Modern Law Library

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

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

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

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

Almost 30 years before Linda Brown and her parents took on the Topeka Board of Education in Brown v. Board of Education, Martha Lum's parents Jeu Gong and Katherine sued to try to stop Rosedale, Mississippi, from barring their Chinese-American children from the local "white" school. Their case, Gong Lum v. Rice, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, but rather than granting them relief, the unanimous Supreme Court decision led to even stricter school segregation.

For this episode of the Modern Law Library, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discusses this little known chapter of history with Adrienne Berard. Berard is the author of “Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South.” Berard discusses the bravery of the family's decision, and the complicated state of race relations in 1920s Mississippi in which the debate over whether the "colored" category applied to Asian Americans took place. We also discuss Earl Brewer, a former governor of Mississippi, who took the Lums' case in a bid to regain his reputation, and how the immigration debates of the early 20th century have ugly echoes in today's political environment.

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 abuses which occurred in the prison’s early years; and former prisoners who have emerged from long-term solitary confinement and dealt with its after-effects. She also shares what kind of reforms she thinks would be necessary for the judicial system and legislators to be able to assess the need for long-term solitary confinement.

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 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 mailroom clerk may hold the school's future in his hands. And why, after reading an advance copy, Alan Dershowitz could write, “You will never view legal education in the same light after you've read 'Legal Asylum.'”