Trial Magazine

Dropping the Digital Anchor: Preparing and Presenting Your Case with Technology

By Jonathan H. Lomurro
AAJ Press
www.justice.org/digitalanchor
408 pp.; $144.99

Combining years of courtroom experience with tech know-how, trial lawyer Jonathan Lomurro offers a road map on how to use technology to successfully prep, try, and settle cases. The book focuses on dropping “digital anchors”—graphics, animations, pictures, and models—to present evidence and tell client stories in a visually powerful way. From electronically stored information to electronic medical records, Lomurro describes how to acquire, sift through, and arrange technological material in a world that “has become a hoarder of digital data.” He offers advice to both tech novices and tech-savvy trial lawyers looking for new and innovative ways to connect with jurors.

Privacy at the Margins

By Scott Skinner-Thompson
Cambridge University Press
www.cambridge.org
234 pp.; $32.99

University of Colorado law professor Scott Skinner-Thompson—a scholar of constitutional, civil rights, and privacy law—sheds light on the importance of privacy for members of marginalized communities, including minorities, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and others. The book delves into why privacy has not been a judicial or legislative priority despite its importance to society and ways the law can do better for those in these “precarious positions.” Skinner-Thompson explores privacy as it is commonly understood, as well as informational privacy and technological advances that have brought privacy issues to the forefront. His hope is that “privacy can be transformed from a liberal affectation to a legal tool of liberation from oppression.”

An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles

By Scott L. Cummings
Oxford University Press
https://global.oup.com
688 pp.; $44.95

Covering the plight of low-wage workers in Los Angeles—from garment workers to truck drivers—University of California Los Angeles law professor Scott Cummings explores how lawyers “dedicated to the ideal of equality” joined with activists to improve workplace conditions and workers’ economic security over two decades. Presenting Los Angeles as a test case, Cummings discusses what local labor policymaking can accomplish and the suitability and scalability of local reform. He also evaluates whether the lawyers’ efforts enabled those workers to achieve “a more equal place at the political bargaining table.”

Liars: Falsehoods and Free Speech in an Age of Deception

By Cass R. Sunstein
Oxford University Press
https://global.oup.com
192 pp.; $22.95

Legal scholar Cass Sunstein’s latest book laments that false statements are more prevalent today than ever and more damaging given how quickly technology enables them to spread. He explores the U.S. Supreme Court’s hesitancy to restrict false speech despite finding it of “‘low First Amendment value’” and argues that censorship and punishment are not the answer—it is better to correct the lies and falsehoods. But Sunstein says governments should be permitted to regulate “genuinely harmful” lies and falsehoods—and if “actual lies” are involved, then a “weaker demonstration of harm” should be required than when falsity is “unintentional.”

The Journey to Separate but Equal: Madame Decuir’s Quest for Racial Justice in the Reconstruction Era

By Jack M. Beermann
University Press of Kansas
https://kansaspress.ku.edu
256 pp.; $34.95

Almost 20 years before the U.S. Supreme Court formally embraced the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, it laid the groundwork for segregation in Hall v. DeCuir. In that case, Madame Josephine DeCuir, a Black woman who was barred from a “white only” riverboat cabin, sought to enforce a Louisiana state law providing that “all persons shall enjoy equal rights and privileges upon any conveyance of a public character.” Boston University law professor Jack Beermann takes an in-depth look at the Court’s decision, as well as the political and legal struggles that people of color faced in the post-Civil War years.