In August of 2012, Crown/Random House will release my memoir entitled "Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Cases and Finding Redemption." Crown has started sending copies of the manuscript to people for reviews and blurbs. One of the first people they sent the manuscript to was Michael Santos. Mr. Santos is a [...]
I recently ran across a cool way to check whether my writing is readable. The tip comes from Ross Gubberman's book Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation's Top Advocates. I was unaware that Microsoft Word has a feature that measures the readibility of Word documents. Word generates a readibility report that is based on the [...]
I don’t normally get excited about receiving subscription email newsletters. The one exception is when I see a Legal Writing Pro newsletter in my inbox. The newsletter is prepared by Ross Guberman and you can subscribe to it here. Guberman is a genuis at explaining the art of writing because his explanations are clear [...]
Once again I’d like to thank the assigned readings from my classes for exposing me to a classic that I might not otherwise have had the time or notion to read. Every once in a while you come across one that reminds you why they are labeled classics in the first place. [...]
Have you ever wondered about the women who ran the households of the Founding Fathers while they Declared Independence, fought the Revolutionary War, drafted and ratified the Constitution, and then governed the fledgling United States? We know quite a bit about Abigail Adams, in large part because of the vibrant letters she [...]
I just finished reading Randy Barnett’s book Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. While the book has received its share of criticism (see here), including by one of the CockleBur contributors (see here), I found the book very interesting. I cannot say that I agree with all of it or [...]
I was in a Barnes and Nobles about six months ago, and the store had a rack of five-dollar books. I am like a junkie when it comes to discounted books. So I read a few jacket covers before stumbling upon a book called The Tender Bar—a memoir written by J.R. Moehringer, [...]
In the latest Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, I review UCLA law professor Stuart Banner's book Who Owns the Sky? The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On. Banner’s book is outstanding because it presents the history of air law -- particularly the struggle to determine who would have property rights in and [...]
I’m a sucker for those library book sales. You know – the ones where you pay a dollar for a hardcover and 25 cents for a paperback. Usually I pick up novels. Last week at Creighton’s main Reinert Library I couldn’t resist a book called Society without God. (I expect I was [...]
The New York Times’ reporting has been legal-heavy in the past week. Emily Bazelon, normally of Slate, covered the subject of shaken-baby syndrome and how that crime is proved in court. Adam Liptak discusses the possibility that the Supreme Court could lose its reputation for impartiality if the Court rules in a partisan way on the Obama [...]