Saturday, January 10, 2015

Weekend Roundup

  • From the New York Review of Books: "'Selma' v. History." "By distorting an essential truth about the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King over the Voting Rights Act of 1965," writes Elizabeth Drew, "Selma has opened a very large and overdue debate over whether and how much truth the movie industry owes to the public."  
  • A memorial service for Gordon Bakken will be held on January 24 in the Ruby Gerontology Center on the CSU-Fullerton campus.  Hat tip.
  • Here's news on a former LHB Guest Blogger: "The Canadian American Bar Association announced today that the John D. Lawson Award will be awarded to Bernard Hibbitts, Publisher and Editor in Chief of JURIST, the award-winning law student-powered legal news service that he created at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law where he has served as a Professor of Law since 1996. The Award recognizes Canadians who have excelled in the practice of law and/or made an outstanding contribution to the law or legal scholarship in the United States."  More.
  • The latest issue of the newsletter of the Historical Society of the DC Circuit is here.   It includes word of a session, "Judging, Then and Now" to be held in the Ceremonial Courtroom of the Prettyman Court House on Wednesday, February 25.  It will be "a dialogue featuring Senior Judge Paul Friedman, who joined the U.S. District Court in 1994, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the Court in 2013, moderated by Miguel Estrada. The judges will compare their experiences on the bench as they discuss changes in the confirmation process, the makeup of the Court, dockets, training, staffing, technology, and the impact of these and other changes on judging." 
  • This report from Volodymyr Machuskyy, Associate Professor of Theory and History of State and Law at Kyiv National Economic University, identifies as one obstacle confronting the rule of law in Ukraine the diversity of Ukrainian legal culture, which draws upon “the legal cultures of Byzantium, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, the Crimean Khanate, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.”
  • The tables of contents for the two most recent issues of the Journal of Turkish Legal History are here and here.
  • Via Balkinization: The University of Texas Law School will host a symposium on “Popular Sovereignty, Self-determination, and Secession” on January 22-24.  
Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.