ABA Journal: Modern Law Library

With resource-strapped police departments facing pressure to avert crime and end racially discriminatory police practices, many are turning to data-driven surveillance technology with the thought that it could be both more objective and more effective. But without transparency into what technology police are using and how the data is gathered, can the public have confidence that these tools will be used responsibly or effectively? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, author of The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement. Ferguson discusses how these tools became popular, how they can be used and misused, how implicit bias can taint results, and the limits of predictive technology. He also shares suggestions for how citizens can have an impact on how data is used to police their community.

Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. But Richard and Mildred Loving were not the first American couple to love across race boundaries. The history of what we would now consider interracial relationships in America extends back to the first European explorations of the continent. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Sheryll Cashin, a professor of law at Georgetown University and author of Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy. Cashin discusses how the concept of race was introduced in America; how the doctrine of white supremacy was used as a method to divide slaves and free blacks from indentured servants; how flimsy the rationale for racial classification was; and the stories of some men and women who ignored those barriers and formed relationships anyway. She also shares her thoughts on how a younger generation's "cultural dexterity" could help battle the forces of racism and white supremacy.

If you mention a terrorist attack in which a Libyan suitcase bomb brought down an airliner, most people will be quick to remember Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed on Dec. 21, 1988 in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. But there is another, similar attack that happened nine months later, on Sept. 19, 1989. When UTA Flight 772 was downed over the Ténéré Desert in Niger, 170 people lost their lives, including seven Americans. Though it is far less known, it was family members of Flight 772 victims who successfully brought suit against the Libyan government in the American court system. Stuart Newberger, author of “The Forgotten Flight: Terrorism, Diplomacy and the Pursuit of Justice,” represented the families in their court case against the Libyan government. He speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the incredible French investigation into the crash, the years he spent representing the families, and how diplomatic decisions complicated the families’ search for justice and recompense.

The rights to free speech and freedom of the press guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. But when it was first passed–and for its first hundred or so years–the First Amendment was not the robust defense we think of today. Legendary civil rights attorney Floyd Abrams joins the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles to discuss his book “The Soul of the First Amendment” in this episode of the Modern Law Library. Abrams shares how First Amendment jurisprudence changed over time, and what dangers he sees ahead for free speech in the era of fake news and a presidential administration that is hostile to the press.

What do lawyers and lexicographers have in common? The main job of both is to argue over the meaning of words. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles talks with Kory Stamper about her work as a lexicographer and editor for Merriam-Webster; her new book, “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries”; and her position as chief defender of the word "irregardless." We explore the difference between the prescriptivists—whose champion, Bryan A. Garner, writes a column for the ABA Journal—and the descriptivists, and why using the dictionary definition of a word should not end all arguments. We also find out what goes on behind the scenes to produce the newest edition of a Merriam-Webster dictionary.

In this special mega episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with all three finalists for this year's Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Jodi Picoult, author of Small Great Things, shares how research for this novel changed her views on race and racism. Graham Moore, author of The Last Days of Night, discusses how he approaches writing historical fiction about real people like Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla. And James Grippando, author of Gone Again, talks about how he's been able to balance his work as a mystery writer with actively practicing law.

Richard Rothstein spent years studying why schools remained de facto segregated after Brown v. Board of Education. He came to believe that the problem of segregated schools could not be solved until the problem of segregated neighborhoods was addressed–and that neighborhoods were de jure segregated, not de facto. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks to Rothstein about his new book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein says that federal, state and local governments passed laws and created policies which promoted racial discrimination in housing and destroyed previously integrated neighborhoods. In this interview, Rothstein discusses his findings and proposes remedies to rectify the injustice experienced by generations of African-Americans.

Although the Osage tribe had been forced from their ancestral lands by the U.S. government, through shrewd and careful bargaining they retained the mineral rights to one of the richest oil fields in the world: Osage County, Oklahoma. But instead of insuring the prosperity and safety of the tribe, the wealth of the Osage made them targets for what was later known as the Reign of Terror. The task of solving dozens of murders fell in the 1920s to the newly formed FBI and its young director, J. Edgar Hoover. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, author David Grann tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles how he first learned of this series of murders and decided to write Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. He also discusses the brave Osage woman at the heart of his story, Mollie Burkhart, who defied the local white-dominated power structure to discover who was responsible for the deaths of her family members.

Almost 30 years before Linda Brown and her parents took on the Topeka Board of Education in Brown v. Board of Education, Martha Lum's parents Jeu Gong and Katherine sued to try to stop Rosedale, Mississippi, from barring their Chinese-American children from the local "white" school. Their case, Gong Lum v. Rice, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, but rather than granting them relief, the unanimous Supreme Court decision led to even stricter school segregation. For this episode of the Modern Law Library, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discusses this little known chapter of history with Adrienne Berard. Berard is the author of “Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South.” Berard discusses the bravery of the family's decision, and the complicated state of race relations in 1920s Mississippi in which the debate over whether the "colored" category applied to Asian Americans took place. We also discuss Earl Brewer, a former governor of Mississippi, who took the Lums' case in a bid to regain his reputation, and how the immigration debates of the early 20th century have ugly echoes in today's political environment.

If you are a bystander and witness a crime, should intervention to prevent that crime be a legal obligation? Or is moral responsibility enough? These are among the hard-hitting questions discussed in a provocative and moving conversation with author and Holocaust education advocate Amos N. Guiora. In his new book, "The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust," Guiora addresses these profoundly important questions and the bystander-victim relationship from a deeply personal and legal perspective, focusing on the Holocaust and then exploring cases in contemporary society.   Sharing the experiences of his parents, who were Holocaust survivors, and his grandparents, who did not survive, Guiora examines the bystander during three distinct events: death marches, the German occupation of Holland, and the German occupation of Hungary. He then brings the issue of intervention into current perspective, discussing sexual assault cases at Vanderbilt and Stanford Universities, as well as the plight of today’s refugees from war-ravaged countries such as Syria.   Guiora asserts that a society cannot rely on morals and compassion alone to help another in danger. It is ultimately, he concludes, a legal issue. We must make the obligation to intervene the law, Guiora asserts, and thus non-intervention a crime.