Aba Journal: Modern Law Library

As general counsel for the Teamsters Union Local 810, Mark Torres spends his days arguing for workers' rights. But another of his passions is writing; he published his debut crime novel in 2015. So when he was approached by Hard Ball Press to write a bilingual children's book explaining the importance of labor unions in ways that kids could connect with, Torres agreed. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, he shares with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles what the process of writing the children's book "Good Guy Jake" was like, why he feels it's necessary for kids to learn about the modern labor movement and how the book has been received by kids and Teamsters alike.

To Bryan Garner, editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary, Justice Antonin Scalia was a friend, a mentor, a collaborator and a fellow lover of words. In the wake of Scalia's death on Feb. 13, 2016, Garner reflected back over their relationship, from their first brief introduction in 1988 to the trip they took to Asia together in the last weeks of Scalia's life. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Garner speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about what gave him the confidence to ask a sitting Supreme Court justice to co-author two books; the four style issues he and Scalia were never able to agree on; and what it was like to write his first memoir.

You have reason to believe you're being monitored by the government, that they are following you and cataloging everywhere you go and everyone you talk to. The knowledge haunts you, and has a chilling effect on everything you do. But can you sue to stop it? In this month's episode, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Jeffrey Vagle about his new book, Being Watched: Legal Challenges to Government Surveillance about the current challenges to government surveillance, and a seminal Supreme Court case in 1972 whose effects are still being felt today. Vagle tells the story of Arlo Tatum, a Quaker and anti-war activist who went to prison twice as a conscientious objector rather than sign up for the WWII and Korean War drafts. When he discovered in 1970 that U.S. military intelligence had been following and gathering intelligence on him, he sued the Secretary of Defense. What happened next has had lingering ramifications.

In this month's Modern Law Library, we read a thrilling tale of dueling toymakers, corporate espionage and a group of brats taking on the queen of the DreamHouse. Prof. Orly Lobel, author of "You Don't Own Me: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side," speaks to the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about how an intellectual property dispute between the maker of Barbie and the creator of Bratz spun into a legal battle that would last more than a decade.

As a former federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., Paul Butler once worked to put people in prison. Now, he has come to believe that prisons should be abolished. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Butler speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the racial inequities built into the system; his advice for young black men interacting with the police; and his view that radical re-imagining, rather than incremental reform, is the only way to fully address the harm done to civil rights by the criminal justice system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you are a bystander and witness a crime, should intervention to prevent that crime be a legal obligation? Or is moral responsibility enough? These are among the hard-hitting questions discussed in a provocative and moving conversation with author and Holocaust education advocate Amos N. Guiora. In his new book, "The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust," Guiora addresses these profoundly important questions and the bystander-victim relationship from a deeply personal and legal perspective, focusing on the Holocaust and then exploring cases in contemporary society.   Sharing the experiences of his parents, who were Holocaust survivors, and his grandparents, who did not survive, Guiora examines the bystander during three distinct events: death marches, the German occupation of Holland, and the German occupation of Hungary. He then brings the issue of intervention into current perspective, discussing sexual assault cases at Vanderbilt and Stanford Un

In the 1960s and 1970s, a series of deadly prison riots convinced corrections officials that long-term solitary confinement was the only solution to control the "worst of the worst." Supermax prisons, such as the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, were constructed to fulfill this perceived need. But with the abundance of evidence showing how psychologically harmful solitary confinement is, can its use be justified? And with the lack of transparency surrounding the number and type of prisoners being held in long-term solitary confinement, how can we really judge its necessity or effectiveness? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Keramet Reiter, a University of California Irvine professor and the author of the new book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Reiter discusses the years of research she conducted into Pelican Bay Prison, including interviews with the prison's main designer; the judge who condemned horrific a

Neuroscience and brain-imaging technology have come a long way, but are they actually useful in a courtroom setting to explain why a person committed a crime? And are our brains to blame for all our actions, or do we have free will? Can a differently shaped brain remove moral responsibility for violence in an otherwise functioning person?  In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles spoke to Kevin Davis, a fellow ABA Journal editor and author of the new book "The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms." Davis shares how he first became interested in the issue of brain injury and brain development theories as evidence, and explains the little-known backstory to the murder case that ushered in the use of neuroscience in criminal defense cases. He also recounts the way the reporting for this book ended up changing his own attitudes and behavior–and how he parents his son.  

In his debut novel Al-Tounsi, critically acclaimed Canadian-American author and playwright Anton Piatigorsky tells the behind-the-scenes story of U.S. Supreme Court justices as they consider a landmark case involving the rights of detainees held in a Guantanamo Bay-like overseas military base. It explores how the personal lives, career rivalries, and political sympathies of these legal titans blend with their philosophies to create the most important legal decisions of our time. Given the current U.S. political climate, Al-Tounsi could not be more topical or relevant.   In a conversation that touches on everything from the right of habeas corpus to similarities between the fictional justices and their real-life counterparts and differences between the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts, Jon Malysiak, Director of Ankerwycke Books, discusses the novel with Piatigorsky. They explore how the author, born and educated in the U.S. and currently living in Toronto, came to w

In his new novel, "Legal Asylum: A Comedy," bestselling and Harper Lee Prize-winning author Paul Goldstein takes a satiric – and affectionate – look at the lengths to which the dean of a backwater state law school will go to ensure that her school makes it into the annual U.S. News & World Report Top Five. With the simultaneous arrival on campus of an American Bar Association committee to conduct the law school's reaccreditation review, "Legal Asylum" asks: Can a school make it into the exalted realm of the U.S. News Top Five and lose its accreditation, all in the same year? In a wide-ranging conversation, Jon Malysiak, the Director of Ankerwycke Books (the trade imprint of ABA Publishing), explores with Goldstein how fiction follows truth and the rankings game can produce a law school at which law teachers (at least those who manage to make it into the classroom) teach no law, a timid associate dean discovers a secret agenda that surprises even him, and a 

The Hon. Alberto R. Gonzales rose from humble beginnings in Humble, Texas, to some of the highest legal positions in the country as White House counsel and U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush. As the nation prepares to inaugurate a new presidential administration, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles spoke with him about his new memoir, "True Faith and Allegiance," his reflections about the choices the Bush administration made during his own time in office, and his advice for President-elect Donald Trump's nominees. He also sheds light on how some of the post-9/11 legal decisions were made and what it meant to him to be the first Hispanic person to advise the president of the United States as his chief counsel.