Law, Not Poetry @BarbaraRich_law @Medium

Barbara Rich explains how she became a lawyer, not a poet. Here, for Medium.

Anne Marie McElroy Examines Canada's Former Supreme Court Chief Justice's First Legal Thriller @McElroy_Law @simonschuster

Anne Marie McElroy checks out the law in former Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin's first novel Full Disclosure (Simon & Schuster, 2018) and gives her verdict on her blog, McElroy Blog, here.

Ms. McElroy points out some inaccuracies, such as that under Canadian law, there's no right to have an attorney present during police interrogation, or that in a first degree murder case, bail is not a simple matter. Other criticisms also seem tied to substantive criminal law. Perhaps Justice McLachlin wasn't a criminal lawyer before going on the bench? (She was a law professor at UBC). But Ms McElroy concludes that "Despite my whining about some creative liberties taken by the author, Full Disclosure was actually a fun read. It included some subtle commentary on sexism in the profession and delays in the courts, and presents a smart protagonist and an engaging plot. And while some have said that the character of Jilly Truitt is based on Marie Henein, I know a lot of spunky thirty-something female defence lawyers who could have just as easily inspired this story, and will hopefully inspire more entertaining (and legally accurate) stories to come."  NB: Marie Henein is a leading Canadian criminal defense lawyer. 

Sounds good to me. Full disclosure: I'm ordering the book. 

Thornton and Roberts on Women Judges, Private Lives: (In)Visibilities in Fact and Fiction @ANU_Law @hj_roberts_ @GenderANU

Margaret Thornton and Heather Roberts, both of the Australian National University College of Law, have published Women Judges, Private Lives: (In)Visibilities in Fact and Fiction at 40 University of New South Wales Law Journal 761 (2017). Here is the abstract.

Once unseen, women are now visible in increasing proportions on the bench in common law courts, although this reality has generally not percolated into fictional worlds, where ‘the judge’ is invariably male. Fiona, cast by Ian McEwan as the protagonist, in The Children Act, is a notable exception. In the novel, McEwan directs our gaze beyond the traditional separation of judicial identity into public/private (visible/invisible) facets of life and raises questions regarding the impact of life on law, and law on life. This article draws on McEwan’s work to illuminate a study of how judicial swearing-in ceremonies tell the stories of Australian women judges. At first glance, this may seem an unusual pairing: The Children Act is an international best-selling work of fiction whereas the official records of court ceremonial sittings are a somewhat obscure body of work largely overlooked by scholars. However, the speeches made in welcome in open court on these occasions by members of the legal profession and by the new judge in reply, offer glimpses of the attributes of women judges not discernible in formal judgments. These ‘minor jurisprudences’ challenge the familiar gendered stereotypes found in the sovereign body of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Wonder Woman and Lawyers

Christie Marston writes  (Hollywood Reporter) about her grandmother, lawyer Elizabeth Holloway Marston, who was the inspiration for Wonder Woman, the creation of  her husband, William  Moulton Marston.

Mr. Marston was also an attorney, as well as quite an adventurous soul. Read more about him, his wife Elizabeth, his mistress, and all the feminist and sexual symbols in his work (I said he was adventurous) in Jill Lepore's book The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Random House, 2014). More here from NPR.

Jordan on Ida Platt: The First African-American Female Lawyer in Illinois @UISedu

Gwen Jordan, University of Illinois, Springfield, has published ‘A Woman of Strange, Unfathomable Presence’: Ida Platt's Lived Experience of Race, Gender, and Law, 1863-1939. Here is the abstract.

In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate. Platt’s choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women’s rise within the profession. Platt’s life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt’s pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions. 

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Higdon on Oral Advocacy and Vocal Fry

Michael J. Higdon, University of Tennessee College of Law, is publishing Oral Advocacy and Vocal Fry: The Unseemly, Sexist Side of Nonverbal Persuasion in volume 13 of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD (2016). Here is the abstract.

In 2015, Naomi Wolf warned that “the most empowered generation of women ever — today’s twentysomethings in North America and Britain — is being hobbled in some important ways by something as basic as a new fashion in how they use their voices.” She was referring to the phenomenon referred to as "vocal fry" — a speech quality in which the speaker lowers her natural pitch and produces a "creaking" sound as she talks. Naomi Wolf is not alone in her warnings; vocal fry has received quite a bit of negative attention recently. Specifically, these critics warn that those who speak in vocal fry are doing themselves great harm by undermining the speakers’ overall perceived effectiveness. In fact, recent studies even lend some support to these arguments, showing that listeners tend to rate those who speak in vocal fry more negatively. The problem, however, is that much of this criticism is directed at young women, and for that reason, some defenders of vocal fry have countered that these criticisms are merely attempts to regulate how women talk. In other words, a preference for speech that does not contain vocal fry is actually motivated by pernicious stereotypes about how women "should" talk. Thus, on the one hand, there are those studies supporting the argument that women who engage in vocal fry are less likely to be perceived positively, yet on the other hand, there exists the very real likelihood that these perceptions are based on gender stereotypes. Accordingly, the question emerges: what should a young woman do? Should she eliminate all instances of vocal fry from her speech so as to maximize her perceived effectiveness as a public speaker if, in so doing, she is reinforcing the very gender stereotypes upon which such preferences are based? Or should she openly confront such stereotypes and employ vocal fry as much as she likes, knowing that, by taking that approach, she is taking the risk that she might be hurting not only herself but also those upon whose behalf she speaks? This essay, by first discussing this background on vocal fry, delves into that very dilemma. It does so specifically in the context of female attorneys given that 1) public speaking is a key component upon which their effectiveness is gauged and 2) to the extent their public speaking is judged to be less than ideal, they are not only harming themselves, but also potentially a client. Finally, in wrestling with this question, these essay hopes to shed light on a bigger concern — specifically, how useful are studies on effective nonverbal behavior when the results of those studies are largely driven by underlying societal prejudice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.