As states navigate a post-Dobbs world, a series of federal and state regulations known as Comstock Laws are being discussed as avenues to further restrict access to abortion drugs and birth control. In 2018, with Roe v. Wade still the law of the land, Rawles and Amy Werbel discussed the fiery namesake of those laws and Werbel’s book Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock. It sheds light on how a 19th-century U.S. Postal Service agent funded by the Young Men’s Christian Association created obscenity restrictions so sweeping that medical textbooks were seized and destroyed for displaying anatomical diagrams.

Rawles also shares some favorites from what she’s been reading and listening to since our 2023 year-end pop culture picks episode. If you have your own favorite reads so far in 2024, send your recommendations to books@abajournal.com with a brief description, and we may choose to highlight them on our social media.

Mentioned in the episode:

BOOKS

• The Three Dahlias, A Very Lively Murder and Seven Lively Suspects by Katy Watson
• The Appeal and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett
• Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day, by Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan
• Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail, by Stephen J. Bown

PODCASTS

• Cocaine & Rhinestones
• Beyond the Breakers
• Reformed Rakes
• Talk Justice

In The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back, Dennie traces the roots of originalism as a legal theory back to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, though the Supreme Court rejected the arguments in the 1954 case. Its adherents argue the meaning of the Constitution must solely be determined by “the original public meaning of the Constitution at the time it was drafted,” and that there is a discernible correct answer to what that meaning would have been.

The theory gained popularity in the 1980s, with the late Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia as two influential proponents. Scalia famously said the Constitution is “not a living document. It’s dead, dead, dead.” Today, originalism has formed the basis for decisions such as Justice Samuel Alito’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

“Despite originalism’s reputation as a serious intellectual theory, it’s more like dream logic: It seems reasonable at first, but when you wake up, you can recognize it as nonsense,” Dennie writes. “Originalism deliberately overemphasizes a particular version of history that treats the civil-rights gains won over time as categorically suspect. The consequences of its embrace have been intentionally catastrophic for practically anyone who isn’t a wealthy white man, aka the class of people with exclusive possession of political power at the time the Constitution’s drafters originally put pen to paper (or quill to parchment).”

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Dennie and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss how conservative originalists prioritize the time period of the Founding Fathers over the Reconstruction Era that produced the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. “We can’t fulfill the Reconstruction Amendments’ radical vision of full equality and freedom if we can’t be attentive to the ways in which we have been made unequal and unfree,” Dennie writes in The Originalism Trap.

While Dennie believes there are portions of the historical record that support broad civil liberty protections, she says she does not think originalism is a useful tool for progressives to use as a legal framework. 

In place of originalism, Dennie has a bold proposal: inclusive constitutionalism. “Inclusive constitutionalism means what it says: the Constitution includes everyone, so our legal interpretation must serve to make the promise of inclusive democracy real. When the judiciary is called upon to resolve a legal ambiguity or when there are broad principles at issue, the application of which must be made specific, it is proper for courts to consider how cases may relate to systemic injustices and how different legal analyses would impact marginalized people’s ability to participate in the country’s political, economic and social life.”

 Rawles and Dennie also discuss how lawyers and judges can push back against originalism; the legal rights and protections achieved by groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses and the LGBTQ+ community; why she dropped Jurassic Park references into the book; and how she keeps an optimistic outlook on the expansion of civil liberties.

“Justice for all may not be a deeply rooted tradition,” Dennie writes, “but fighting for it is.”

“You have picked a profession that is never finished meeting people,” Feder writes of lawyers. A practicing lawyer for many years, Feder now works as a business development coach.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Feder explains to the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles that her goal is to help attorneys have “curious, confident conversations.” They discuss conversation stoppers v. conversation starters; how not to panic when targeting the “cool client”; and how young attorneys can get past “the kids table.”

Lining up a roster of ideal clients doesn’t start at cocktail party mingling, Feder warns. A key to building relationships with the clients you actually want to work with lies in identifying what legal work you’re looking to do, and that requires some inner work. It also involves owning your value, Feder says, and she shares a story about how a partner in her firm impressed that lesson on her when she was a young attorney.

In After Hello, she says she meets people who feel too overwhelmed by keeping up with their legal work and personal lives to contemplate business development. “How do you balance the chaos of the day and allow technology to be the support and solution, rather than part of the challenge; how do you let it serve, not destroy you?” Feder asks. She lays out strategies to organize and cope, including how to stop letting your email inbox overwhelm you.

Feder and Rawles also discuss After Hello’s “30 Conversations in 30 Days Challenge” and the most common mistakes Feder sees lawyers making on LinkedIn."

Leslie P. Francis is a professor of law and philosophy with a background in bioethics, and John G. Francis is a professor of political science with a focus on European comparative politics, federalism and comparative regulatory policy. The spouses had partnered on three previous books together. When looking for their next project, they decided to examine the consequences of states opting out of Medicaid expansion and what power federalism could have in protecting American citizens’ health. But soon more news events and landmark cases expanded their focus.

The result is States of Health. The book examines the tensions between state and federal powers in a number of areas, including reproductive rights; gender-affirming care; medical marijuana; public health and pandemics; right-to-try laws; patient confidentiality; and care quality and life expectancies.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with the Francises about their collaborative writing process, and what conclusions they have drawn about the benefits of federalism and states’ rights.

The Francises argue that since it is the federal government that determines citizenship and census decisions, state differences go too far when they make “basic decisions about who counts at all, and what it means to count.” They add, “Movement is a critical aspect of who counts: the ability to come and go, or to leave one state more permanently for another.” The Francises argue that freedom of movement for the purpose of medical treatment is crucial for patients, but also point out when states control licensure for medical providers, that too can restrict freedom of movement.

The value of 50 individual laboratories of democracy can be appealing to a scientific mind. But at what point can it be argued in the healthcare space that a federal government needs to step in, if the outcomes in some of those laboratories are decreased lifespans and higher mortality?

Minian, who immigrated from Mexico to the United States right before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has made an academic career studying immigration, incarceration and detention. As a young adult, Minian followed the news of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base being used to detain people who might be connected to those attacks. But in researching their new book, In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States, Minian discovered the base was first used as a detention center under President George H.W. Bush to hold Haitian refugees.

Minian uses the personal experiences of four immigrants to walk readers through the history of immigrant detention in the United States: Fu Chi Hao, a Chinese Christian attempting to escape the Boxer Rebellion in 1901; Holocaust survivor Ellen Knauff, a war bride of an American GI who arrived at Ellis Island in 1948; Gerardo Mansur, a Cuban who joined the Mariel boat lift in 1979; and Fernando Arredondo, a Guatamalan asylum seeker who was separated from his daughter by border officials in 2018.

 In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Minian shares details of these stories with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. They also discuss the shifting motivations behind changes in the immigration system, parole versus detention, and how attorneys can help immigrants currently in detention.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Golden speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the ancient concepts underlying modern adverse possession law; some quirky state laws; and why societies would allow land to be transferred in this way. They also discuss how the plain meaning of terms like “hostile” are changed when used in adverse possession cases, and Rawles raises a hypothetical—taken from real life—of a neighbor’s crooked fence.

During Golden’s first appearance on The Modern Law Library, he explained how the lack of a written contract could be navigated by a savvy lawyer. In his new book, Golden guides attorneys and their clients through the finer points of arguing for and against adverse possession claims. He shares some of the errors he’s seen pop up in adverse possession cases, and offers advice for how to avoid common pitfalls.

Modern Law Library listeners have been given a promotional discount code for Litigating Adverse Possession Cases: Pirates v. Zombies through May 10, 2024. For 20% off, go to the ABA’s online shop and enter LAPC2024 at checkout.

In his newest release, The #1 Lawyer, James Patterson partnered with co-author Nancy Allen to tell the story of Stafford Lee Penney, a criminal defense attorney in Biloxi, Mississippi, who’s never lost a case. But after handing a high-profile murder trial involving the son of a mobster, Penney finds himself on the other side of the bench as a defendant himself, charged with murdering his own wife.

Patterson has written and co-written more than 300 books, including bestselling series like Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Maximum Ride. He had some writing tips for attorneys, particularly on how to work collaboratively. As Patterson tells listeners in the podcast, he is open about working with other writers on many of his books, and he finds tools like outlining absolutely essential. He also shares with Rawles how he thinks co-writers should handle interpersonal communication while working together.

Patterson says one of the major benefits of working with co-authors is pulling from their experiences to make his books more accurate and true to life. When he wrote The President is Missing with Bill Clinton, the former president could tell Patterson the inside details of how a Secret Service detail worked. When he wrote Run, Rose, Run with Dolly Parton, she walked him through the production cycle for a song.

Allen, who conducted more than 30 jury trials as a prosecutor in Missouri and taught law for 15 years at Missouri State University, contributed her firsthand courtroom experience to The #1 Lawyer. Patterson says they worked to make everything as accurate as possible—while still allowing for a good story. It’s the pair’s second book together, following a previous standalone novel, Juror #3.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Patterson shares some of his favorite law-related pop culture picks; news about new and ongoing projects; and describes a very special birthday event with Dolly Parton. He also discusses how his children’s series Maximum Ride got caught up in Florida book bans in 2023. For fans of Patterson’s breakout success, the Alex Cross series launched in 1993 with Along Came a Spider, the author shares updates about what’s next for the intrepid detective—including details about the upcoming Amazon Prime TV series Cross, starring Aldis Hodge.

“The question gnawing at everyone, myself included, was: What were these kids thinking?” writes Anna Gjika, a sociology professor who studies crime and gender issues. More than 10 years later, Gjika has attempted to answer that question in her new book, When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age. She took a close look at the three attacks in 2012, but identifies a number of similar instances that have happened more recently.

One of the elements the public found shocking about the cases was how many bystanders filmed or photographed the unconscious girls or the sexual assaults as they were occurring, without intervening. In talking to people involved in the cases and to teens in general as part of her research, Gjika found that the young people did not think of their social media as archival so much as “of the moment.” They filmed and posted what was happening around themselves because they were used to doing that. “Sharing an experience has become an integral part of the experience,” Gjika writes.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Gjika and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her research into generational attitudes towards social media and sexual assault; the promises and pitfalls of digital evidence in sexual assault cases; how social media can be empowering or degrading for survivors; the social responsibility held by the legal community and the tech industry; and what interventions could be effective to prevent such assaults from taking place.

Digital evidence like cellphone videos and texts can be extremely beneficial to prosecutors looking to prove incidents of sexual assault, particularly when victims are unable to recount their experience because they were unconscious or impaired during the attacks. But Gjika explains that this kind of evidence is not uncomplicated. The way juries perceive the evidence will still be filtered through societal expectations and prejudices. Defense attorneys do not have the same access to digital evidence from tech companies, and usually lack capacity to process immense amounts of data. The expertise, willingness and resources of police departments and prosecutors’ offices to seek out this evidence also vary widely. And the victims can be further traumatized by the use in court of images and video of their assaults, and the knowledge that the images continue to be disseminated on the internet.

In closing, Rawles and Gjika discuss what actions can be taken by schools, the legal community and the tech industry to prevent such attacks or to assist victims whose assaults have been digitally documented. Gjika believes educational programs and trainings for teens need to focus on peer groups and norms, rather than emphasizing individual responsibility, and “must be grounded within adolescents’ lived experiences, rather than on adult fears and anxieties.” She also argues that adults as well as teens would benefit from “ethical digital citizenship initiatives,” where concepts like privacy and online decision-making could be discussed. And she suggests the creation of government-funded organizations to assist survivors with removing digital content from the internet.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Brescia tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the efforts in the late 19th and early 20th century to exclude people from the legal profession who were not part of the dominant social class, and how access-to-justice issues persist today as a result of some of those measures. The early American Bar Association is one of the organizations he names as a participant in the exclusionary efforts through its law school accreditation program, and he and Rawles discuss the ABA’s current efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion.

As someone who has worked in academia, the non-profit world, legal aid organizations and as a clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, he says he’s come across many people who care deeply and want the justice system to function better. But without fundamental changes to the ways legal services are delivered, he does not think the access-to-justice issues can be solved.

A large part of Brescia’s concern that he expresses in Lawyer Nation is for legal professionals themselves. Brescia says the mental illness and substance-use levels within the profession demonstrate that greater care has to be shown for lawyers’ well-being and work-life balance. He shares his advice for making the profession more sustainable for the incoming generation. He also discusses how law schools and legal education can change.

From the beginning, race and ethnicity had a major impact in the policing of New York City. In a city where the top echelons of power were held by Anglo-Dutch Protestants, the streets were patrolled by Irish and German immigrant police officers, sometimes enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act by snatching Black people off the streets and sending them back to enslavement in the South.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Guariglia and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss what the early period of policing in New York City can tell us about policing today. Rawles shares her own ancestor’s path from immigrant to police court judge on the West Side of Chicago (though the dates she cites in the interview are incorrect–Michael J. O’Donoghue emigrated from Ireland in the 1874 and was appointed to the police court in 1901.)

For Irish and German immigrants, a job on the police force was a path out of poverty and towards whiteness and political power, but you would be asked to prove yourself by visiting violence on your own community. African American community leaders hoped the appointment of Black policemen would curb police brutality, but the city was slower than other metropolises like Chicago, who hired James L. Shelton as the city’s first Black officer in 1871. Samuel Battle became the NYPD’s first Black police officer in 1911, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant and being appointed a parole commissioner.

Meanwhile, in neighborhoods like Chinatown, entire communities went without police officers who spoke the same language as inhabitants. The first Chinese-speaking officer was hired in 1904. That same year, the General Slocum disaster sent the city administration scrambling for German-speaking police officers to locate relatives in Kleindeutschland to identify bodies of the thousand victims of the burned shipwreck. Fears of “the Black Hand” led to the creation of the Italian Squad, and Guariglia shares the story of how the Italian Squad’s founder, Joseph Petrosino, ended up assassinated while on assignment in Sicily.

“Empire City” is an apt name for New York City, as it had international reach and drew on former colonial administrators. One influential police commissioner, Gen. Francis Vinton Greene, had been involved in the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Tactics first used to subjugate colonists were put to use in the city. As the Progressive Era led to a preoccupation with eugenics, the New York City police were involved in international conversations about the characteristics of criminals and race science. The idea of molding the perfect police officers also caught hold. In this episode, Guariglia shares how the police departments decided they had to teach their officers how to stand and chew properly.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Fiss speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the paradox of the court system–the least democratic branch of government–having the responsibility of safeguarding the right to vote. He looks back on his work with the DOJ in southern states, and his time as a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall (then on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and Justice William Brennan. 

Rawles and Fiss also discuss recent threats to the electoral system and right to vote, including the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Fiss shares his thoughts about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and whether former President Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on that basis.

While every book he writes is for his students, Fiss says, he hopes Why We Vote can impress upon a broader audience the privilege and duty of voting and participating in a democracy.

On this episode of the Modern Law Library, Jefferson and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her new book, Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis. The scale of the issue is daunting: Jefferson cites a study finding that 87% of American households facing legal issues don’t even attempt to seek legal assistance.

“Civil legal disputes—think child support, citizenship, consumer complaints, custody, divorce, employment, guardianship, housing, medical needs—make their way to more than fifteen thousand courts throughout the United States each year,” Jefferson writes. “Whatever the root cause, a massive delivery problem clearly exists for personal legal services.”

Jefferson shares examples of alternative business structures and access-to-justice projects from around the world that challenged old client models. Some–like offering legal services inside British grocery stores–were not successes.

“In theory, consumers could pick up a will with a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, allowing them to resolve legal problems in a place they already regularly transact,” Jefferson writes. “But grocery store law never flourished.”

Other ventures fared better, and Law Democratized compiles a number of suggestions based on research findings and real-world experiences. Jefferson says she intends the book to not only be a record of what’s been tried, but to also serve as a user-friendly way for the public to learn about changes they could be advocating for at local, state and national levels.

Much of the discussion around improving access to justice involves regulatory reform, and Jefferson shares what has been discovered in states like Utah and Texas through the establishment of regulatory sandboxes. Jefferson also shares ideas about how law schools can be serving their communities as well as their students. Law Democratized suggests ways antitrust law and the First Amendment could be used to expand the public’s access to civil legal services without the direct use of lawyers.

Jefferson and Rawles also discuss her expertise in legal ethics, and what she thinks about the use of artificial intelligence by legal professionals. Jefferson, who writes the Legal Ethics Roundup newsletter on Substack, explains why she doesn’t see the need for an immediate rewriting of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct to address the new technology.

In his book, Finding Your Landing Zone: Life Beyond the Bar, McGoff describes his dawning realization that he was missing out on experiences while his life was dominated by his legal practice. He approached his law firm management team with a proposal to gradually decrease his hours and hand off his client work to younger successors.

A big believer in purposeful planning, McGoff offers a series of worksheets to help readers kickstart their own plans for what a life after the practice of law might look like. For McGoff, one of the big dreams of his life—which began while he was stationed in Europe with the U.S. Army—was to spend more time traveling, and to one day live in France. He studied French and even sponsored a club at his children’s school to promote the French language. He and his wife, Patty, loved their trips to France. So when they discussed what the next chapter of their lives would look like, they decided to finally make it happen. A major goal for McGoff in writing Finding Your Landing Zone is to help readers identify what their own equivalent dream would be, and how to find their own France.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, McGoff and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss his motivation to write the book, his advice for planning a financial future, the importance of mentoring younger attorneys, and how he and Patty finally made their dream of living in France happen. He shares tips on building a succession plan and getting your firm on board, and how to actually (mostly) cut down on your hours.

While Diana Rickard didn’t consider herself a “podcast person,” her interest as an academic was piqued. The criminology professor began listening to Serial, and became fascinated by what she saw as a new expression of the true crime genre, dubbing it the “New True.”

“These series deserve our attention for what they reveal about our societal understanding of crime and punishment,” Rickard writes in her book The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence. “Through them, audiences are receiving ideological messages about punishment. They are also sites where inequality, power and racism are openly examined, playing a role in our public conversations about who is and is not deserving of punishment and who is and is not protected by law. In addition, by using the term ‘New True,’ I am also suggesting these series indicate a new way of constructing truth itself. Questioning the finality of verdicts, framing facts as in the eye of the beholder, the new series unmoor our faith in what is knowable.”

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Rickard explains how she sees the New True podcasts and documentary series as differing from older media. She and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the differences between crime reporting and this serialized storytelling, and whether the New True series are managing to avoid some of the ethical pitfalls of traditional crime reporting. They also delve into whether debunking things like flawed forensic science or false confessions for the general public may have shifted the way people think about wrongful convictions.

Rickard shares what she has heard from legal experts in the innocence community about the benefits—and drawbacks—of cases catching the eyes of New True producers. She also reveals what surprised her most when she researched the Reddit communities that gather to discuss New True cases.

Kung was born in Los Angeles, and spent their childhood in Hong Kong and Toronto before landing in Michigan for college and law school. Their recipes combine elements of Chinese and North American cuisines and cooking techniques.

“This new fusion that I’m referring to as ‘third culture’ takes a more thoughtful approach to the genre,” Kung writes in the introduction to their new cookbook, Kung Food: Chinese American Recipes from a Third-Culture Kitchen. “Third culture embraces each side as equal, drawing from a lived experience that is immersed in both or multiple cultrues, once again taking the mentality of the American culinary renaissance that came around in the 2010s and granting the rest of us the ability to take part in it.”

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Kung discusses their new cookbook with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles—who made the Beef & Broccoli Potpie, the Shrimp Paste Dumplings and the Parmesan-Curry Egg Fried Rice from the book—and shares their favorite meal tips for starving law school students. Kung also shares how they went from word-of-mouth pop-ups to social media fame.

In 2020, when the pandemic made their pop-up meals impossible and the murder of George Floyd prompted massive protests in their home state, Kung began using their TikTok account @jonkung as a place to find community and share recipes. They quickly began gaining followers, and started being approached to partner with brands on projects like developing recipes based on anime series. Kung shares the story of how they were offered the publishing deal for Kung Food, and what it’s like to be a social media influencer.

Trauma-Informed Law, published by the ABA Law Practice Division, arose as a collaborative effort between Canadian lawyers Helgi Maki and Myrna McCallum and American lawyers Marjorie Florestal and J. Kim Wright. It seeks to suggest not only how lawyers can provide better client service to traumatized people, but also how lawyers, law students and judges can deal with their own traumas.

Maki points out many people say that while the initial incident that brought them into contact with the court system was difficult—be it a divorce, an assault or a contract dispute—their experiences once inside the judicial system were harder to bear and caused more emotional damage. What other profession, she asks, would accept that as an outcome for its clients?

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Maki and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the impact of trauma on the legal profession, and the ways researchers have seen it impact people on a personal and systemic level. Lawyers may be reluctant to label their own experiences trauma, but Maki explains vicarious trauma, and how burnout is a “cousin” to trauma.

One element the book stresses is how important it can be for judges to become aware of how trauma can impact everyone in a courtroom, and basic measures that can be taken to decrease the risk of causing further harm during courtroom proceedings. The ABA House of Delegates recently called for more research to be done on how court workers are impacted by what they see at work and by threats to their personal security.

Maki and Rawles also discuss ways legal professionals can build support systems without endangering client confidentiality, and how law schools can prep law students for the inevitable challenges they will face in the profession.

But Federman, author of Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures, proposes that we can and should adapt our framing to encompass a “win-win-win” mentality. A win-win mentality “attends to the interests only of the signatories, not of those who live out the consequences of the agreement,” Federman writes. “A win-win-win model requires paying attention to those usually not at the negotiation table.”

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Federman discusses with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles how traditional advice around negotiations—from salaries and corporate contracts to landlord disputes and personal lives—makes assumptions based on what’s worked for people who have traditionally held positions of power. Those assumptions could be outdated, unhelpful or actually harmful to minorities and others who have been economically or socially disadvantaged.

Transformative Negotiations was written with four goals, Federman tells Rawles: To help people move “from precarity to stability;” to expose the blind spots in the field of negotiation studies; to propose a new approach to negotiations that addresses oppression; and to show people who do have bargaining power how they can use it to “create more equitable futures.”

Advice Federman shares in this episode includes how woman can approach salary negotiations, how to achieve more economic stability through “inbox colonics,” and why being the nosy neighbor can get people through tough times. She also discusses why bonding events like firm happy hours can actually backfire on employee morale, and how firms can not only hire diverse workforces but successfully retain them.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Moukawsher and the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discuss his ideas and his new book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It. Instead of advocating for legislation to simplify the court process, Moukawsher says many of his ideas could be immediately put into practice by judges.

Many of Moukawsher's theories were developed in the wake of having to make changes in court proceedings during the COVID-19 pandemic while court buildings were closed. He says being forced to reexamine the habitual ways cases were heard was actually beneficial. Realizing how much could be conducted remotely gave him confidence that broader systemic changes in that direction are worth trying. One such suggestion is to conduct more jury trials remotely to increase juror numbers and diversity.

The Common Flaw contains many concrete suggestions for lawyers and attorneys to streamline trials, but it was also written to be enjoyed by the public, Moukawsher tells Rawles. To that end, concepts are liberally illustrated with cartoons, and despite having 51 chapters, the book is not doorstopper-length.

Speaking of length, one of Moukawsher's largest concerns is that the length of time many cases drag on decreases public confidence in the legal system as a whole. He says he sees this often in family court, where conflicts that could be handled in weeks stretch out through months or years and can lead to bankruptcy.

He and Rawles also discuss his thoughts on the billable hour; how his ADHD helped him prune away unnecessary flummery in court processes; how he would rethink the job duties of law clerks; and his top tips for not fumbling cross-examinations.

This year, that episode is our 2018 interview with Kathryne M. Young about How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School. Young used her background in sociology to gather data from students, alumni, faculty and law-school dropouts on their experiences during and after law school. Based on her findings—and her own experiences as a law student and professor—she offers advice on protecting your mental health; choosing courses and activities to pursue; managing the practical aspects of your household and budget; and forming relationships with mentors and peers. She also discusses how to decide when if it’s time to leave law school altogether.

Rawles also shares some favorites from what she’s been reading, watching and listening to since our 2022 year-end pop culture picks episode.

If you have your own favorite reads so far in 2023, send your recommendations to books@abajournal.com with a brief description, and we may choose to highlight them on our social media.

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.

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.

While the foundational principle of the Statute of Frauds holds that contracts must be written and signed to be enforced, there is a tool to create an exception. This tool is laid out in detail by Paul Golden in his new book, Litigating Constructive Trusts: The Last Resort in Fighting Inquity and Inequity. Golden, who has extensive experience in real estate and trust and estate law, believes far too few attorneys are aware of the potential benefits of constructive trusts.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Golden explains the concept of a constructive trust to the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. A constructive trust is a “legal fiction,” where (broadly speaking) a judge decides that between two parties with a relationship where trust could be assumed, there has been an egregious betrayal of that trust and an unjust enrichment to the betrayer. The judge can then retroactively declare that even without a written contract, a defendant had a fiduciary duty to the victim, and victim’s property must be returned to them.

“Traitorous partners, gold-digging girlfriends, old ladies being tricked out of preparing a fair will, and plain old murder,” writes Golden in the book. “These have been, and will continue to be, the subjects of constructive trusts. The facts in some constructive trust cases are so outrageous, one often feels like a voyeur, but without the shame.”

Golden explains the special benefits of a constructive trust, as well as defenses that can be made if your client is the subject of a constructive trust claim. Different jurisdictions have different standards for constructive trusts, and Golden and Rawles discuss the state of New York’s 4-prong test in detail. Most constructive trusts are based on case law, but some states do have civil code about them. Golden offers advice to lawyers looking to use a constructive trust argument, and lists common trial issues they might face, including how to convince a judge they have the power to act to avert a deep injustice from continuing.

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 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.

A case ordinarily comes before the U.S. Supreme Court after a long appellate process; receives a public hearing where the case is argued before the justices; then a signed opinion or series of opinions and a majority ruling are issued, which generally comes months after oral arguments—and years after a matter first entered the court system. Given the limited length of each Supreme Court term, there has always been the need for an alternative form of response when the court is not in session or a swift response was absolutely necessary. The vast bulk of those occasions have been in capital cases, where a last-minute appeal might be the difference between life and death.

But since 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued many more emergency orders than at any time previously, and on matters ranging from election law to immigration bans, from abortion access to COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings.

By issuing unsigned majority emergency orders rather than signed majority opinions, Vladeck says the court is establishing precedents without supplying the legal reasonings behind its rulings. During a time when the U.S. Supreme Court and individual justices are being criticized for not abiding by a clear judicial code of ethics, Vladeck argues the secretive nature of the shadow docket will only further undermine public trust in the rule of law.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Vladeck discusses with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles the origin of the term “shadow docket,” the dangers he sees for the court and the country, and what remedies may be available to the republic.

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.

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.

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.

Rikleen, a former law firm partner and consultant who writes and speaks about the importance of cross-generational communication, tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles that she hopes millennial and Gen Z readers will benefit from the reflections of women judges from the Silent Generation, baby boomers and Gen X. Some of the challenges they faced will not similarly impede younger generations, but other obstacles are familiar, formidable and still present.

“[E]ven as gains are made, biases are deep and systemic, requiring the vigilance of every generation to continue the difficult work of achieving full equity for all,” Rikleen writes in her introduction to Her Honor: Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges.

Bookended by essays about the former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Her Honor compiles reflections by the living jurists or essays about the lives of judges who have passed on. The 25 women jurists are all honorees of the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Awards, selected by the Commission on Women in the Profession. Rikleen herself has received a Margaret Brent award, and says it was a fair-handed way to narrow down participants. Past Margaret Brent honorees who also contributed to Her Honor include previous guests of the Modern Law Library podcast, Judge Bernice Bouie Donald and Judge M. Margaret McKeown. The judges write about the paths they took to the judiciary; their struggles to balance their work and personal lives; the people who mentored and encouraged them; and their triumphs and regrets.

“They are different in every particular, yet what unites them in the aggregate is profound: This is a book about imagination, and what it took and still takes for women, and by extension other minorities invisible to the Constitution and the law, to imagine themselves into a structure that didn’t include them,” Dahlia Lithwick, senior legal correspondent at Slate, wrote in the forward to the book.

In addition to discussing Her Honor, Rikleen and Rawles get into another project to which Rikleen has devoted her time. She is the executive director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that works to uphold democratic norms and the rule of law. They also discuss the “three Cs” promoted by ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross: civics, civility and collaboration.

Princeton University historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer say they have been alarmed about this uptick in misinformation, censorship and rewriting of history. Having previously co-written Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, they decided to partner as editors of a book responding to this wave of false history. They commissioned a number of other prominent historians to contribute, and the result is Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Kruse and Zelizer speak with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about how their project began and what they see as the greatest challenges facing modern historians. They offer tips on how to evaluate claims about history as a non-historian. They also discuss one of the most pervasive myths in the legal community: the true importance of Federalist Paper No. 10.

Robbins began writing her memoir, The Box: An Invitation to Freedom from Anxiety, while still in the process of recovery. It began as a series of writing exercises she used to make sense of her meditation practices. But it became an investigation into the mental and emotional barriers she constructed since childhood to protect herself–and a blueprint for dismantling the barriers that no longer served her.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles talks to Robbins about dealing with anxiety in law school and law practice; the positive reaction at her law firm when she opened up about her mental health struggles; and what Robbins finds unhelpful about self-help books. They discuss the difference between being "productive" and being mentally well, and how Robbins overcame her aversion to mindfulness as part of her healing process. They also talk about how people with anxiety respond when the dangers they perceive are real, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the months since the 2021 publication of The Box, Robbins has also dealt with a cancer diagnosis and many career changes, and she shares updates on her progress and projects.

We cover the usual lineup of our favorite books, movies and TV shows, but each participant also provides more niche content. Hill, who recently joined the Journal full-time after freelancing for the magazine, has a background in film, and she shares her favorite documentary projects she watched in 2022. Chavis, a dedicated home cook, shares her favorite recipe sources for making meals with her partner. Ward, the host of the Journal's Asked & Answered podcast, has podcast picks for those who like a little gossip and spice to their stories. And Rawles, who has been on a mystery kick, shares the series of audiobooks she's been listening to for the past few months.

Do you have own favorites, or suggestions for what the Modern Law Library should be reading in 2023? Email them to us at books@abajournal.com, and you may hear them featured in a future episode.

In 2016, she tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles, there was enough of a political movement behind the idea of reform prosecutors that the nonprofit Fair and Just Prosecution was founded to help elected local prosecutors promote "a justice system grounded in fairness, equity, compassion and fiscal responsibility." Krinsky became its executive director.

Over the course of two years, Krinsky interviewed 13 elected prosecutors from a variety of different backgrounds who share the dream of reforming the criminal justice system. These oral histories were then paired with portraits of those prosecutors created by formerly incarcerated artists thanks to a partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia. It became the bookChange From Within: Reimagining the 21st-Century Prosecutor.

In this episode, Krinsky discusses insights from the election cycles FJP has observed; the difficulty of producing a book like Change From Within during the COVID-19 pandemic; and some of her favorite anecdotes she learned from the prosecutors she interviewed. She also responds to critics of the concept of reform prosecutors from both the tough-on-crime advocates and abolitionists who object to the carceral system entirely. Krinsky explains how prosecutors' discretionary power can be used to avert injustice in the system, and urges young lawyers and law students to consider that career path in addition to public defense positions to battle injustice.

She went into the CRRJ’s archive of Jim Crow racial homicides, and a search revealed another George Floyd. The account of the jailhouse death of this first George Floyd appeared in a 1945 letter to Thurgood Marshall from a Floridian chapter of the NAACP. Floyd, a 46-year-old turpentine worker, was arrested in St. Augustine, Florida, accused of public intoxication. When Floyd protested a second search of his person at the local jail, he was beaten to death by the arresting officer. Aside from a coroner’s report, Burnham and her colleagues could find no evidence that the officer who killed Floyd in 1945 faced any investigation.

“It was not entirely unforeseeable that we would find this name-fellow in our archive, pleading to be exhumed and put in conversation with the iconic inspiration for what would come to be known as the 2020 ‘reckoning’ with Black death at the hands of the state,” writes Burnham in her new book,By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. “We count, and contest, because George Floyd counted. Number 1. And Number 2.”

InBy Hands Now Known, Burnham looks at three interrelated themes: The way the federal government enabled the subjugation of Black Americans through both action and inaction; the relationship between racial violence and political power; and community resistance to Jim Crow that predates the “official” Civil Rights Era from 1954 to 1967.

Burnham’s first chapter examines one such area that shows elements of all three themes: Rendition cases gave attorneys the opportunity to try to prevent the extradition of Black men and women to jurisdictions where they faced lynching or other violence. William Henry Huff, a Black lawyer in Illinois, successfully handled 77 such cases, Burnham found in her research.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Burnham discusses her book with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. She describes talking to family members of victims who never thought the full story of their loved ones’ deaths would ever be told; the way shopkeepers or bus drivers were essentially deputized to violently enforce rules against Black people in the South; and how her work in 1990s South Africa with truth and reconciliation efforts impacts her view of the potential for reparations efforts in the United States. She also contends that the lack of enforcement made the kidnapping of Black people by white people not a criminal offense, regardless of what laws were on the books.

Burnham, along with her partner Melissa Nobles of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has also made her research available through the CRRJ’s Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive. Primary source documents such as FBI interviews, news articles and jury inquests into anti-Black killings in the American South during the early to mid-20th century are available, as well as more than 900 case pages for individual incidents.

But there is a science behind it, says Dr. Michael Shahnasarian, and he has written a book, The Valuation of Monetary Damages in Injury Cases: A Damages Expert's Perspective, to explain the methodology.

Shahnasarian has a PhD in psychology, and he's focused his practice on vocational rehabilitation and life care planning. As an expert witness, he's participated in at least 5,000 cases, he tells Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library podcast. The Valuation of Monetary Damages in Injury Cases walks through the forensic process he and others use to estimate what someone's earning potential might have been without an accident, as well as the amount of money it may take to cover the person's living and healthcare expenses in the future.

In this episode, Shahnasarian offers advice to young lawyers interested in tort cases; gives his expert-witness opinion on how best to reach jurors with information without overwhelming them; and shares with listeners his core beliefs about the value and dignity of work.

Listeners of this podcast can get a 20% discount on The Valuation of Monetary Damages in Injury Cases: A Damages Expert's Perspective by entering the code VMDCDEP22 at checkout at the ABA store. The discount code is valid until 8/31/2023.

The history of National Public Radio, the outlet that made Nina Totenberg a household name, is shorter than many people imagine. Its first broadcast hit the airwaves in 1971. Napoli shares how NPR helped craft the careers of women like Susan Stamberg, Linda Linda Wertheimer, Cokie Roberts and Totenberg, but also how these women helped shape the network and national conversations. Totenberg changed the way the Supreme Court was reported on, says Napoli, and she discusses defining moments of Totenberg’s career.

The second half of the episode is made of highlights from Totenberg’s conversation with E. Thomas Sullivan, the president of the ABF, in front of a Washington, D.C., audience that included former Ginsburg clerks. Totenberg spoke about her book, her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and what the justice really thought about the Notorious RBG meme. She reflects on Justice Ginsburg’s relationship with Sandra Day O’Connor; the current “grey” makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court; and why Ginsburg chose not to retire in 2013.

McKeown, who sits on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was on a hike when she came upon a cabin belonging to two friends of the justice, Olaus and Margaret Murie. Learning more about the Muries’ history as environmental advocates and preservationists brought her down the path that led to Citizen Justice, she tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library.

Seeing himself as entitled to advocate as a citizen for causes he believed in—despite his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court—Douglas did not hesitate to lobby federal agencies and the general public to protect wilderness areas from development. McKeown discusses how this could conflict with the code of ethics that she and other federal judges–but not U.S. Supreme Court justices–are bound by, and the implications for public trust.

Douglas’ childhood in Yakima, Washington, was marked by frailty and illness, but he became an avid outdoorsman and hiker in his adolescence and adulthood, keeping up a brisk clip and covering many miles per day. One of his favorite areas to hike in the Washington, D.C., area was along the disused Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. When the editorial board of the Washington Post advocated for the construction of a parkway on top of the old canal, Douglas wrote a letter strenuously objecting, and invited the editors to join him on a 187-mile hike of the length of the C&O Canal to see the wilderness he wanted to protect. It became the first of his “protest hikes,” and marked one of his favorite methods for convincing others of the importance of conservation: taking people on camping, fishing and hiking trips into wilderness areas.

A loyal New Dealer, one of the few areas of disagreement Douglas had with President Franklin D. Roosevelt was FDR’s bend towards conservation over preservation on public lands, McKeown says. She discusses the development of the conservation and environmental movements, in which Douglas was a powerful player. Douglas was the first justice to even use the word “environmental” in a Supreme Court opinion. She also delves into Douglas’ positions on Native American rights, which were supportive—unless they were pitted against the interests of fish.

The good news–according to author, attorney and parliamentarian Jim Slaughter–is that no matter the size or composition of a meeting, Robert’s Rules of Order has advice for that. But you find the 816-page Robert’s Rules of Order, 12th Editiondaunting, Slaughter has written Robert’s Rules of Order Fast Track to give people a slim and accessible guide, and will soon be releasing Notes and Comments on ‘Robert’s Rules,’ Fifth Edition.

Rather than hindering or slowing down a meeting, Robert’s Rules of Order can provide a structure that heads off potential problems at the pass. In his fast track guide, Slaughter brings up common problem areas and how to deal with them. He and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the viral videos of city council or school board meetings that have gone off the rails with attendees who are deliberately being disruptive. But Slaughter points out that sometimes a meeting participant derails a meeting by virtue of a talkative personality, and that, too, can be addressed by a chair who has a good command ofRobert’s Rules. Abiding by Robert’s Rules can also help groups avoid legal jeopardy.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Slaughter and Rawles discuss why a book first written in the 19th century is useful today; best practices for running Zoom or hybrid meetings; the common mistakes Slaughter sees most often; and the misconceptions people have about meeting minutes.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Jones and the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discuss the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924 in the wake of racist immigration laws. Jones shares how a "Wild West" mentality thrived within the service in its early years; how language restricting the Border Patrol's actions to within a "reasonable" distance resulted in a 100-mile border zone; and how two California public defenders in the 1970s brought four critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court that dealt a heavy blow to Fourth Amendment rights in the border zone.

Jones describes how the original mission of the Border Patrol to curtail illegal immigration expanded to include drug searches and anti-terrorism missions. That mission creep resulted in Border Patrol agents snatching protestors off the streets of Portland, Oregon, during protests after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.

They also discuss how Border Patrol checkpoints could potentially be used in states that criminalize abortions to control and monitor the travel of pregnant people within the 100-mile border zone.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Bergman and Castro share experiences from their respective backgrounds in coaching and psychotherapy, and some of their work creating wellness programming tailored for the legal profession. They intend their book to be a jumping off point for attorneys looking to increase resilience and happiness in their personal and professional lives. Rather than ticking off 50 boxes, the authors encourage readers to look at 50 Lessons for Happy Lawyers to find the lessons that speak to them. (For host Lee Rawles, one of those was the suggestion to make a "to don't" list to remove unnecessary tasks from her plate.)

Tune in to hear Bergman and Castro discuss the research that went into 50 Lessons for Happy Lawyers, the other books in the 50 Lessons for Lawyers series, and their advice for lawyers who are finding it difficult to cope with the stress of their professional and personal lives.

Well, esports is a growing industry, and if you'd like to make it part of your legal practice, a background in gaming can help, says Justin M. Jacobson, author of The Essential Guide to the Business & Law of Esports & Professional Video Gaming. Jacobson started in sports and entertainment law, and he says when representing musicians and athletes, knowing how to engage with your clients and speak in a vernacular they're accustomed to is key to forming a productive–and long-term–relationship with them.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Jacobson speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about his own career journey into esports management and legal representation, tips for law students on what classes could be useful for this practice niche, and the common mistakes he sees inexperienced clients make. 

When writing his manual, Jacobson wanted it to be useful not only to lawyers looking to practice in this area, but also people who are involved in the esports industry in other ways. In addition to a history of the video game contests that eventually developed into the multimillion-dollar esports industry, Jacobson breaks down the major stakeholders in the sector, including the event organizers, the game publishers, the teams and the talent. From contract writing to immigration issues, intellectual property disputes and tax write-offs, The Essential Guide to the Business & Law of Esports & Professional Video Gaming touches on many different areas of law.

Esports athletes or their friends, loved ones and business managers could also be served by Jacobson's clear breakdowns of issues that crop up for professional gamers. Tune in for Jacobson's advice for parents of talented young gamers who are looking to make a career in esports.

Hochman shares the real story that inspired the cover in this episode of the Modern Law Library with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles. It involves a private detective with a showman's instincts, a congressional hearing and an electronic bug hidden in a martini olive. It was an incident that spooked the legislature so much that in 1968, they banned the "martini olive transmitter"–even though a working prototype had never been built.

In this episode, Hochman also talks about America's long history of wiretapping, from Civil War saboteurs to confidence tricksters, from suspicious husbands to rival corporations, from drug dealers to district attorneys. Wiretapping was often seen as "a dirty business," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opined in Olmstead v. United States (1928), but also as a necessary tool in the arsenal of law enforcement, particularly once the War on Crime kicked off in the wake of civil rights protests. In the late 1950s, wiretapping was considered by some to be so necessary that New York district attorney Edward S. Silver compared being asked to prosecute criminals without it to being asked to "hunt lions with a peashooter."

Hochman kicks off the episode by telling the tale of the first American to be jailed for tapping a wire–and it's a tale with a twist.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

But when the Soviet Union dissolved and Kazakhstan became a sovereign state, it now had a conundrum: Should the country—which had no military of its own—retain the nuclear weapons and become the world’s fourth largest nuclear power, or relinquish them in return for international commitments?

This is the story that Togzhan Kassenova was born to write. The nuclear policy and nonproliferation expert grew up in the capital city, Almaty, in a family with deep ties to the Semipalatinsk region. Her father, Oumirserik Kassenov, was the head of the country’s first think tank, now known as the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, and he was charged with helping the fledgling Kazakh government make nuclear policy decisions in the 1990s. Kassenova—who now lives in a different capital city, Washington, D.C.—was also able to access and interpret archival documents from the United States, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The result is Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Kassenova and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the challenges of writing about top-secret nuclear test programs; the brave Soviet-era medical professionals who sought to record the sicknesses and birth defects caused by nuclear radiation; and the connections between the communities in Kazakhstan and the United States impacted by nuclear testing. She also sheds light on the real international diplomacy that took place that led to Kazakhstan giving up its nuclear arsenal, which was not a foregone conclusion.

Atomic Steppe was released only nine days before Russia invaded Ukraine. Kassenova also discusses the parallels between Ukrainian and Kazakh experiences, the Russian attitudes towards the former Soviet republics, and what the international community can do about the threat nuclear weapons still pose today.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Frederick says that she's never been the sort of person who enjoyed the cocktail party circuit way of rainmaking. When she launched her own law practice after years of working in BigLaw and as an in-house attorney for companies including Tesla, she relied for the first year entirely on referrals. But the connections she was able to make through LinkedIn has rapidly expanded opportunities for her legal practice and for her training and skill-development company, How to Contract.

Frederick tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles that one of her driving motivations for posting daily tips to LinkedIn has been her desire to pass along knowledge gained over the course of her career to younger attorneys. When she was a beginning attorney in the 1990s, she says she gained tremendously by being able to shadow more experienced attorneys at her firm, learning at the side of longtime contract attorneys. The same opportunities are not available now, particularly when so many young attorneys are launching their own solo or small firm practices. 

She hopes that both Practical Tips on How to Contract and her continuing daily posts to LinkedIn–she's now written more than 400–can help fill that gap. She adds that engaging with her commenters has also taught her lessons that improved her own legal work. 

In this episode, Frederick talks about the practical steps to building a brand and self-publishing; how she expanded into creating legal cartoons; and what it was like to be an attorney for Tesla.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

In No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett Jr., co-authors Edward J. Littlejohn and Peter J. Hammer have filled in this blank with an absorbing history of Crockett's Floridian childhood, his law school years at the University of Michigan, his defense of Communist activists at the height of the Red Scare, his harrowing search for the murdered Freedom Riders in 1964, his time as a judge on Detroit's Recorder Court, and his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. 

For this episode of the Modern Law Library, Hammer joined the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles to discuss the research that went into the book, some of Crockett's most high-profile cases, how Crockett ended up serving four months in prison for contempt of court, and to explain why Crockett was one of the Detroit police department's most-hated public figures.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Wehle’s previous books attempted to fill in civics education gaps for the general public. With her newest book, Wehle is hoping to give the general public alternatives to kneejerk or strictly partisan decision-making by encouraging a more methodical approach. In How to Think Like a Lawyer—and Why, Wehle shares what she calls the B-I-C-A-T Method. The five steps to the B-I-C-A-T Method are:

1. Break the problem down.

2. Identify your values and your aim.

3. Collect lots of information.

4. Argue both sides of each point.

5. Tolerate the fact that people may disagree with your choice and that you might feel conflicted about your decision.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Wehle and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss how she chose the five different spheres of life highlighted in her book as areas where a lawyerly mind could be particularly useful: work, family life decisions, civic life, health care and when it’s time to hire an actual lawyer. They also take the B-I-C-A-T Method for a spin in a hypothetical situation that’s a real-life dilemma for many parents around the world: How to approach masking in school.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Allen was involved in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that was formed by Congress to study the causes behind the 2008 financial crisis. Now she sees the possibility of financial collapse on an even greater scale with AI technology being used in the financial industry; "smart contracts" that could bring down banks before human intervention is possible; cryptocurrency and non-fungible token sales being made for the purpose of speculation; and tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google contemplating offering financial services. In the future, she warns, banks might not be the only entities that become "too big to fail." 

While the public is concerned about the safety of driverless cars, there's much less awareness about driverless finance, and the dangers it could pose to the global financial system are real, says Allen. 

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Allen speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the promise and downsides of some "cutting-edge" financial products, and why innovation is not inherently good. She suggests some avenues for regulation and oversight, urges that regulators be given the technology and access to expertise they need to keep up with new financial products and markets, and explains what an NFT is–and what it isn't.

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But Bacharach decided he wanted to dive deeper, to see what the science of psycholinguistics could teach lawyers and judges about how written words persuade an audience. The result was his new book, Legal Writing: A Judge's Perspective on the Science and Rhetoric of the Written Word, published by the ABA.

Legal Writing is a slim volume, but it's packed with tips. It considers details as microscopic as a serif on a letter and as macroscopic as how to create an outline for an argument. In this episode of the Modern Law Library podcast, Bacharach chats about his own writing process; shares his top takeaways from the psycholinguists he consulted; and offers his advice for young litigators looking to hone their skills.

When Gibson and Nelson set themselves the task of analyzing civil cases and the court makeups of all 50 state supreme courts, they realized without additional manpower it would be a daunting one, they tell Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library podcast. With the help of students, they created a database to track the outcomes of seven kinds of civil cases that would come before each court, and looked to see which courts tended to support the "haves" against the "have nots." They also analyzed the backgrounds of each justice, to the best of their ability. One of their most important findings? It's not as facile as a red state/blue state divide.

In this episode, Gibson and Nelson discuss the work that went into their study, the results they found most surprising, and what they as political scientists think that the legal profession should be discussing when it comes to the highest courts in each state.

What would possess someone to react to the sight of her boss (and longtime married lover) shot to death in his office by closing the door and walking away without alerting anyone? The trauma behind Littlejohn's actions becomes clearer as readers discover more about her background, and they may have a hard time putting down the novel as Littlejohn tries to discover the real reason behind her subsequent promotion at work. Is she a pawn, a token or a fall guy? Can she protect the people she loves and make sure her long-buried secrets don't rise from the grave?

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Morris discusses her 13-year journey towards publication, tips she has for fellow lawyers who want to write books, and the motivations behind her characters' actions with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles. While this interview remains spoiler-free, Morris reveals the backstories behind some of the characters in her book, and shares her thoughts on the real-life racism that is reflected in Littlejohn's experiences as the only Black woman attorney in an executive suite.

From his research, Grossman discovered that skepticism towards medical authorities has been the historical attitude Americans have held through the majority of the country's history. Instead, the deviation was the confidence and trust in science that held sway in the 1930s through the 1960s. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Grossman discusses these historical attitudes with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles, and what these attitudes could mean for the country's public health.

Grossman points out that views on medical choice don't map directly onto political views. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, liberal gay activists teamed up with anti-regulation conservatives to demand the FDA change its policies and let HIV-positive people try drug treatments that hadn't yet completed the approval process. During the COVID-19 pandemic it appears conservatives are more likely to demand unproven drugs and treatments like hydroxychloroquine (touted by former President Trump) and the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin, but there are numerous instances of vaccine hesitancy on either side of the political spectrum.

Choose Your Medicine takes readers back to the time of "heroic medicine," where doctors advocated for extreme (and sometimes deadly) treatments like purgatives and bloodletting in the hope that some progress would be made towards cures. The book looks at pre-Civil War efforts to regulate the practice of medicine, and shows how they failed. It illuminates once-popular movements like Thomsonianism, practiced by followers of a 19th century herbalist named Samuel Thomson.

One chapter of the book deals with the changes brought by the 1970s health movements. A cautionary tale from that time is Laetrile–a "medicine" made from apricot pits–which was touted as a wonder drug that could fight cancer. In practice, Laetrile did no such thing. But not all lobbying for alternative treatments has been a failure: Supporters of medical cannabis have been able to completely shift laws and attitudes towards marijuana over a relatively short amount of time. Other alternative treatments like acupuncture and chiropractic practices have become mainstream and successful.

In this episode, Grossman–who started writing the book long before the COVID-19 pandemic began–discusses what it's been like to see a new field of battle develop over medical choice. He talks about the constitutional theories advocates have used to push for therapeutic choice. He also shares a story he tells his students at the beginning of every semester: the story of a college student named Abigail Burroughs, who was dying from cancer and seeking an experimental drug.

But the path to becoming a classic was not a simple one, and the man behind the script was not a simple man. In Reginald Rose and the Journey of 12 Angry Men, author and business professor Phil Rosenzweig has written the first biography about the man who brought 12 Angry Men to screen, first as a television program and then as a film.

Rosenzweig has long used the film in his classes to discuss group dynamics. Delving deeper into Rose's work, he uncovers the background of one of the unsung pioneers of the television age. In addition to 12 Angry Men, Rose also wrote The Defenders, a seminal television show that has also been named by the ABA as one of the most important legal TV series ever.

One of the striking things Rosenzweig has observed about Twelve Angry Men is the ownership that two industries feel towards it. For legal professionals, this is a script about the law and a commentary on justice; business management circles feel equally certain that this is a script about the art of persuasion and getting buy-in. 

Rose claimed that the idea to write about a jury stemmed from an experience he had when called for jury service himself. Through careful examination of the criminal dockets during the time, Rosenzweig has identified the real-life (but little-known) case he believes gave Rose that inspiration. In this Modern Law Library episode, he discusses his discovery with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles, and shares his opinion about why this script has stood the test of time.

But when a veteran's circumstances are given another look, there may have been mitigating factors that weren't considered at the time of their discharge. As we've gained more understanding of conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction, it's become clear that some behaviors once seen as prompted by malice or poor character might instead have been a symptom of mental illness or a rational response to trauma like military sexual assault. A discharge status could also have been given as an act of retaliation, or because of bias and discrimination.

There can be a possible remedy: requesting a military discharge upgrade. For the first time in 30 years, there is a new manual to help guide veterans and their legal counsel through the process of requesting an upgrade, giving a fully updated look at a process that can be challenging to navigate. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Dana Montalto, one of the authors of the Military Discharge Upgrade Legal Practice Manual and an attorney and instructor with the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law's Legal Services Center.

Getting a discharge upgrade can be life-changing for a veteran, and the work can be done by a pro bono attorney, says Montalto. It's not an area of the law that features in law school classes, which is one of the reasons there was a push to create this new resource. In this episode, Montalto shares how she became involved in veterans legal services, answers some common questions lawyers have when considering pro bono work in this area, and talks about the many people and organizations who took part in the yearslong process of creating this resource.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Chemerinsky discusses why the Supreme Court did not address police powers during the first century of its existence; why the Warren Court was an aberration when it came to curtailing police powers; and what his experience was like when he investigated the Los Angeles Police Department’s notorious Rampart Division in 2000.

While Chemerinsky is not in favor of abolishing police, he also suggests several pathways for the American people to reform policing systems and buttress Fourth Amendment protections without relying on the Supreme Court to hold police accountable. He also shares how he was able to finish his book on an accelerated deadline while juggling his work as an ABA Journal columnist and a dean of a law school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with Natalie Fragkouli, his wife and business partner, Levy has written Beyond Se Habla Español: How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market to share their tips on marketing legal services to Lantinx communities. By segmenting the Hispanic market in the U.S. into demographics based on acculturation–for example, whether they consider Spanish to be their first language, or how recently their family has come to the United States–there is data that can show how each group can be most effectively reached by advertising. Levy and Fragkouli can help lawyers figure out the best way to connect with the people they can best serve within their practice areas.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Levy speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about his own journey from growing up as a member of an Israeli family in Mexico City, to summers in his teens helping his uncle promote his law firm in Los Angeles, to launching Nanato Media in Austin, Texas. He shares some common missteps that law firms make with courting Hispanic clientele; some of the attributes that many Hispanic consumers share; the ways to quickly drum up business; and long-term strategies for building community connections.

In Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire, author Liz Brown tells the life story of Harrison Post, a story that starts in the Gilded Age and moves through the Golden Age of Hollywood, a film noiresque tale of betrayal, and a WWII fight for survival inside concentration camps. It's a story that began for Brown years ago when she discovered Post's signed photo inside her late grandmother's possessions and felt gripped by the gaze of the dark-eyed young man.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Brown tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles how she discovered Post's distant connection to her own family. Post was the lover and longtime companion of William Andrews Clark Jr., founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and heir to a Montana mining fortune.

Clark, who was much older than Post, provided a trust to ensure that Post would be taken care of after his death. But his good intentions were foiled when Post's sister and her husband became Post's conservators and energetically began draining that trust. Only after they had completed selling off Post's possessions and draining his funds did they move to end the conservatorship and free Post, who fled Hollywood in the hope of finding a safe new life in Norway–just before the Nazis invaded.

Brown discusses her research methods, including the providential discovery of Post's journals, in the podcast. She shares how anti-Jewish and homophobic public opinion may have played into Post's treatment, and how Clark's father's political shenanigans led directly to the passage of the 17th Amendment.

Halpert was so convinced of this that in 2017, he wrote a book on LinkedIn marketing techniques. Enough has changed in the swiftly moving internet landscape that he is now releasing a new edition of the book, LinkedIn Marketing Techniques for Law and Professional Practices, Second Edition.

Do you feel awkward sharing your thoughts on LinkedIn? Finding own your voice and using it authentically is extremely important, Halpert counsels. As a LinkedIn consultant for professionals, he coaches people on how to use LinkedIn to demonstrate your worth to clients, colleagues–and recruiters.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Halpert shares what's changed in the past four years, how the pandemic has made online networking more important than ever, and the most common missteps he has seen lawyers make on LinkedIn. He discusses how he works LinkedIn into his day and when to say no to someone who wants to connect with you. He also warns about ethical pitfalls to steer clear of, and common faux pas people should avoid.

In her book Great Minds Think Differently: Neurodiversity for Lawyers and Other Professionals, autistic attorney Haley Moss provides guidance for firms looking to add neurodiverse employees; develop better working relationships with neurodiverse clients; and create more supportive workplaces to help their neurodiverse employees perform at their peak. But she also approaches the issue from the point of view of neurodiverse people looking to enter the profession and thrive within it, whether by advocating for accommodations or leaning in to the way their brain functions best.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles and Moss discuss Moss's journey as a child who was non-verbal to an adult with a law degree, law firm job and numerous public-speaking engagements. They also talk about how COVID-19 has shown law firms that flexible work arrangements are possible and desirable, and what that could mean for neurodiverse attorneys seeking accommodations.

Moss shares tips for students entering law school this fall, or who are attempting to pass the bar exam. And Moss also shares an anecdote about how her very literal way of thinking during research helped her firm successfully advocate for a recusal. If you are someone who never received a diagnosis as a child but have wondered whether you may have a condition like ADHD or autism, she also offers suggestions for how you could explore it further.