LER No. 44 - A Legal Ethics Summer Reading List (05.27.24)
The Legal Ethics Roundup - your Monday morning tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics with University of Houston law professor Renee Knake Jefferson
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Today is Memorial Day. This federal holiday was established in 1868 to remember and pay tribute to those who lost their lives in service to the United States and their families. President Joe Biden issued a proclamation in honor of the holiday:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Memorial Day, May 27, 2024, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11:00 a.m. of that day as a time when people might unite in prayer and reflection. I urge the press, radio, television, and all other information media to cooperate in this observance. I further ask all Americans to observe the National Moment of Remembrance beginning at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day.
If you missed the officially designated times for reflection, perhaps you might take a moment now.
Summer Reading
This week I’m mixing things up here at the Roundup. Although the first day of summer does not officially arrive until June 20, the long holiday weekend always inspires me to craft my summer reading list.
So, I thought I’d share some recently published books related to legal ethics that you might want to add to your own summer reading list. (For even more suggestions, revisit LER No. 20 - A Holiday Gift Guide, which includes several books published last year.) Keep reading to the end for a few non-law recommendations too.
Click on the titles below to purchase. Doing so contributes to this reader-supported website, because the Legal Ethics Roundup earns a small commission at no cost to you. (You’ll be taken to a new page listing the books with direct links to buy them on Amazon. Thanks in advance if you buy books this way, but I understand if you choose to support your local bookstore instead!)
If a legal ethics summer reading list isn’t for you, don’t worry. The Roundup in its regular form will be delivered to your inbox next Monday.
Books with Legal Ethics Ideas and Themes
All the Campus Lawyers: Litigation, Regulation, and the New Era of Higher Education by Louis H. Guard and Joyce P. Jacobsen. From the publisher:
Not so long ago, colleges and universities had little interaction with the law. In the 1970s, only a few well-heeled universities even employed in-house legal counsel. But now we live in the age of tenure-denial lawsuits, free speech battles, and campus sexual assault investigations. Even athletics rules violations have become a serious legal matter. The pressures of regulation, litigation, and legislation, Louis Guard and Joyce Jacobsen write, have fostered a new era in higher education, and institutions must know how to respond. … As well as informing about the latest legal and regulatory developments affecting higher education, Guard and Jacobsen offer practical guidance to those in positions of campus authority. There has never been a more crucial time for college and university boards, presidents, inside and outside counsel, and other higher education leaders to know the law and prepare for legal challenges.
(As one of eight trustees serving on the Michigan State University Board, this book is fascinating to me both for what we can learn as lawyers and legal ethicists, but also as those who care about the future of higher education. It’s at the top of my summer must-read list.)
Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade. From the publisher:
American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation—the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth—and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It’s endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility. In Attack from Within, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it.
Canceling Lawyers: Case Studies of Accountability, Toleration, and Regret by W. Bradley Wendel. From the publisher:
Lawyers take pride in a professional tradition of representing unpopular clients, understanding it as a contribution to the rule of law and the practice of toleration in a polarized society. This does not mean that lawyers are fully insulated from criticism for the clients they represent. The seemingly intractable debate over accountability for representing nasty clients is in part the result of a deep, structural tension between the institutions and procedures of the legal system, and the underlying issues and controversies about which people disagree. We also care about the attitudes and motives of lawyers, which play an important role in evaluating the actions of others. Much of the frustration experienced by lawyers who are criticized for representing unpopular clients arises from what lawyers see as the public's inability to understand the rule of law and the function of the legal system in resolving conflicts over rights and justice. Using a series of case studies, this book explores the possibility that both lawyers and their critics are right.
Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases edited on by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. From the publisher:
On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.
Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society by Daniel Chandler. From the publisher:
Taking Rawls’s humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a powerful case for a new progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet. This is a book brimming with hope and possibility—a galvanizing alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. Free and Equal has the potential to offer a touchstone for a modern, egalitarian liberalism for many years to come, cementing Rawls’s place in political discourse, and firmly establishing Chandler as a vital new voice for our time.
Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis by Renee Knake Jefferson. A bit of shameless self-promotion, I confess. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Colin Levy had to say:
On such a critical topic and such a complex one, you will find no better book to help guide you, inspire you, and inform you than this one. It is not just thoroughly researched, but empathetic and thoughtful. It is also accessible and makes for a remarkable read. I cannot recommend it highly enough whether you are a lawyer, legal professional, court professional, judge, or just one interested in ensuring that justice is accessible to all and not just a few. A masterful work!
(And thank you, Colin!)
Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession by Ray Brescia. From the publisher:
The American legal profession faces significant challenges: the changing nature of work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic; calls for greater racial and gender justice; threats to democracy; the inaccessibility of legal services for the majority of Americans; the risk of obsolescence owing to the emergence of new technologies; and the disaffection many lawyers feel toward their work. Ambitious in its scope yet straightforward in its approach, Lawyer Nation seeks to address these crises by offering a path forward for the legal profession.
Leading Works in Legal Ethics, edited by Julian Webb. Russ Pearce and I contributed a chapter to this collection, “Not the End of Lawyers, But a Beginning—The Place of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Legal Ethics,” reviewing works by Richard Susskind. From the publisher:
This volume reviews and takes stock of legal ethics, at a time when the legal profession globally is experiencing considerable change and challenges, through a re-evaluation of writings that are in some way foundational to the field. Legal ethics, understood here as the study of the ethics and professional regulation of lawyers, has emerged as a novel and important field of study over the last 50 years. It is also one that displays considerable diversity in its scholarship, with distinctive philosophical and interdisciplinary approaches emerging over the years to underpin and supplement the doctrinal ‘law on lawyering’.
Making Climate Lawyers: Climate Change in American Law Schools, 1985-2020 by Kimberly K. Smith. From the publisher:
Why did it take so long for American law schools to start teaching about climate change? Although most environmental law professors were aware of climate change by 1990, it took nearly fifteen years for them to incorporate the topic into their curriculum. In her innovative new work, Kimberly K. Smith explores how American environmental law professors have addressed climate change, identifying the barriers they faced, how they overcame them, and how they created “climate law” as a domain of legal specialization.
One Way Back: A Memoir by Christine Blasey Ford. From the publisher:
On September 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee which was considering the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. She described an alleged sexual assault by the Supreme Court nominee that took place at a high school party in the 1980s. Her words and courage on that day provided some of the most credible and unforgettable testimony our country has ever witnessed. … Ford’s experience shows that when one person steps forward to speak truth to power, she adds to a collective whole, causing "a ripple that might one day become a wave.”
Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism by Stephen Breyer. From the publisher:
The relatively new judicial philosophy of textualism dominates the Supreme Court. Textualists claim that the right way to interpret the Constitution and statutes is to read the text carefully and examine the language as it was understood at the time the documents were written. This, however, is not Justice Breyer’s philosophy nor has it been the traditional way to interpret the Constitution since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall. Justice Breyer recalls Marshall’s exhortation that the Constitution must be a workable set of principles to be interpreted by subsequent generations. Most important in interpreting law, says Breyer, is to understand the purposes of statutes as well as the consequences of deciding a case one way or another. He illustrates these principles by examining some of the most important cases in the nation’s history, among them the Dobbs and Bruen decisions from 2022 that he argues were wrongly decided and have led to harmful results.
Renegade by Nancy Allen. From the publisher:
Assistant DA Kate Stone has just suffered the biggest loss of her career. She’d worked so hard to prosecute a serial assaulter of women, and it was a case she should have won. But a corrupt judge allowed Max James to walk free. When he confronts her outside the courthouse, she punches James, and he goes down hard. After the footage is plastered across every TV screen, Kate’s boss demands that she either attend anger management meetings or give up the job she lives for. Begrudgingly, Kate attends her first meeting. Inside is a group of people all failed by the justice system. Their mission: to do everything in their power to help right wrongs, even if outside the law. Unsure who to trust among this unlikely team of renegades, Kate begins to dig into Max James’s secret life and her explosive discoveries will lead to a stunning new twist in the case. And turn her into the prime suspect.
The Thriving Lawyer: A Multidimensional Model of Well-Being for a Sustainable Legal Profession by Traci Cipriano. From the publisher:
The Thriving Lawyer is based on an innovative model, grounded in science. This book serves as a resource for promoting well-being and culture-change in the legal community by educating about pertinent issues impacting lawyers, and how to address them. It is a roadmap, highlighting the many over-arching and inter-connected aspects of well-being, and enabling readers to identify and target the issues most relevant to their unique situations.
The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann. From the publisher:
In the long span of American history, Donald Trump is the first former president to face criminal indictment. He is the subject of a series of explosive charges across four cases: the January 6 case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith; the election interference case in Georgia; the classified documents case also brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith; and the "hush money" case in New York. … A necessary handbook for anyone following the trials in 2024, The Trump Indictments will endure as an indispensable record of a democracy at the crossroads.
The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning by A.J. Jacobs. From the publisher:
In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts— feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations. … Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As politicians and Supreme Court Justices wage a high-stakes battle over how literally we should interpret the Constitution, A.J. Jacobs provides an entertaining yet illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.
What’s Currently Stacked by my Bed or Packed in my Suitcase
Looking for something that isn’t related to legal ethics? Here are the non-law books currently stacked on my nightstand or packed in my suitcase for summer reading. I’ve made it through at least the first chapter in all of them already and I can say each is beach-worthy in its own way.
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid. Her debut novel Such a Fun Age was my favorite read during summer 2020. I couldn’t put it down. I’m two chapters into this one and it is similarly a page-turner. From the publisher:
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue. A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon. This book, in many ways, bravely tells my own story. From the publisher:
Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and―most of the time―a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood. Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon. My college friend Lenore Knight Johnson, a sociology professor, gave me this for my birthday. It’s a thought-provoking, dense read, which is why it is still on my nightstand even though my birthday was over six months ago. I’m making my way through it slowly. From the publisher:
How did the female body drive 200 million years of human evolution? • Why do women live longer than men? • Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s? • Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? • Is sexism useful for evolution? • And why, seriously why, do women have to sweat through our sheets every night when we hit menopause? These questions are producing some truly exciting science – and in Eve, with boundless curiosity and sharp wit, Cat Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. … Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it’s an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long.
The Future by Naomi Alderman. After hearing the author interviewed by Ari Shapiro on NPR, I picked this book up. Here’s the excerpt Ari asked her to read during the interview that drew me in:
Nothing can be permanently settled or solved. No state is perfect. No utopia exists but that it leaves someone out. All we can be is alert, like Fox to the changing winds - to ask ourselves in each new situation, what would we hate anyone to do to us, and who have we forgotten? - to exist in motion, falling forward, trying to bend our own histories toward what is fair and kind, what is sensible and good. We will keep failing, but final success was never the point.
I'm nearly done reading the book, and since I don’t want it to end I’ve set it aside for now. (Am I the only one who lets a book go unfinished to draw out the pleasure of reading it?) From the publisher:
By turns thrilling, hilarious, tender, and always piercingly brilliant, The Future unfolds at a breakneck speed, highlighting how power corrupts the few who have it and what it means to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here.
It. Goes. So. Fast. The Year of No Do-Overs by Mary Louise Kelly. This one hits especially close to home. I can only read it in small bits before I tear up. If you’ve got kids heading to college, keep tissues nearby. From the publisher:
The time for do-overs is over. Ever since she became a parent, Mary Louise Kelly has said “next year.” Next year will be the year she makes it to her son James’s soccer games (which are on weekdays at 4 p.m., right when she is on the air on NPR’s All Things Considered, talking to millions of listeners). Drive carpool for her son Alexander? Not if she wants to do that story about Ukraine and interview the secretary of state. Like millions of parents who wrestle with raising children while pursuing a career, she has never been cavalier about these decisions. The bargain she has always made with herself is this: this time I’ll get on the plane, and next year I’ll find a way to be there for the mom stuff. Well, James and Alexander are now seventeen and fifteen, and a realization has overtaken Mary Louise: her older son will be leaving soon for college. There used to be years to make good on her promises; now, there are months, weeks, minutes. … This chronicle of her eldest child’s final year at home, of losing her father, as well as other curve balls thrown at her, is not a definitive answer―not for herself and certainly not for any other parent. But her questions, her issues, will resonate with every parent. And, yes, especially with mothers, who are judged more harshly by society and, more important, judge themselves more harshly. What would she do if she had to decide all over again?
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. My kids gave me this for Mother’s Day and it’s intriguing so far, narrated in part from the perspective of an octopus living in an aquarium. If you liked My Octopus Teacher, this is a book for you. From the publisher:
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late. Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs. Several years ago we stayed at La Colombe d’Or in St. Paul de Vence, where James Baldwin held salons while living in France, and that experience made me want to learn more about the people in his life who influenced his writing. Where better to start than with his mother? From the publisher:
Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning―from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced. These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families’ safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers. These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.
What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. I gave my husband this book for Christmas in part because I wanted to read it myself. He had an owl regularly visit him in the backyard and ever since we’ve wanted to learn more about these amazing birds. From the publisher:
With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active at night. Though human fascination with owls goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand the complex nature of these extraordinary birds. In What an Owl Knows, Jennifer Ackerman joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations; the result is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of the world’s most enigmatic group of birds.
Thank you for indulging me in a different sort of Roundup as summer approaches. I’ll be back next week with the usual whirlwind of ethics news, reforms, historical moments, current events, trivia, job opportunities, and whatever else fills my mind.
Keep in Touch
News tips? Announcements? Events? A job to post? Reading recommendations? Email legalethics@substack.com - but be sure to subscribe first, otherwise the email won’t be delivered.
Teaching Professional Responsibility or Legal Ethics? Check out the companion blog for my casebook Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach for teaching ideas and other resources.
Want me to speak about my new book Law Democratized with your group or organization? Email my publicist Sydney Garcia at sydney.garcia@nyu.edu
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