Legal History

Judge Jed Rakoff’s stance on the SEC deals draws fire, praise—and change

Over lunch in New York City in 2009, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff took a dare. Then-executive assistant U.S. attorney Fred Virella complained that the prosecutor’s office had lost four games in a row in the Lawyers Co-Ed Softball League. Rakoff joked that it likely had to do with Virella…

Oct 1, 2013 10:10 AM CDT

Remembering Lindley Murray, an inspirational lawyer-grammarian

In 1763, a New York lawyer named Benjamin Kissam took on an 18-year-old apprentice named Lindley Murray. According to Murray’s memoir, Kissam taught his young charge to “discourage litigation and to recommend a peaceable settlement of differences.” Some time after hiring Murray, Kissam took on another apprentice named John Jay,…

Oct 1, 2013 8:10 AM CDT

Remembering ex-ABA leader Bert Early, whose ‘legacy of service and achievement will endure’

Bert Hylton Early, who led the ABA from 1964 to 1981, died just before the 2013 annual meeting of the organization he loved. He was 91 years old. Early, a West Virginia native, was a pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II, serving as a first lieutenant.…

Oct 1, 2013 6:10 AM CDT

Oct. 21, 2003: Florida enters the Terri Schiavo case

In 1998, after eight years watching his wife wither in a persistent vegetative state, Michael Schiavo petitioned a Florida court to remove the feeding tubes that were keeping her alive. Though her doctors offered little to no hope of recovery from cardiac arrest, Terri Schiavo’s parents—Robert and Mary Schindler—objected, continuing…

Oct 1, 2013 5:30 AM CDT

Debt collector accused of posing as law firm will pay $1M in first FTC case over texts

A California-based debt collector has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission case. The collection company allegedly falsely portrayed itself as a law firm and sent text messages to debtors which didn’t include a validation notice with information required by law to be provided in an…

Sep 26, 2013 5:55 PM CDT

Nobel-winning law prof who wrote most-cited law review article dies at 102

A University of Chicago law professor and economist who wrote the most-cited law review article of all time has died at the age of 102. Ronald Coase died on Monday, report the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (sub. req.) and the New Yorker blog Rational Irrationality.…

Sep 4, 2013 2:29 PM CDT

Justice Sotomayor presides over re-enactment of historic baseball case

No one was selling peanuts or Cracker Jack in the U.S. Supreme Court on May 22, but they might as well have been. The spectators, as well as the players and the umpire, seemed to be having as much fun as a day at the ballpark. Justice Sonia Sotomayor presided…

Sep 1, 2013 9:29 AM CDT

September 2, 1963: Gov. Wallace halts integration

Anthony and Henry Lee were no different than thousands of other black Southern teenagers caught in the intense battle over the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education. But their names would go down in history. Alabama Gov. George Wallace took office in January 1963 vowing “segregation now, segregation tomorrow…

Sep 1, 2013 6:40 AM CDT

Lawyer says Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. departed from script to ad-lib iconic ‘Dream’ speech

Fifty years after a massive civil rights march in Washington, D.C., culminated in an electrifying “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., tens of thousands of people converged on the nation’s capital Wednesday to ponder what has, and has not, been accomplished since then. Although…

Aug 28, 2013 10:10 PM CDT

Jury says Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan should get death penalty

An Army psychiatrist who admittedly shot dozens of people at Fort Hood in 2009, insisted on representing himself at his court-martial and presented virtually no defense or justification for his actions should get the death penalty, a 13-member military jury has ruled. Maj. Nidal Hasan’s shooting rampage at the Texas…

Aug 28, 2013 7:45 PM CDT

Rosa Parks’ attorney: ‘If the story would be told, I’d have to tell it’ (podcast)

Fred D. Gray was 24 years old when he defended Rosa Parks after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person in Montgomery, Ala. But the story you might think you know is not the full story.

Aug 20, 2013 1:30 PM CDT

Tests on degraded DNA can’t link ‘In Cold Blood’ killers to unsolved Florida slayings

Did the two men made infamous by Truman Capote’s true-crime novel, In Cold Blood, kill not only the four members of a Kansas farm family, for which they were executed, but four members of a Florida family, too? Law enforcement officials believe Richard Hickock and Perry Smith likely were involved.…

Aug 13, 2013 10:20 PM CDT

Ancient object at Asian Art Museum speaks to modern law

Surely it was just coincidence, but an exhibit that should be of particular interest to lawyers opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum near San Francisco’s City Hall. The ABA convened its 2013 Annual Meeting in San Francisco on Thursday. The exhibit centers on the Cyrus Cylinder, created from clay…

Aug 10, 2013 2:45 AM CDT

You can’t censor Trotsky speech, DOJ lawyer advised FDR administration in 1937 legal opinion

A Justice Department lawyer advised the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that it had no legal authority to block transmission of a speech by Leon Trotsky. The 1937 legal opinion by Assistant Attorney General Golden Bell was included in a volume of newly released legal opinions by the Office…

Aug 2, 2013 10:34 AM CDT

How attention to style improves substance

In 1991, the late Judge Robert E. Keeton of Boston, serving as the chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, appointed a subcommittee to improve the style of federal procedural rules. It was an ambitious undertaking that, from its inception, was dogged by…

Aug 1, 2013 7:40 AM CDT