Magazine - News - ABA Journal

Cover Story

Next!

We’ve consulted with some of the legal profession’s best prophets, prognosticators and soothsayers to bring you a report from the future.

In 2007, judges will increasingly get creative with sentencing, shaming defendants in the hope they will think twice about violating the law again. Partners being pushed out by their firms will have new leverage to negotiate sweeter severance deals. And patent holders will find their way to a forum that resolves their disputes in record time.

Americans will battle over who’s really a citizen, online background checks will raise thorny questions about discrimination, prosecutors will zero in on medical ID theft, and lawyers will discover that MySpace ain’t just for kids.

For a closer look into our crystal ball, read on.

Feature Section

Forces of Change

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in U.S. v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association probably didn’t receive much public attention at the time. Besides covering the tedious domain of insurance regulation, it was released June 5, the eve of D-Day.

ABA Connection

Strange New World

It was early 2005, and G. Victor Tiscornia II was thinking about how to broaden the scope of his law practice. This solo practitioner in Salem, Ore., handled mostly trust and estate work, but he was planning to expand his sideline in bankruptcy work. That plan was shot down, however, when Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. When the law went into effect in October of that year, the landscape of bankruptcy law changed.