 First edition | |
| Author | Louis Nizer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Published | 1961 |
| Publisher | Doubleday & Company |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 524 pp. (first edition) |
| OCLC | 636241551 |
My Life in Court is a 1961 memoir by American trial lawyer Louis Nizer documenting his career in law. [1] The work was a best seller when it was first released, lasting for 72 weeks on The New York Times Bestsellers list. [1]
The book is based on a number of court cases that Nizer argued in US courts. The original papers for many of these trials are held by the Columbia Law Library. [2] [3]
All six cases depicted within the book are civil cases, which is unusual for legal fiction and non-fiction because of the greater sensationality of criminal law cases. [4] The book depicts the following cases:
The book was received favorably. Commentary magazine reviewer David T. Bazelon said he did not "understand why it has become a bestseller", but all in all "Properly read, it is an occasion for some real understanding of the trial man. Haphazardly or naively read, it is interesting, instructive, and even exciting." [9] Bazelon challenges praise by Max Lerner that the work is "one of the great legal autobiographies of our time". [9] Kirkus reviews gave less praise, calling the book "direct and orderly" and enjoyable by "Trial lawyers, law students, and the general public". [4]
For the most part, academic and legal reviewers of the autobiography were particularly harsh critics of the book. In The Modern Law Review, British reviewer C.P. Harvey commented "I cannot help wondering what made Messrs. Heinmann think it would be good business to publish this book in [the United Kingdom]." [10] He writes "I pronounce this book to be didactic, long-winded and pretentious" and describes it as an example of "the breadth of the ocean which lies between the English and American legal systems." [9]
In the Osgoode Hall Law Journal , reviewer R. N. Starr described the work as not exactly realistic, and taken to "poetic license". [11] His review is rather skeptical and mixed; he writes: "For my own part I would have preferred it, had Mr. Nizer put his wide experience to other purposes." [11] In the Yale Law Review Joseph W. Bishop lambasts the piece as demonstrating the decline of legal practice, jury tried cases, and the flaws of the legal profession. [6] Nonetheless, he describes the book as anything but "dry and indigestable reading" which is usually the case for accounts of legal cases. [6]
Unlike other academic reviewers, American Bar Association Journal reviewer Alfred Schweppe praised the book as a "must for every lawyer searching for an answer to success in the courtroom" and then describing the style as "Moving with an easy finished prose". [8]
The book has inspired a number of people to become lawyers, including Laurie Levenson [12] and Roy Black. [13] Nizer's subsequent book The Jury Returns follows much the same format and pattern as My Life in Court, attempting to create a similar work and success. [14]
The book was adapted into the 1963 Broadway play A Case of Libel by Henry Denker. [1] The book was also adapted into a television film. [15] Both depict the Reynolds v. Pegler case. [16]
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.
Clarence Earl Gideon was an impoverished American drifter accused in a Florida state court of felony breaking and entering. While in prison, he appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark 1963 decision Gideon v. Wainwright holding that a criminal defendant who cannot afford to hire a lawyer must be provided one at no cost.
John Hart Ely was an American legal scholar. He was a professor of law at Yale Law School from 1968 to 1973, Harvard Law School from 1973 to 1982, Stanford Law School from 1982 to 1996, and at the University of Miami Law School from 1996 until his death. From 1982 until 1987, he was the 9th dean of Stanford Law School.
Reynolds v. Pegler, 223 F.2d 429, was a landmark libel decision in which Quentin Reynolds successfully sued right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler, resulting in a then-record judgment of $175,001.
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Fred Rodell was an American law professor most famous for his critiques of the U.S. legal profession. A professor at Yale Law School for more than forty years, Rodell was described in 1980 as the "bad boy of American legal academia" by Charles Alan Wright.
Quentin James Reynolds was an American journalist and World War II war correspondent. He also played American football for one season in the National Football League (NFL) with the Brooklyn Lions.
Louis Nizer was an American trial lawyer based in New York City. He was the senior partner of the law firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. In addition to his legal work, Louis Nizer was an author, artist, lecturer, and advisor.
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Emily Bazelon is an American journalist. She is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a senior research fellow at Yale Law School, and co-host of the Slate podcast Political Gabfest. She is a former senior editor of Slate. Her work as a writer focuses on law, women, and family issues. She has written two national bestsellers published by Penguin Random House: Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy (2013) and Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (2019). Charged won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Current Interest category, and the 2020 Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. It was also the runner up for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia University and the Nieman Foundation, and a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from the New York Public Library.
Trial film is a subgenre of the legal/courtroom drama that encompasses films that are centered on a civil or criminal trial, typically a trial by jury.
Stephen Yagman is an American federal civil rights lawyer, who also handles criminal defense and habeas corpus matters. He has a reputation for being an exceptionally zealous advocate in cases regarding allegations of police brutality. He has argued hundreds of federal civil rights cases before a jury, and has been involved in over a hundred and fifty federal appeals and certiorari petitions before the United States Supreme Court.
Barbara Allen Babcock was the Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, at Stanford Law School. She was an expert in criminal and civil procedure and was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty from 1972 until her death.
Deborah Lynn Rhode was an American jurist. She was the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the nation's most frequently cited scholar in legal ethics. From her early days at Yale Law School, her work revolved around questions of injustice in the practice of law and the challenges of identifying and redressing it. Rhode founded and led several research centers at Stanford devoted to these issues, including its Center on the Legal Profession, Center on Ethics and Program in Law and Social Entrepreneurship; she also led the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford. She coined the term "The 'No-Problem' Problem".
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Lara Bazelon is an American academic and journalist. She is a law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law where she holds the Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy and directs the Criminal & Juvenile and Racial Justice Clinics. She is the former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles. Her clinical work as a law professor focuses on the exoneration of the wrongfully convicted.