town Court justice, author, Monroe Community College professor and Girl Scout leader Karen Morris said she started reading J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series because she likes to stay informed about the things that interested both students and Scouts alike.
The more she read, however, the more interested she became in the books — and now she’s combined Harry Potter’s world with the legal world in a book released last week called “Law Made Fun Through Harry Potter’s Adventures: 99 Lessons in Law from the Wizarding World for Fans of All Ages.”
Justice Morris said that in creating an alternative universe, Rowling had to weave law into it to prevent chaos and anarchy. A fascination with the law is something Justice Morris wants to share with her audience.
“It’s one more way I can reach my students,” she said before leaving for a Harry Potter and the Law conference in Orlando on Tuesday. “My goal is to excite people about the law. My hope is that anybody who has a curiosity about the law will find their way to this book which easily introduces them to legal principles that help them appreciate the law and to understand their rights and responsibilities.”
The conference is purposefully timed to coincide with the last Harry Potter movie, and placed near Universal’s Harry Potter-themed amusement park.
Karen L. Morris
Justice Morris said she doesn’t expect to see any Harry Potter-like wizardry in her courtroom, but still wants to incorporate new and interesting ideas in the classroom.
“The professor in me is always on the lookout for ways to demonstrate the law and make the teaching of it easier and more exciting,” she said.
The concept of using Rowling’s fantasy work as an educational tool isn’t entirely new. Justice Morris said there are schools offering classes that revolve around the lessons students can learn from the Harry Potter series.
“I believe she intended that her books be used as a way to begin discussions, particularly with young people, about hate and ethnic cleansing and why that is so wrong,” Morris said.
She wrote the book with Phoenix-based attorney Bradley Carroll, whom she met several years ago at another Harry Potter conference in Las Vegas. The pair identified almost 100 different legal topics and issues in Rowling’s work, including identity theft, bullying, child abuse, minors and coming of age, marriage, due process and many more.
Justice Morris said she hopes her book excites “muggle” (non-wizard) readers enough to want to read Rowling’s famous fantasy, which ended with the release of the seventh book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
“It appears the story is done but [Rowling] always dangles the possibility that there’ll be more in some related way,” Justice Morris said.
Justice Morris said she enjoyed the five-year collaborative project with Carroll and writing at a “lighter level for a broader audience” than she normally does in her legal textbook, treatise and blog contributions.
More information on the book is available online at www.lawmadefun.com and the book is available at Amazon.com or as an e-book at www.barnesandnoble.com.
