Legal News

Stevens sentencing math: a triumph of good PR?

Posted on October 28, 2008
Every high-profile criminal verdict brings a new opportunity for reporters to explain how sentences really work. The O.J. Simpson verdict earlier this month served as a reminder of a very old and very stupid journalistic habit: adding the maximum possible sentences on all counts and treating the sum as the possible sentence...

Fact checker fails to explain abortion fight

Posted on October 26, 2008
This Washington Post "Fact Checker" column by Michael Dobbs purports to explain the truth behind an abortion-related controversy in the presidential campaign. Trouble is, I read it a few times and I still don't know what the facts are. Call me dense, but the piece -- which acknowledges the "legally complex" issues surrounding Barack Obama's opposition to Illinois' "born alive" legislation -- does not make clear what changes the bills would have made from existing Illinois law...

A thousand-word legal history lesson

Posted on October 23, 2008
David Savage, the veteran Los Angeles Times Supreme Court correspondent, used a recent Sarah Palin controversy to expose readers to some legal history in this story today. It's a creative idea, and done well under tight time and space constraints. But I wish Savage had added one or two more grafs of explanation to make the lesson for laymen that much more valuable...

Playing catch-up to bloggers on child-porn story

Posted on October 23, 2008
Amir Efrati's story in the Journal today takes a look at a law-enforcement controversy that's been percolating for some time, and that has received heavy attention already by law bloggers. Noting a growing judicial backlash against mandatory-minimum sentences for downloading child pornography, Efrati quotes judges and advocates on both sides while using Justice Department stats to good effect...

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Anatomy of a smear: pro bono version

Posted on October 23, 2008
There's nothing like a recording or speech text to serve as a check on faulty reporting. As I and others suspected, 2nd Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs' remarks to a Federalist Society gathering in Rochester were wildly misinterpreted by the reporter covering the event, and then by critics who seized upon Jacobs' supposed views as evidence of his hate for all pro bono (and by implication for all poor people in need of free legal help)...

Pro bono hater, or victim of a misquote?

Posted on October 23, 2008
Did a legal newspaper rip a judge's comments about pro bono out of context, and did critics then rush to judgment about the judge's meaning? I'm still trying to figure out the answers to both questions. Walter Olson reports at Point of Law that 2nd Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs claims he was quoted "grossly" out of context when he made critical remarks about pro bono work and impact litigation at a Federalist Society event in Rochester...

The Docket: 10/20

Posted on October 21, 2008
Before we get to this week's excellent samples of legal journalism, I wanted to remind readers to feel free to send any thought-provoking articles to rsmascarenhas [at] gmail [dot] com. The internet's just too big for this intern to handle.While Gov. Sarah Palin has quickly become Alaska's most famous export, it's hard to keep the state's other luminary, Ted Stevens, out of the picture for too long...

Cleveland rocks: crack, prison, and race

Posted on October 20, 2008
Cleveland Plain Dealer's Bob Paynter powerfully combines anecdotes and his paper's own statistics to document disparate treatment of black drug defendants. It's convincing and damning stuff, told in part 1 Sunday and part 2 today. Paynter is transparent about his methodology -- which cases he's considering, and why -- and gives law enforcement ample opportunity to poke holes in the stats...

Times too quick to see trial lawyer PR boost

Posted on October 18, 2008
Jonathan Glater takes a savvy look at the litigation potential in the financial crisis today. He examines the potential deep pockets, theories of recovery, and other strategic calculations now being made by investors and lawyers. The net effect is a solid legal sidebar to the Wall Street mess...

Lat dumps notebook from Lithwick UVa talk

Posted on October 18, 2008
Above the Law's David Lat has this report -- almost a transcript, really -- of Dahlia Lithwick's talk at the University of Virginia Law School. It's notable at this blog because it's all about legal reporting, and about Lithwick's role as Slate's columnist at the Supreme Court...

Cameras invade federal courts. Film at 11.

Posted on October 16, 2008
American Lawyer's Litigation Daily (fifth item) reports that the ingenious argument by Boies, Schiller's Jonathan Sherman to crack open federal courts to camera access has won two trial judges' support. AmLaw's report, by Andrew Longstreth, links to the two orders...

Recalling "a stitch in time saves nine"

Posted on October 15, 2008
Jess Bravin has this readable, brief constitutional-law sidebar today to the ongoing story of the government's intervention in the banking industry. It's old hat to con-law scholars and even first-year law students. But, to the average reader, it's an enlightening and engaging history lesson about the clash between competing constitutional and policy views that tilted us toward an activist government in the Depression...

The Docket: 10/15

Posted on October 15, 2008
Unlike the rest of the university, I took Columbus Day off, which means I missed my Monday deadline. Thankfully, the rest of the profession has picked up for my slack, giving us some powerful examples of legal journalism this week:Eyewitnesses often are a crucial part of crime investigations, but how reliable are they? The Dallas Morning News looked at robbery trials in Dallas County over two years and found a disquieting reliance on eyewitness testimony, even when corroborating evidence was weak...

ChiTrib domestic violence probe, in brief

Posted on October 11, 2008
When I saw the words "lengthy article" used by the ABA Journal to describe a Chicago Tribune story, and then saw the story itself emblazoned with the telltale term "Tribune Investigation" and touting a "Tribune analysis" of court records, I braced myself...

How the system really works in Baltimore

Posted on October 10, 2008
Courthouse beat reporters -- and, worse still, the horde that descends on headline-making trials -- distort reality when they gravitate to the rare juicy trial to the exclusion of the plea-bargaining machine that disposes of the vast majority of cases and makes all courthouses hum...

Greenhouse still enduring Q&As, and still worth listening to

Posted on October 10, 2008
Charles Kaiser interviews Linda Greenhouse at Radar Online, and finds her in a feisty mood about her ethical dustups at the Times. There's nothing really new here, but Greenhouse is perhaps more pointed and quotable about the well-known episodes concerning her participation in a pro-choice march and her talk at Radcliffe...

"Not about the money" cliche archive

Posted on October 10, 2008
In kindly linking to my earlier post that mocked NPR's unquestioning acceptance of a plaintiff's claim that her lawsuit was "not about the money," Overlawyered's Walter Olson reveals his archive of "not-about-the-money" claims by plaintiffs. Genius! Courts reporters, could we please consider a ban on such quotes because they simply don't pass the laugh test? Thanks!

Mob gossip on the Times site

Posted on October 10, 2008
Famed mob reporter Jerry Capeci is holding court this week on The New York Times' site to answer questions from readers. There's been no shortage of such questions, and Capeci has tackled a number of them in two takes (so far). Capeci, whose Gang Land News site adopted a paid-subscription model about four months ago, is getting some promotional mileage, and sharing some of his voluminous knowledge of New York's mafia families...

When they say it's not about the money. . .

Posted on October 07, 2008
We're hearing a lot these days about evil, biased "mainstream media" who are best bypassed so that newsmakers can speak directly to the public. That's a crock in politics, and likewise in business. Case in point: today's Q&A on NPR between host Melisssa Block and Daphne Hereford, owner of the descendants of Rin Tin Tin...

Stohr catches Breyer's switch

Posted on October 06, 2008
I'm just now coming up for air from the workday, so I'm not up on what everyone else might be reporting from the first Monday in October at the Supreme Court. This Greg Stohr story strikes me, though, as smart and enterprising. Using Stephen Breyer's latest financial disclosure form, context on Breyer's history of finance-related recusals, a good eye for cases Breyer is participating in (despite his past holdings), and good questions that got direct answers from the Supreme Court press office (on Breyer's recent stock sales), Stohr gives his business readers important intelligence...

Preview most likely to wake you up

Posted on October 06, 2008
I've been stifling yawns or going into OCD mode with the past few days' worth of Supreme Court previews. But Jim Oliphant snapped me out of my trance with his entertaining and smart storytelling in this story today. Simple labeling and packaging elevate dry material to something readable by the average hockey mom or average Joe.

Totenberg and the runaway lede

Posted on October 06, 2008
Who can blame Nina Totenberg for trying to entice listeners to pay attention to her Supreme Court preview by looking for a device to make the very unsexy theme of this term so far -- pre-emption -- a little sexier? But her attempt at perspective on today's Morning Edition ran into some troubling facts...

The Docket: 10/06

Posted on October 06, 2008
If you have come across any examples of compelling legal journalism lately, please send them to rsmascarenhas [at] gmail [dot] com. Not that this week's edition is wanting: we have soured financial deals, immigration snafus, and mackerel dollars. Over at The American Lawyer, Andrew Longstreth has compiled a good summary of the Citibank-Wachovia dispute, with obsessive linkage to court documents and story updates...

O.J. sentencing math: SI wins

Posted on October 05, 2008
Coverage of the O.J. Simpson verdict in Las Vegas is largely guilty of breaking one of the most basic legal-reporting rules. Rather than explain what sentence Simpson realistically faces -- what discretion the judge has to impose minimums, and whether it's common to stack sentences in such a case with such a defendant -- we're told endlessly about his possible life sentence...

First legal reporting fellows named

Posted on October 03, 2008
Drum roll, please .... announcing the first Carnegie/Newhouse School Legal Reporting Fellowships. The program, described more fully here, subsidizes the work of four freelance writers with $3,000 awards -- and then sweetens the deal by paying Newhouse School journalism students to serve as the reporters' research assistants...

Mauro picks up fallen SCOTUSblog banner

Posted on September 30, 2008
Thanks to Legal Times' Tony Mauro, I now have a more-than-adequate substitute to link to for the missing Lyle Denniston analysis of the Supreme Court's possible role in the financial crisis. Mauro's story is more traditionally and explicitly sourced than Denniston's off-the-top-of-his-brainy-head article...

Bashman watches the setting Sun

Posted on September 30, 2008
How Appealing's Howard Bashman gets wistful over the loss of The New York Sun -- specifically over his admiration for two law-beat reporters, Josh Gerstein and Joseph Goldstein. I, too, have noticed the little paper's ambitious, national legal coverage, and have had it on my to-do list to do enough research of the archives that I could come to some sort of conclusion about the quality of that coverage...

The Docket: 9/29

Posted on September 29, 2008
While not on the level of today's dramatic bailout vote, this week's stories still pack a punch, featuring GITMO detainees, damning government e-mails, and jury snooping. If you have any other links to compelling legal journalism, please send them to rsmascarenhas [at] gmail [dot] com...

Leaked document puts Post ahead

Posted on September 25, 2008
The New York Times' William Glaberson has ruled the Guantanamo-justice beat for quite some time. But today was an off day. He and the Washington Post's Peter Finn both write today about the resignation of a prosecutor in the detainee cases at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...

Did Liptak cook up a trend?

Posted on September 23, 2008
Since I'm often an Adam Liptak cheerleader, I should point out that Joshua Friedman has more critical things to say in CJR about Liptak's "American Experience" swan song. Based on what seems to be a careful reading, and conferring with experts who are debating the story's premise, he argues that Liptak had little evidence to support his thesis that the worldwide influence of the U...

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