Discover books and stories that explore the law in new and surprising ways through eye-opening conversations with their authors. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction that you seek, Modern Law Library features today’s top legal authors and delves into legal theories, historical events, true crime, and law-inspired storytelling. Join Lee Rawles twice a month as she opens up a new legal publication on Modern Law Library, a Lisagor Award-winning podcast.
In Silicon Valley, a "unicorn" is a private startup with a net worth of $1 billion. As the term suggests, these were once incredibly rare creatures. Most startups would go public within 4-7 years, long before they had a $1 billion valuation. But two key pieces of legislation made the rare into the rampaging, starting in 1996. In her new book, Untamed Unicorns: Why Startup Finance is Broken and How…
For this year's summer reading recommendations, host Lee Rawles shares three recommended reads, three books on her to-be-read pile, and three TV shows she's enjoyed. The recommended reads are all fiction this time around, ranging from a spooky contemporary, to a historical novel about the Black Death, to a frothy sweet romance novel. Her to-be-read pile includes a Danish book about time loops, a…
In January 1800, Elma Sands's dead body was found in a New York City well. The case has captivated people ever since, not least because in the resulting trial, defendant Levi Weeks was represented by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and a future Supreme Court justice. The Girl from Greenwich Street: A Novel of Hamilton, Burr and America's First Murder Trial is a historical fiction novel by Lauren…
Environmental law in the United States can be a double-edged sword. "I think that when people think about environmental law, very frequently what they mean is environmental protection, and what that misses is the other side of the coin, that there is a whole lot of law that is meant to exploit the environment," says law professor Brig Daniels. When Daniels and his writing partner Alejandro Camacho…
When Shaun Ossei-Owusu looked around at his classmates at UC Berkeley School of Law, there were many upper middle class children of lawyers who were coming straight from their undergraduate degrees. There were not many people like him, a child of Ghanaian immigrants who grew up in an impoverished South Bronx community and was now finishing his PhD as a returning student. That background and his…
The Third Amendment to the Constitution forbids the quartering of troops in Americans' houses. It's a reminder of how uneasy the people of the country have been about the domestic deployment of our soldiers. There are robust rules about how the military can be used on American soil, but how did those rules come about? It's a question that National Guard officer Jonathan Bratten hoped to help…
Coming across the right book at the right time can make all the difference, says Sherry Thomas, author of the popular Lady Sherlock series. In her case, picking up a historical romance from the library led to her writing career. "Two years into my career as stay-at-home mom, I grabbed a historical romance, which I devoured growing up," Thomas tells the Modern Law Library's Lee Rawles. "I grabbed a…
It's time for the first official meeting of the Modern Law Library Book Club, and Lee has invited on her friend (and go-to Nixon expert) Victor Li to talk about his experience reading the 1979 bestseller The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. As both a lawyer and journalist, Victor gives his thoughts on how Woodward and Armstrong were able to pierce the secrecy of the Supreme Court and show the…
Your smartwatch tracks your heart rate and counts your calories. Your Ring camera lets you know when a package has been delivered. The GPS in your car smoothly directs you to a restaurant you've never been to before. We've grown used to getting a technological assist for everything from finding our keys to checking where our children are at curfew. But the consumer electronics which can make our…
For more than a decade, the Modern Law Library has been chatting with authors about their books. But there haven't been many opportunities to talk directly with our listeners, and we want that to change. We are so excited to announce that we are launching a monthly book club series, which will appear in your normal podcast feed. This year, we are going to be diving into The Brethren: Inside the…