ABA Journal: Modern Law Library

The year was 1961. Freshly minted attorney James J. Brosnahan had been on the job as a federal prosecutor in Phoenix for two days when he was handed his first trial: a capital murder case. Twelve days into the job, he’d won his first jury trial, and caught the trial bug. (Though to his relief, the two young defendants escaped the death penalty.) For the next six decades, Brosnahan chased every opportunity to present to a jury, in both civil and criminal court.In his new memoir, Justice at Trial: Courtroom Battles and Groundbreaking Cases, Brosnahan selected 19 of the more than 150 cases he brought before a jury. Each case reflects an issue he sees as being critical to current cultural events, and he feels the losses are as important to share as the victories. He’s fought for press freedom, a woman’s religious right to give sanctuary to undocumented migrants, and for a female corporate chairperson unfairly targeted because of her gender. His international experiences include trying to prevent a client from being framed by dictator Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and fighting for justice for assassinated lawyers in Northern Ireland. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Brosnahan shares some of these stories with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles, elaborating on the most important lessons he’s learned about juries, offering tips for aspiring litigators, and sharing what it was like to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s classmate at Harvard Law.

Jane M. Spinak did not set out to write a book arguing for the abolition of family court. She thought she would be making the case for a set of sensible reforms. But the more she dug into the history of the family court system, the previous attempts at reform, and the examples of real world harms the system had caused, the more she began to believe there was no saving it.In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Spinak speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about her philosophical journey and the writing of her new book, The End of Family Court: How Abolishing the Court Brings Justice to Children and Families.Spinak walks Rawles through the origins of the family court system at the turn of the 20th century. The movement began with Northern and Midwestern progressives, usually white middle- and upper-class women, who felt there needed to be a way to make the children of recent immigrants into “real Americans.” They also believed, as Spinak does, that adult court was not a place for juvenile offenders.Over the next century, the purpose and purview of family courts expanded and changed. Today, family court judges may consider juvenile criminal offenses, status offenses, custody cases, adoption, the removal of children from their parents and truancy cases. What has remained constant is the uneven enforcement of child safety laws, which fall primarily on poor and minority families.“It is doubtless true that many children of the well-to-do are saved from coming before the courts because their families have greater resources and are often able to obtain special care for their children,” reads a report from the Children’s Bureau in the 1930s cited in The End of Family Court. “Whereas the children of the poor are more likely to be referred to courts or committed to institutions when they develop serious behavior problems.”In this episode, Spinak shares experiences from her four decades in the family law arena, discusses how the children and families impacted by family court are leading movements for change, and explains how family court jurisdictions could shrink as communities step up to support families.

Legal expert Paul Golden discusses the concept of constructive trusts, a tool to enforce unwritten agreements. He explains how judges can declare a fiduciary duty retroactively, returning property to victims. The podcast delves into cases of betrayal, deceitful partners, promises broken, and the significance of constructive trusts in real estate litigation.

While directed at young children, a lawyer's book also speaks to lawyers who are moms, letting them know that being both can be a busy but fulfilling life.As Michelle Browning Coughlin, of counsel at ND Galli Law in Louisville, Kentucky, was raising her two daughters, she wanted her kids to understand what lawyers do. She worried that children only knew the type of lawyers who commonly appeared in courtrooms on television shows.

In his new book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America, Michael Waldman identifies three times the U.S. Supreme Court caused a public backlash against itself—and warns the court may be well along the path to a fourth massive public backlash.In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Waldman walks the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles through the prior episodes of backlash, starting with the fallout from the Dred Scott decision in 1857. He explains the “switch in time that saved nine,” when in 1937 the court narrowly avoided President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan to change the makeup of the court by unexpectedly upholding the constitutionality of New Deal legislation. And he posits that much of the contentious legal wrangling of the past half-century can be seen as a backlash to the Warren Court’s decisions like Brown v. Board of Education.Waldman, a constitutional lawyer who is the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, says that over the period of three days in June 2022, “the Supreme Court changed America.” With decisions overturning Roe v. Wade, loosening gun restrictions and reducing the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency, Waldman argues that the court’s six conservative justices signaled a sea change for the court. He warns that the change from a 5-4 ideological balance to what he terms a “supermajority” of conservative justices will mean a more turbulent relationship between the public and the Supreme Court.In this episode, Waldman shares his thoughts on the position of Chief Justice Roberts in the new balance, his advice on how the public can respond when the Supreme Court acts in opposition to the public will, and a counter-intuitive theory on why having more former politicians on the Supreme Court might have made the court less politically divisive.

Law professor Stephen Vladeck discusses 'The Shadow Docket', revealing how the Supreme Court issues unsigned majority emergency orders to establish precedents without legal reasoning. Topics include impacts on Roe v. Wade, power dynamics, same-sex marriage cases, Chief Justice John Roberts' views, and challenges of lack of transparency.

As chunks of the Berlin Wall were being torn down by jubilant crowds on November 9, 1989, James Silkenat was serving his term as chair of the ABA International Law Section. But he is the first to admit he did not immediately anticipate what that event would mean for the Cold War, or that monumental changes that soon be taking place across Europe and Central Asia. It was that event, however, that spurred discussions within the section about the need to help support countries working to establish a new rule of law. And those discussions would lead to a global volunteer effort spanning more than 100 countries over the next three decades.In Building the Rule of Law: Firsthand Accounts from a Thirty-Year Global Campaign, dozens of those volunteers share their experiences from what began as the ABA Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (known as CEELI) in the 1990s to the expansion into the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (known as ROLI), which now operates with five divisions covering Africa; Asia and the Pacific; Europe and Eurasia; Middle East and North Africa; and Latin America and the Caribbean. From fighting gender-based violence in Jordan to advising on judicial ethics in Kazakhstan to advocating for the rights of journalists in Indonesia, ROLI is involved in a myriad of efforts that have been supported by hundreds of volunteers as well as staff.The first-person narratives in Building the Rule of Law range from heart-rending accounts of helping to catalog war crimes to slapstick misunderstandings in foreign taxi cabs, and were compiled by editors Silkenat and Gerald W. Libby, who is also a past chair of the International Law Section. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Silkenat speaks about the project of compiling these histories and personal photographs, but also about how he has been changed by his work with ROLI. Silkenat, who served as ABA president from 2013-2014, is still heavily involved in ROLI, and returned from a volunteer trip to Zambia the day before the recording. As for why so many lawyers, judges, and even U.S. Supreme Court justices wanted to volunteer their time for ROLI initiatives, Silkenat says there were a number of motivations. "Many saw a chance to help shape legal systems of countries that would later become leading players on the global stage," he told the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles. "Many were motivated, in part, by the interest in public service that originally caused them to go to law school. Other volunteers wanted the chance to experience life abroad with a specific professional goal to accomplish, and finally, many were encouraged to participate by the very persuasive views of CEELI/ROLI's early leaders. If Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor and Secretary of State [Madeleine] Albright thought this was a good activity, then maybe it was something to be pursued seriously."In this episode, Silkenat and Rawles also discuss concerns about the strength of the rule of law in the United States, the World Justice Project's tracking of the rule of law around the world (the United States was ranked 26th out of 140 in the group's last report), and opportunities for other legal professionals to become involved in ROLI or other rule of law projects.

Heather Terrell, who writes under the pen name Marie Benedict, has written about novelist Agatha Christie in The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, and in Lady Clementine, she looked back on the life of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine Churchill. Now, in her historical novel The Mitford Affair, she has turned her attention to three English sisters—Unity, Nancy and Diana Mitford—with the rise of Nazi Germany as a backdrop.

Bruce Jackson grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan public housing projects. His journey led him to Hofstra University, then Georgetown Law. He ditched a white-shoe firm job to launch a career in entertainment law, and represented some of the hottest hip-hop and rap artists in the 1990s. When Napster changed the music industry, Jackson left for Seattle and Microsoft, where he traded in his sharp suits for polos and khakis, and sick beats for mosh pits–briefly. As he tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library, one exposure to a Seattle grunge concert had him packing his bags to return to New York City.But Jackson didn’t leave Microsoft—where he now serves as an associate general counsel—and a major focus of his career at the company has been to increase the tech giant’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip Hop, Microsoft, and the Law, Jackson reflects on the people and programs that made his own career possible, and is unflinching about the dangers he faced, the racism he encountered, and the mistakes he made in his personal life as he pursued professional success. Jackson tells Rawles that before demanding others share their stories with us, it important to tell our truths as well.In this episode of the podcast, Jackson shares how his childhood love of musical theater dovetailed with his skill at accountancy and tax law while representing his clients in the hip-hop music scene. He discusses his top tips for improving the diversity pipeline within organizations, and reflects on finding commonality with people from entirely different backgrounds to his own.

The 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan protected the civil rights movement, established the “actual malice” standard, and is the basis for modern American libel law. But in recent years, criticism of the case has grown among conservatives, with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas calling it “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law” and suggesting that the decision should be reconsidered.In her new book Actual Malice: Freedom of the Press and Civil Rights in New York Times v. Sullivan, law professor Samantha Barbas uses archival documents to shine light on the history behind the case, and introduces readers to the pivotal figures involved. She outlines the path libel law jurisprudence had taken prior to 1964, and explains why the New York Times v. Sullivan case was such a departure.In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Barbas tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the curious journalistic spat that led to the litigation, as well as the legal tactics used by the pro-segregationists who brought the suit. Barbas also gives listeners a glimpse at the complex and sometimes counterintuitive characters involved in New York Times v. Sullivan, explains the stakes the case holds for the 21st century, and shares the story of perhaps the only lawyer who’s ever had to argue before the Supreme Court without wearing any socks.