J.K. Rowling has now crossed all limits. A few days ago, she opened some charity for women which explicitly refuses to help trans women. But now see what she has done yesterday 😡😡😡

1) She proudly tweeted "Merry Terfmas". That too in response to a tweet which called criticism of JKR by trans women as "men getting mad"

https://news.yahoo.com/j-k-rowling-lambasted-merry-013548195.html

2) She mocked a trans person who called for a boycott of the new Hogwarts Legacy game, who then got trolled by JKR fanboys

https://news.yahoo.com/trans-youtuber-spoke-hogwarts-legacy-181850573.html

This has gone on for too long now. But I want to question why Harry Potter courses are still being taught at NLUs/Jindal or else guest lectures are being given by the same? And why students are being allowed to write projects on themes like Harry Potter and Critical Legal Studies, when it's clear that JKR's transphobia negates everything that CLS scholars stand for?

Moreover, the Harry Potter courses (such as the one in NUJS) aren't really that special. If one wants to use fiction as a reference point for jurisprudential concepts, why not Game of Thrones, which is more egalitarian as it gives visibility to LGBTQ+ people and people of colour, versus ZERO visibility in Harry Potter? There are also TONS of jurisprudential concepts visible in GoT. See these articles, including in the prestigious Opinion Juris blog.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2653506

https://opiniojuris.org/2022/10/28/winter-is-not-coming-game-of-thrones-as-an-allegory-for-climate-change-international-politics/

https://jog.tk.hu/mtalwp/game-of-norms-law-interpretation-and-the-realms-in-game-of-thrones?download=pdf

In one law school abroad GoT is discussed as part of a course on Legal Fictions: Representations of Law in Cinema, Literature and Philosophy, so we do have a precedent. Interestingly, Harry Potter is not included as part of this course.

https://www.griffith.edu.au/study/courses/legal-fictions-5039LAW?location=intl

JK is just a bit of a troll who has spent too much time on the internets... You can still study and enjoy her books, no? And arguably it makes studying those books even more interesting, since the problems between reading the text and view of the author can be brought into the classroom (in an interesting manner).

But mostly this is a comment putting responders on notice that please let us not turn this thread into a discussion of 'cancel culture', 'wokism' etc, but on the merits of OPs points. We have accordingly modified the headline.

No, she's not a troll. She's a very nice person and an icon. She gave us a lot of happiness in our childhood through her books. Also, she's spot on in her stance about gender and the ▮▮▮ making death threats to her are disgusting and vile. How can you ignore that? They posted her house address and photos.

Coming to her position, I agree that men who have transitioned to women simply cannot be given all the same privileges, such as participating in women's sporting events because they have a natural biological advantage by virtue of having bigger muscles etc. Also, I honestly can't see how men who claim to have transitioned to women but still retain a penis and testicles can be allowed the same privileged. Why did they not replace those parts? Note here that we are not talking about intersex people but trans people. For intersex people a doctor can make the call.

This is the essence of JKR's position.

As someone who has actually taken the Harry Potter course at NUJS, I would like to differ from OP. The course does not deal with Rowling as an individual, but the narrative itself. Nor does it glorify the characters or the story, or even Rowling's take on it. It is just used as a medium to help us ask questions. There was only one class discussing Rowling as an individual, and that too about her dealing with legal issues and how it could have affected the narrative. The current controversies simply do not have anything to do with what she had already written! On the plus side, the course did deal with issues like contract, family law, economic analysis, criminal law, socio-political aspects including gender rights and discrimination and even critiqued some of the shortcomings of the series itself.

As for Game of Thrones, it is set in a completely different world, where might makes right, compared to the relatively more identifiable world created by Rowling. I am not saying that one cannot make a course out of GoT. If you want to do so, please go ahead. However, one fails to see why it has to done at the expense of another course. So long as nothing hateful or objectionable is being taught in a course, there is room for all the courses that one may come up with. By the way, while you are at it, you may actually request the author to finish the series first!

Incidentally, I have taken other courses offered by the same guy and sought help from him on other issues outside the classroom too. He has never come across as either 'woke-libtard' or 'RW bhakt'. If he has any political inclination, he keeps it to himself at least within the classroom.

While song of ice and fire is an interesting character exploration and an incredibly written novel, Harry Potter would be far more relevant in the legal context, while I do think it is a mediocre work of fiction and Rowling herself is a horrible human being, it is a popular piece of literature that could be used to generate interest in students, my recommendation would be to pick better, more relevant works of largely political science fiction, and since you mention lgbtq representation, ursula k. le guin's literature largely satisfies this and the requirement for a comprehensive understanding of legal systems in several economic contexts, which seems more useful for law, also as other comments have pointed out the course deals with the harry potter world and not rowling herself, despite this, i do agree with your point that there is more apt literature that can be taught at law schools.

Please bring back sanity to law schools. There's really no need to pay big money just to have a book that we've all read and enjoyed read back to us with some whacky interpretation of what the author may have actually meant.If there really needs to be a course that you get a kick out of, have a go at the legal history during the Tudor period in England and their treatment of vagabonds and beggars, I'm sure it'll do the trick.