Rapport minoritaire : La dissidence fait juge

Abstract

In this article, we explore the relationship between gender, judging, and the place of judicial dissent through the cinematographic treatment of the film Minority Report. We draw parallels between the structure of the judicial system and the main characters and events of the film to better understand how the idea of ‘dissent’ is represented and gendered. The exercise leads us to a consideration of the figure of the judge in relation to the film's precognitives – three beings kept in a foetal state whose task it is to transmit their visions of the future, visions that enable the prevention of murders yet to come. The precognitives can be seen, in the world of the film, to have assumed the role of judge. We see them as assuming that function in a variety of ways: first, as a type of ‘judicial-automatons’ in a system that is thought to require perfect and necessary unanimity, where the truth can be definitively known and found; alternatively, as judges in a more flexible and provisional system where the possibility of disagreement and dissent exists.