Modern Law Library

Grammar nerds, meet your Comma Queen 30.04.2015 16:02 ↓

Mary Norris has been a copy editor for the New Yorker since 1978. In her new book, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, she offers clear and understandable grammar lessons for some of the most common conundrums faced by English speakers. Along the way, she also lifts the veil on the editorial process for the famed magazine, and describes the meandering career path that led her to the Ne...

Author tells tangled tale of the $19B verdict against Chevron in 'Law of the Jungle' 28.01.2015 20:48 ↓

In 2011, an Ecuadoran court found the Chevron Corporation liable for environmental damage caused by oil drilling in the 1970s-80s. Chevron was ordered to pay $19 billion to the plaintiffs who brought the suit, a collection of small farmers and indigenous peoples. Although it is tempting to fit this into a simple narrative-either "victory for oppressed people against an evil corporation" or "respon...

All is not as it seems for 9th Circuit clerk in ATL founder's new novel (podcast) 17.12.2014 16:18 ↓

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, moderator Lee Rawles chats with Above the Law's David Lat about his novel Supreme Ambitions, his career, and his time as the anonymous author of the sometimes-scandalous blog Underneath Their Robes.

How a series of attacks by a breakaway Amish sect became a landmark hate-crimes case 30.09.2014 23:33 ↓

The Amish religion is a branch of Christianity that adheres to a doctrine of simplicity, nonviolence and forgiveness. How then did a breakaway group come to be implicated in the first federal trial to prosecute religiously motivated hate crimes within the same faith community? From September to November in 2011, there was series of five attacks against nine Amish victims in Ohio in which their bea...