January 2008
Newsmakers of the Year 2007 and 2008
Naming a legal newsmaker of the year for the 12 months that have just ended is easy. Naming the newsmaker of the year for a year that hasn’t begun would normally be evidence of hubris or a touch of insanity.
But not this year.
The top legal story of 2007 was unquestionably the unraveling of support for the Bush administration’s expansive view of presidential power during wartime, and with it, the slow-motion destruction of Alberto Gonzales’ reign as U.S. attorney general. Add to that the controversy over whether the administration fired eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons, and no single lawyer made more news in 2007 than Gonzales.
And now, all of those problems have been dumped in the lap of the new AG, former federal judge Michael Mukasey. How he’ll deal with them—in the middle of a presidential campaign, no less—promises to make him the top legal newsmaker of 2008.
What follows is our opinionated look at those two attorneys and the cast of characters—prosecutors and defense lawyers, government lawyers and those in private practice, Republicans and Democrats—who made legal news in 2007, along with our predictions of who will take their places in the headlines of 2008.
Continue reading...In This Issue
Feature Section
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Electing to Litigate
As the primaries begin, lawyers, voters and state officials brace for more and more lawsuits.
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Full Court Coverage
What happens when defense counsel and ordinary citizens blog about high-profile trials?
ABA Connection
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The Boss Is Watching
And employees are finding they have fewer places to hide.
Opening Statements
- In Volume Veritas
- Struggling Against Sadness
- Translation Station
- Greenbacks for Going Green
- A Flush Start
- Seventeen Percent
