Law School Is Starting Already in the U.S. ...

Many American students are beginning their first year of law school by now. The University of Virginia asked Virginia Solicitor General Toby Heytens, a professor there, to give a short (one hour) overview of the U.S. legal system and a description of how a typical case goes through the legal system. Unfortunately you can't see the slides illustrating the talk, but you can put on the subtitles on YouTube to help you follow along.
A related video presents a description of five first-year law school courses (tort, contract, criminal law, civil procedure and legal writing). 58 min., no transcript, but subtitles available.

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

The U.S. Senate is holding hearings before giving their "advice and consent" to President Trump's pick to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The hearings this time are especially acrimonious. To put them in historical perspective, The New York Times has a video presentation, How Supreme Court Confirmations Became Partisan Spectacles. 4 min 44 sec, no transcript but you can turn on subtitles.

Which Court?

A very well-done animated video which explains jurisdiction (which court — state or federal?) in the U.S. can be found here. 5 min 25 sec

Presidential Power in the U.S.

NPR’s All Things Considered of May 16 look at the legal questions around President Trump’s use of executive power and its challenges in the courts can be found here. Various law professors give their views on the issue. 3 min 47 sec, transcript available.

State Judicial Elections in the U.S.

In the U.S. state, but not federal, judges are often elected although these elections were not usually considered « political ». This is changing as NPR’s All Things Considered report reveals. 4 min 40 sec, transcript available.

The comedian John Oliver on the U.S. Criminal Justice System

John Oliver’s satirical comedy program, Last Week Tonight, has just posted a program on YouTube about obstacles that former offenders face when they leave prison. 25 min, no transcript. Both funny and serious. In this program, Oliver mentions four other programs of his about criminal justice - mandatory minimum sentences, bail, public defenders, and municipal violations .
He also has a program about elected judges. While it's comedy (and not always easy to understand for non-Americans) it is sadly not fiction.

An Online Course on American Law

Coursera has a free online course entitled American Law which began on February 15 - it’s not too late to sign up. Subjects covered include torts, contracts, property, constitutional law, criminal law and civil procedure. It consists of a series of short video clips with closed caption subtitles than can be activated.

U.S. Supreme Court made simple

C-Span has a video of the journalist Linda Greenhouse talking about her book The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction at the National Book Festival in Washington last September. She gives a very good introduction to the institution in its historical context followed, in the question and answer period, with her thoughts about where the Court is headed. 45 min, no transcript

American Elections

Americans voted last week to elect their President, some Governors, one-third of Senators and all the Members of the House of Representatives but in many states they also voted for judges. NPR's Morning Edition of November 6 had a story about judicial elections in Florida. 3 min 56 sec, transcript available. The NPR piece doesn't give the outcome of those elections, but you can read more on Slate.
Elections in many states also included referendums. California voters were asked about abolishing the death penalty and modifying the state's three-strikes law. You can find what those voters decided by listening to this Morning Edition program. 3 min 51 sec, transcript available.

Conversation with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Elena Kagan, the newest and youngest associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, answered questions this week at the University of Richmond Law School about oral arguments, how the Court decides cases, the role of clerks, how she writes opinions, the blogs she reads and much more. Very interesting.
58 min, no transcript

Webinar on the American Constitution

For those interested in the American Constitution, the American Constitutional Society, a liberal think tank, has published a downloadable online book, Keeping Faith with the Constitution, and this fall has added a "webinar"(web seminar) - 15 min. lectures (plus 15 min. of questions) by 9 scholars. You can download the sound file and both the relevant chapter of the book and a "primer" or outline of the lecture. The 9 chapters of the book are :

Chapter 1 The Constitution's Vision and Values
Chapter 2 Judicial Interpretation of the Constitution
Chapter 3 Equality
Chapter 4 Promoting the General Welfare
Chapter 5 Separation of Powers
Chapter 6 Democracy
Chapter 7 Criminal Justice
Chapter 8 Liberty
Chapter 9 Progress and Possibilities

Hot Coffee

Hot Coffee, a documentary about the civil justice system, was featured on Democracy Now! of Jan. 25, 2011. The title of the film refers to the case of Stella Liebeck who sued McDonald's for injuries she received from scalding coffee. In the first segment of the news program, Ms Liebeck's daughter and son-in-law are interviewed. In another segment,  a former judge on the Mississippi supreme court who was attacked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because he wasn't "corporate" enough, is seen. Mandatory arbitration clauses are examined. Finally, the  effects of limits (or "caps") on medical malpractice awards is presented through the story of a family affected by them.
The site for the documentary is here. A DVD will be on sale in the U.S. from Nov. 1.
The whole presentation of the documentary is ± 45 min. downloadable and streaming audio and video, transcript available.

Perp walks

NPR's All Things Considered of July 7, 2011 has a news item entitled "Perp Walk: The History Of Parading Criminal Suspects". The most famous recent one was Dominique Strauss-Kahn's perp walk, but the tradition is much older. Perp is American slang for perpetrator.
4 min 11 sec, transcript available

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

For those following the Strauss-Kahn case, the latest news is discussed on PBS's Newshour with a law professor and former prosecutor, Laurie Levenson, and a journalist.
8 min, video or .mp3, transcript available

Guantanamo

President Barack Obama issued an executive order Monday, reversing a two-year ban on military trials for suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. PBS's Newshour has this report.
5 min 39 sec. video or .mp3, transcript available

Same-sex marriage in California

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard oral arguments Monday in a case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, involving California’s ban against same-sex marriage. In the November 2008 elections, California voters approved Proposition 8, an amendment to California’s Constitution that limits marriage to a man and a woman. The Circuit Court is faced with two questions: one on the merits of the case (whether California's Proposition 8 which limits marriage to heterosexual couples violates the Constitution) and the second procedural (who has legal standing to appeal the decision of the lower court).
PBS's Newshour presents a good introduction to the question with commentary and video extracts from the courtroom. The video can be found here. There is also an .mp3 version of the story.
5 min 48 sec, transcript available.
The video of full arguments before the 9th Circuit on C-Span is here.
2 hr. 32 min., no transcript

On Monday, NPR's All Things Considered had two separate stories about the case here (3 min 28 sec) and here (starts at 1:10 min on this link  - 3 min 10 sec) transcripts available soon

For help in following the story, Slate, an online magazine, has two commentaries.  Standing on Its Head by law professor Walter Dellinger examines the procedural angle, and Gay Marriage Has a Good Day in Court by Emily Bazelon discusses the constitutional question.

Judges and Judging in the U.S.

The Goldfarb Center at Colby College in conjunction with the State-Federal Judicial Council for Maine and the Maine Council on Social Studies has produced a video which contains interviews with many state and federal judges and a detailed (29 page) study guide. The judges talk about how they became interested in the law ("all judges had lives before they became judges..."), their experiences in law school and in their first jobs as lawyers, why they decided to become judges, how they were chosen (election or appointment), examples of prejudice against women. The video goes on to describe the working of the judiciary (state and federal) at the trial and appellate levels.
54 min. no transcript, quicktime
Interesting and useful, but it's best not to watch too closely or you will probably be distracted by the lack of syncronization of lips and sound.

What U.S. Supreme Court Justices do when they retire

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was interviewed on PBS's program Newshour on Oct. 13 concerning her views about electing judges. The interview starts out, however, with a description of a project the Justice is behind - a new web site with games to teach middle school children the basics of civics, a subject no longer part of the curriculum in many American schools. Although the site doesn't have audio or video, except for a musical background, it's worth a visit by anyone who wants to learn more about the U.S. legal system. 10 min, video or .mp3, transcript available.

American Juries

The former governor of the state of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was convicted of only one count (out of 24) in the criminal case concerning his attempt to "sell" the Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama. The jury deliberated for two weeks before reporting that they were deadlocked and couldn't reach unanimity on the other 23 counts. The prosecution is planning on re-trying the governor on the other charges. You can find out more about the case and hear jury consultant Karen Fleming-Ginn explain her job here on Talk of the Nation. 16 min 33 sec, transcript available.

"How to" videos from the 9th Circuit

 There is now an official YouTube Channel for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The first videos are "A Court for All Seasons" - about the courthouse (20 min.); "Perfecting Your Appeal - A Civil Case"(27 min.)  and "Perfecting Your Appeal - A Criminal Case"(27 min). The two "how to" videos are mostly identical, obviously because much of the same advice applies in both civil and criminal appeals. The Ninth Circuit includes Hollywood, and it shows.