Legal-opinion

Jim Haggerty's book is just what the doctor ordered for these post Enron, Andersen, Healthsouth days where corporate responsibility has become an oxymoron. As a practicing lawayer and public relations pro, Jim bridges the gap between what companies think they should say when a crisis occurs, what PR firms typically counsel their clients to say and what the law permits. This is MUST reading for anyone working in Corporate America today. And, it's fun reading for the casual reader. It makes for a grerat plane ride companion.

This work is a must-read for any executive with direct responsibility for shaping public perception of their company and any attorney who must navigate a court system that has, like it or not, become increasingly media-driven.

In The Court of Public Opinion features an engaging mix of real-world examples and solid communications strategy. Mr. Haggerty provides a clear and decisive action plan that can be adapted to almost any litigation situation, and offers examples of common mistakes that both attorneys and executives make in the face of media scrutiny. His style is engaging and entertaining, making the book a fun, fast read. Highly recommended!

Haggerty's book is a 'must-read' for any professional concerned about protecting their business' hard-won reputation in the face of high profile litigation. The author's real-life case studies showcase many intriguing cases that were tried in the media prior to being tried in the courts! Through an engaging mix of case studies, analysis and personal stories, Haggerty provides insight into how media coverage is used as a powerful weapon in the litigator's arsenal, and practical advice on how to leverage public relations as part of your litigation strategy.

This book made a remarkable impression on me...Judge Wapner writes in a fun, intelligent way about life's little encounters. I will remember it forever.

Anecdotal voyage through Wapner's career as a judge. Great insight and sense of humor.

I found it similar to a CLE seminar (Getting it Right and Getting it Written) I had taken over ten years ago, except it is written from a Judge's perspective. It describes active voice vs passive voice word usage. Sentence and paragraph structure, etc. Using short words and sentences instead of long ones and gives examples. I has some interesting insights and examples on style, from a Judge's standpoint. The book also gives style advice with respect to one's audience.

This is a top flight book by the foremost analyst of the NY Court of Appeals. It looks at the Court judge by judge, explaining in lucid prose the results of Bonventre's encyclopedic knowledge of the cases, extensive statistical research and his familiarity with its internal workings. He reveals the ways that this Court has been misunderstood by press and public. The book is an objective but deeply critical and disturbing analysis. This Court should be a national leader. But Bonventre reveals the limitations of this powerful court.

Every major opinion of the greates court of america.

An Excellent Resource

now,i dont have time to write about it..........sorry

This book tells a story that is increasingly touching and powerful:a group of friends decide to explore a cave, but when everything goes wrong, they are forced to create a new law inside the place in order to survive.By doing so, they forget the crowd of people outside who are trying to save them, and in this opressive and dark place, they will have to do something terrible. Lon Fuller sets a tense and hair-raising climate, in which the characters will have to play a deadly game in order to choose the one who is going to be killed, because this is the only way they may scape, by eating someone, because the food ran out. Although this book is very interesting, I must say that it is also VERY frightening, and the experience that you will have here will be very similar to the one that those kids from The Blair Witch Project had, the sensation of loss.I study law, and my teacher told to the class that we should all read it, because it also brings a lot of informations about how the justice works, but what will always be reminded by anyone who read this book is the fear that Lon Fuller develops.Lon Fuller isn't Stephen King, but, boy, here he writes something that is poweful and thrilling...

On a very superficial reading of the book, I guess it is possible to classify it as a powerful and frightening thriller. However this is certainly not the purpose of the book. "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers" is a powerful inquiry into the nature of law. These nine new opinions added by Peter Suber compose a rich increment to the original book, keeping the original work of Lon Fuller up to date with the contemporary debates in the philosophy of law.

I found Professor van Geel's book to be quite informative. It definitely helped in understanding how a justice of the Supreme Court would come to a conclusion in a case.

Professor Tyler of U.C. Berkeley has written a lucid and useful treatise that explores one aspectof why people obey the law: their perceptions of the procedural and substantive justice of thelegal system. As this issue is multifaceted, Tyler examines various aspects of a wide variety of perceptions and opinions within his sample. The data he presents are extremely valuable in explaining, not why people break the law, but the equally important (or more important) question of why they usually do not. His conclusions emphasize the importance of public perceptions of substantive and especially procedural justice and how people's interactions with courts and the police shape those beliefs. Certainly, Tyler has not explained "why people obey the law," as that would be a gargantuan task (although the book is not small). Rather, he explicates one extremely important aspect of why people obey the law, and for that Tyler has made a valuable contribution to students of the law, politics, and psychology. This book will be a classic in the law and society movement, if it has not already become one.

The sentence-level writing advice in this book is sound, but there could be more of it. The formatting advice is adequate, though I'd like to see more on how to write a true, up-front summary. And the "fundamental guidelines" chapter offers practical and useful information about the world of appellate judging for novice judges and law clerks.

That gets you to page 64. Pages 65 to 150 (the rest of the book, excluding appendices and index) is devoted to citation. This section duplicates the Bluebook and the ALWD Citation Manual--unnecessarily--and changes a lot of basic citation rules. Plus, there are 45 pages of suggested abbreviations. Are abbreviations a big problem in judicial writing? Given the coverage in this book, you might think so, but the book would have been better without a citation guide and with more organizational and style advice.

A linguistic perspective on legal language is a valuable contribution to the study of language and the law. Mr. Solan, with degrees in linguistics and law, is the right author to tackle the subject. And the book has its strong aspects, such as when Solan discusses the details of real cases and shows how judges interpreted language inconsistently, or badly, or in the only way they could. Plus, his insights into the nonlinguistic forces that act on judges are useful.

But the book could have used a strong edit. There are too many convoluted sentences; I found myself re-reading for comprehension too often. I found a bit too much abstraction, too. And the constant foreshadowing in the early chapters ("as I'll discuss in chapter 5 . . .") became very annoying.

If the essence of great nonfiction is making complex material understandable, then this book is average.