ABA Journal: Modern Law Library

Many people promote a daily practice of meditation, spiritual contemplation and mindfulness as a way to improve your personal life and wellbeing. Attorney Jeremy Richter argues that creating a similar daily ritual to focus on developing your professional skills can be just as helpful to your clients, career and your law practice. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with Richter, author of the new book “Building a Better Law Practice: Become a Better Lawyer in Five Minutes a Day.” The book is structured to provide a daily reading on personal and professional development over a seven-week time period. Richter discusses why he decided to channel energy into blogging during the early years of his practice as an insurance litigator, and shares some lessons from that time that became inspirations for the book.

The authority to impeach and remove a U.S. president is one of the legislative branch's most powerful weapons. But in the country's history, despite many periods of open hostility between Congress and the executive branch, no president has been removed from office through the impeachment procedure. Why is that? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, constitutional litigator Joshua Matz discusses "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment," a book he co-wrote with Laurence Tribe. Matz explains the debates the founders had over including impeachment in the Constitution; some of the lesser-known 19th-century impeachment controversies; and why he believes that the partisan use of impeachment rhetoric over the past 40 years has not been positive for U.S. democracy.

Lisa Scottoline, C.E. Tobisman and Scott Turow have at least three things in common: They’re all novelists, attorneys and nominees for this year’s Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. In this special episode, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with all three authors about their nominated books, their creative processes, and the role they believe lawyers play in society. To cast a vote for one of the three authors to win, go to http://www.abajournal.com/polls/HarperLeePrize2018 before midnight on June 30.

From 1873 until his death in 1915, Anthony Comstock was the most powerful shaper of American censorship and obscenity laws. Although he was neither an attorney nor an elected official, Comstock used an appointed position as a special agent of the U.S. Post Office Department and legislation known as the Comstock Laws to order the arrests and prosecutions of hundreds of artists, publishers, doctors and anyone else he felt was promoting vice. For decades, Comstock was the sole arbiter and definer in the United States of what was obscene–and his definition was expansive. In Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock, author Amy Werbel explains how Comstock’s religious fervor and backing by wealthy New York society members led to a raft of harsh federal and state censorship laws–and how the backlash to Comstock’s actions helped create a new civil liberties movement among defense lawyers.

After losing both the 1960 presidential election and the 1962 California governor’s race, Richard Milhouse Nixon vowed at a press conference, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” and seemed to have written the epitaph to his political career. He left for New York and became a partner in a white shoe law firm. Yet six years later, he would win the White House, in no small part because of that firm. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Victor Li explains how Nixon leveraged his time at Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander to resurrect both his political viability and the firm’s financial standing. He discusses his new book, “Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Richard Nixon Win the White House,” and shares what it was like to have Nixon as a law partner, from piano/clarinet jam sessions to landing a huge client by getting Khrushchev to drink a Pepsi.

Studies have shown that implicit bias is something that affects everyone to some degree. So what steps can legal professionals at all ranks take to make the justice system fairer and more equitable? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with Judge Bernice Donald of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Prof. Sarah E. Redfield about Enhancing Justice: Reducing Bias, a book which Redfield edited and Donald contributed to. They discuss the latest research on bias, and give concrete tips for managing it.

As violent crime in New York City peaked from 1988-1991, policy makers were desperate for ways to combat and prevent it. In 1994, a new theory was embraced by the NYPD: that by controlling low-level “quality-of-life” violations like vandalism, noise complaints, traffic violations and aggressive panhandling, the police would ward off violent crime and more serious property crimes. Violent crime numbers had already begun to dip, but now misdemeanor arrests shot up, pulling in tens of thousands of people with no prior criminal record. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Prof. Issa Kohler-Hausmann explains to the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles the impact this change in tactics had for New York City police, courts and residents, and discusses her new book, “Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing.”

In the 45 years since Roe v. Wade was decided, it has been a focal point for both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights groups. But the opinion in the 1973 case has also been used by activists of liberal, libertarian and conservative ideologies to develop privacy arguments for issues ranging from access to experimental drugs to euthanasia to personal data security to sex worker rights. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Mary Ziegler, author of the new book Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade and the Battle for Privacy. Ziegler discusses what Roe v. Wade's legacy has been, and how it advanced–or failed to advance–Americans' right to privacy.

When we think of civil rights movements, the first to spring to mind might be the battles against African-American segregation or for women's suffrage. But one of the longest, most successful–and least-known–of these movements in America has been made on behalf of corporations. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Prof. Adam Winkler, author of We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, shares what he learned from his investigation into how corporations have achieved constitutional protections ranging from the right to sue and be sued, to individual rights like religious liberty protections and freedom of speech.

For nearly two decades, Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West were the go-to experts that Mississippi law enforcement and prosecutors relied on when there was a potential homicide. Haynes performed the bulk of the autopsies in the state, while West was a dentist who touted his skill in bite-mark analysis. But after years of investigations and countless testimonies from the men, their claims of expertise began to fall apart–and wrongful convictions began coming to light. In The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South, authors Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington lay out how the state’s legal system aided and abetted the use of flawed forensic evidence; how systemic racism influenced Mississippi’s coroner system; and the stories of some of the innocent people whose lives were derailed. Carrington, the founding director of the Mississippi Innocence Project and Clinic at the University of Mississippi School of Law, joins the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles for this episode of the Modern Law Library.