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• Happy Anniversary, No Vehicles in the Park

  Posted Friday, March 21, 2008 6:00 PM by Howard Kaplan Comment Here: 1 Comments This year’s Law Day theme is “The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity.” Among the resources included in the planning guide is a classroom lesson called “No Vehicles in the Park.” As it turns out, “No Vehicles” has quite an interesting history – and, in effect, is also celebrating its golden anniversary this year. [Read More]

• Lawyers By Other Names

  Posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007 12:30 AM by Howard Kaplan Comment Here: 1 Comments “Lawyers” practice law, but they also seem to have often found their way into other professions and fields of endeavor—whether through calculation or happenstance. This is even the case in the seemingly unrelated fields of entertainment and the arts. It’s interesting to consider if—and how—their legal background might have affected their other pursuits. How did their legal training influence their creative process, the techniques they used, and the substantive issues they considered? [Read More]

• Celebrating 50 Years of ABA Silver Gavel Awards

  Posted Saturday, July 21, 2007 7:00 AM by Howard Kaplan Comment Here: (Comments Off) This week American Bar Association President Karen J. Mathis is presenting the Association’s 50th annual Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts. In 1958 ABA President Charles S. Rhyne presented the first Silver Gavels “to recognize outstanding contributions to public information and understanding of the roles of law and courts in our society.” In this post, I’m taking a selective look back at 50 years of Silver Gavel Awards, focusing on the category of legal drama from the media of film and television. Taken together, the set of Silver Gavel Award-winning dramas presents quite a fascinating history of popular culture. They can offer us insights into prevailing attitudes towards law and lawyers during the past half-century. Moreover, they also reveal something about the changing video culture through which legal issues have been dramatized since the late 1950s. [Read More]