The Legal Studies Forum

Must judges be trained as lawyers in order to be effective in office, or can nonlawyers serve equally well? This question has long provoked controversy among lawyers, judges, legislators, and the public. In her empirical study of the place of the nonlawyer judge in the American legal system, Doris Marie Provine concludes that, despite the opposition of the legal profession to nonlawyer judges, they are as competent as lawyers in carrying out judicial duties in courts of limited jurisdiction. Provine presents a persuasive argument that the case against nonlawyer judges has been weighted in favor of the professional interests of lawyers, not public concerns. Her examination reveals as much about the presuppositions of legal professionals as it does about the competency of nonlawyer judges to old judicial office. To substantiate her claims, Provine has conducted the most comprehensive survey of nonlawyer and lawyer judges yet undertaken, augmenting this material with court observations and extensive interviews of judges. She integrates the results of this survey into the historical context of the lay versus lawyer judge debate, showing how the legally trained judge came to predominate in the American judicial system and analyzing in detail the campaign both in and out of the courts to make legal training a prerequisite for being a judge. Ultimately, Provine suggests, Americans are too committed to the significance of credentials and to the legal profession's vision of the judicial process to respond very favorably to nonlawyer judges, however well they might perform. Judging Credentials will force lawyers, judges, scholars, and the public to reconsider the role nonlawyer judges play in the American judicial system. Provine's provocative views and exhaustive research adds new dimensions to our understanding of the ethics of professionalism and its consequences.

This book is an inaugural integration of Contemporary Cultural Studies and Critical Legal Studies that sets the question of "justice" at the fore of postmodern critical theory. Opening with introductory-level discussions of key theoretical models in postmodern thought, the collection culminates in a series of radical critiques of existing modes of cultural and legal theory. Contributors to this volume include David S. Caudill, Marie Ashe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Nancy Fraser, Costas Douzinas and Ronnie Warrington, Drucilla Cornell, Eugene D. Genovese, Peter Goodrich, Teresa L. Ebert, and Jerry D. Leonard.

Since the Louis Auchincloss collections of the 1950s and 1960s, there have been few collections of legal short fiction written by a practicing American lawyer outside the genres of crime and legal thriller fiction. Here is a new collection by Lowell B. Komie of Chicago, published to celebrate his fiftieth year in the practice of law. Lowell B. Komie's first collection of short stories, The Judge's Chambers, was published by the American Bar Association in 1983. It was the first collection of fiction published by the ABA in its more than 100-year history. His second collection, The Lawyer's Chambers and Other Stories, published by Swordfish Chicago in 1995, won the Carl Sandburg Award for fiction from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. This new collection of twenty-nine stories, The Legal Fiction of Lowell B. Komie, centered in Chicago, brings together many of the stories in those collections with new stories that have been published since the earlier volumes, the latest having been written in 2004.

In this insightful collection, a broad range of scholars analyzes a core issue for socio-legal studies, what is understood by the 'socio' of the 'socio-legal'. Drawing from legal theory, cultural studies, and social policy, the collection's wide scope of themes and topics provides an important stock-take and analysis of the socio-legal field.

Dramatic Events shows you how to stimulate workshop participants, through a series of exercises and examples, to release their energy, to free their bodies and their voices, to listen, to think, to be creative, to engage in focussed exchanges with other people, to take risks and to watch others and learn.