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. 

Roz Watkins: The IP Lawyer Turns Mystery Novelist @Ipkat

The IPKat @Ipkat notes the publication of IP attorney turned crime novelist Roz Watkins' novel The Devil's Dice (HarperCollins).

Here's a description of the book's contents.

Detective Inspector Meg Dalton has recently returned to her Peak District roots to pick up the pieces after a breakdown, when a man's body is discovered in a cave. The man's initials and a figure of the Grim Reaper are carved into the cave wall behind his corpse, but bizarrely, the carvings have existed for over one hundred years. The locals talk about a mysterious family curse that started in the times of the witch trials, and Meg finds it increasingly hard to know who to trust. Even her own mother may be implicated. Meg finds her own life at risk as she fights to stop the murderer from killing again. The Literary Review described 'The Devil's Dice' as a 'smart, enjoyable debut', saying that "the setting is dramatic, the characters are convincing and the motive for murder, when eventually uncovered, is interesting."

 

More about Ms. Watkins here.

Would you like to read more mystery or crime fiction featuring IP lawyers? Try out Paul Goldstein's  Errors and Omissions (Random House, 2007),  Havana Requiem (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012), and  A Patent Lie (Random House, 2008).

A New Collection of John William Corrington's Writings, Edited by Allen Mendenhall @allenmendenhall @UnivPressNG

Newly published: The Southern Philosopher: Collected Essays of John William Corrington (Allen Mendenhall, ed., University of North Georgia Press, 2017).

John William Corrington was an English professor (D. Phil, University of Sussex) and lawyer (Tulane Law) who became known as a writer of screenplays and poetry. With his wife Joyce, he wrote for such daytime dramas as Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital. The couple also wrote the screenplays for the films The Omega Man and Battle for the Planet for the Apes, among other films.

Professor Mendenhall's new book highlights Professor Corrington's writings on literature, law, and society.

Here's a link to an interview with Professor Mendenhall on his research for the book.

Here's Richard Bishirjian's review of the new collection from Anamnesis. 

Burke on Why Novelists Write About the Criminal Justice System @alafairburke @Hofstra_Law

Alafair S. Burke, Hofstra University School of Law, is publishing Why Fiction? in the New England Law Review (2017). Here is the abstract.

When I sold my first novel the summer after my first year as a tenure-track law professor, I assured the dean of my law school that fiction was a hobby, completely separate from my academic work, no different than if a colleague were training for a marathon in her spare time. Fifteen years later, this symposium asks its participants - four of us published novelists, one of us a judge, all of us trained lawyers - to reflect on the depiction of the criminal justice system in fiction. Our contributions make clear that the promise I made to my dean was itself a type of fiction. Whether an author realizes it or not, it is impossible to create an interesting, albeit fictional, depiction of the criminal justice system without having something to say about its real-world counterpart. Successful legal fiction uses the legal system as a defining component of the narrative that feels entirely realistic, even if the plot that unfolds there is wholly fictional. To be of interest, a novel’s legal setting must serve a purpose. Legal detail should advance the development of character, plot, or atmosphere. Separate from the question of why a novelist might write about law is the question of why a legal professor might choose to write fiction. This symposium presses me to respond to that query. Fortunately, the five thoughtful and diverse essays contributed to this collection have helped clarify a decade and a half of my own thoughts. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on three themes that I hope I have developed at least as well through fiction as through traditional legal scholarship: (1) individual actors in the criminal justice system matter; (2) legal rules are only a starting point; and (3) justice is not inevitable. Comparing these three points to narrative, one could say that they provide lessons about character, structure, and surprise endings.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Lawrence Joseph's Sixth Book of Poetry Published @fsgbooks @StJohnsU

Lawrence Joseph, poet and professor of law at St. John's University, has published his sixth book of poems, So Where Are We? (Farrar, Straus, Giroux).

Other collections of his poetry include Into It (2005), and Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993, both published by FSG. The latter collects his first three books of poetry. He is also the author of the novel Lawyerland, under option by Mr. Mudd Productions. 

Like Mystery Books? Maybe That Interest Could Lead To a Career @DSimpsonAuthor

Via writer Duncan Simpson @DSimpsonAuthor, a reference book after my own heart: Blythe Camenson’s Careers for Mystery Buffs & Other Snoops and Sleuths (McGraw-Hill, 1997), mentioned at  The Booklist Reader.  Among the careers mentioned: mystery writer (by lawyer John Grisham). The book is o.p., but available from used book dealers (e.g. abebooks, alibris). 

Pultizer Prize and MacArthur Grant Winner James Alan McPherson Dies

Acclaimed writer James Alan McPherson has died at the age of 72. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1977 for his work Elbow Room. He was the first African American writer to win the prize.

Professor McPherson, who taught at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop for many years, retiring in 2014, as well as at the University of Virginia, was also a graduate of Iowa, receiving a master's degree in fine arts, after graduating from Harvard Law School. One can find that legal training reflected in his writing. As Sam Roberts notes in the New York Times obituary for Professor McPherson, he "would invoke the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and infuse his literature with the principles of diversity propounded by Albion W. Tourgée in his brief in 1896 against segregated railroad cars in Plessy v. Ferguson."

The James D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded James Alan McPherson one of the first "genius grants" in 1981.

A selected bibliography is below:


Beavers, Herman, I Yam What You Is and You Is What I Yam: Rhetorical Invisibility in James Alan McPherson's "The Story of a Dead Man," 29 Callaloo 565-577 (Autumn 1986).

Beavers, Herman, Wrestling Angels Into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

McPherson, James Alan, Conversations With Ralph Ellison (1995).

Wallace, Jon, The Politics of Style in Three Stories by James Alan McPherson, 34 MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 17-26 (Spring 1988).

A New Book on Lawyers Who are Writers and Writers Who are Lawyers, From the Middle Ages To the Enlightenment

New from Classiques Garniers:

Écrivains jurists et jurists écrivains du Moyen Âge au siècle des Lumières (Bruno Mèniel, ed., Paris,2016) (Esprit desLois, Esprit des Lettres; 8). 

Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website. 

Does legal practice result in modes of thought, a rapport with language and with reality, which manifest themselves in the works of legal writers? As rigorous as it might be, is it not the case tha tlegal discourse contains an imaginary world that a literary eye can flush out?

More here via Frederik Dhondt@HerakleitosMD.

William Henry Ireland: Poet, Law Clerk, and Forger

A copy of William Henry Ireland's forged "Shakespeare" play, Vortigern, goes on display at the British Library beginning April 15th. When first performed, the play caused quite a lot of debate over its authenticity. More here from the Telegraph.

For more on William Henry Ireland's origins and his history as a forger, poet, and sometime law clerk, see the Smithsonian Magazine. 

And remember, National Poetry Month begins April 1st...

A New Book on the Inns of Court as Centers of Law and Literary Thought: Winston on Law, Literature, and Politics in the Late Sixteenth Century

Jessica Winston, Professor of English, Idaho State University, is publishing Lawyers at Play: Literature, Law, and Politics at the Early Modern Inns of Court, 1558-1581 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

Many early modern poets and playwrights were also members of the legal societies the Inns of Court, and these authors shaped the development of key genres of the English Renaissance, especially lyric poetry, dramatic tragedy, satire, and masque. But how did the Inns come to be literary centres in the first place, and why were they especially vibrant at particular times? Early modernists have long understood that urban setting and institutional environment were central to this phenomenon: in the vibrant world of London, educated men with time on their hands turned to literary pastimes for something to do. Lawyers at Play proposes an additional, more essential dynamic: the literary culture of the Inns intensified in decades of profound transformation in the legal profession. Focusing on the first decade of Elizabeth's reign, the period when a large literary network first developed around the societies, this study demonstrates that the literary surge at this time developed out of and responded to a period of rapid expansion in the legal profession and in the career prospects of members. Poetry, translation, and performance were recreational pastimes; however, these activities also defined and elevated the status of inns-of-court men as qualified, learned, and ethical participants in England's 'legal magistracy': those lawyers, judges, justices of the peace, civic office holders, town recorders, and gentleman landholders who managed and administered local and national governance of England. Lawyers at Play maps the literary terrain of a formative but understudied period in the English Renaissance, but it also provides the foundation for an argument that goes beyond the 1560s to provide a framework for understanding the connections between the literary and legal cultures of the Inns over the whole of the early modern period.

 

A New Novel With an Assertive Lawyer-Protagonist

Heller McAlpine reviews Eliza Kennedy's first novel, I Take You, for NPR.  Says McAlpine in part,

Kennedy, a graduate of the University of Iowa and Harvard Law School, is a former litigator herself, and married to writer Joshua Ferris. Her snappy comedy of mis-manners delights in subverting expectations, from its indictment of monogamy as unnatural to its ardent defense of lawyering and casual sex. Lily unabashedly extols her job: "Because being a lawyer is great. It's mentally engaging and competitive and fun. Work is really the only time that I feel focused." She reconsiders: "That's not true. One other thing focuses me. But I don't get paid for it." She reconsiders again. "That's not true. I got paid for it once."

Read an excerpt of the book here.
More here from the publisher's website.

Law and Poetry: Some New Collections

From Pleasure Boat Studio, two new collections of poetry:

James Clarke's The Juried Heart ($17 U.S.; $20 Can.). Judge Clarke is retired from the bench of the Superior Court of Ontario. 

Lawyer Poets and That World We Call Law (James R. Elkins, ed.) ($22.50 U.S.).

The Lawyer/Novelist

Some lawyers turn to writing fiction to express themselves in a form different from the one they use in every day life (no snark, please, we're serious). The National Law Journal profiles a number of them, including Allan Topol, Douglas Wood, and Scott Turow, in this interesting article (registration required, free).

Mr. Turow points out that writing fiction is difficult, and requires work. He notes that some colleagues have mentioned that they wish they had followed in his footsteps. He has reminded them that writing takes training and perseverance (and, we would add, talent). Not everyone can create the kind of world he has in his wonderful novels Presumed Innocent and Reversible Errors, or the view of law school he gave us in One-L. Even among lawyer-novelists, those like Mr. Turow are rarities.

A Review of "The Hanging Judge"

Tigran Eldred, New England Law School, has published Fact and Fiction: The Hanging Judge by Michael Ponsor at 48 New England Law Review on Remand 61 (2014). Here is the abstract.

This essay reviews the debut novel by senior federal judge Michael Ponsor, a tale of the first death penalty case to occur in Massachusetts in more than 50 years.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.