Delaware Campus Library Blogs

A few months ago I did a blog post on mobile apps for law students and lawyers. I just attended the CALI conference at Marquette Law School where I saw a good presentation on iPad apps for legal education. They covered a few apps I hadn’t seen before.

2Screens – Use your iPad to make presentations. There is also 2Screens Remote that lets your iPad function as a remote for your presentation.

GoodReader – Read and annotate PDFs on your iPad.

CamScanner – Scan and share documents with your iPad.

ThinkBook – a note taking app.

Evernote – another note taking app. I’d heard of this before but I’ve never tried it. It sounds handy.

Here’s a complete list of all the apps mentioned in the presentation. You can watch the presentation online too.

We’re sometimes asked to recommend books for new students to read before they start law school. I personally would advise you to relax and read something fun while you still can, but we know you’re anxious to get started. We have a list of books for new students on our webpage. It’s a long list so don’t feel you have to read them all. Just pick one!

PrawfsBlawg has a recent post on books for rising 1Ls (or as we usually say at Widener, first years). Besides the books in the initial post there are some great suggestions in the comments.

Hat tip to the Biddle Law Library Facebook page!

The most recent issue of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing includes interviews with eight Supreme Court justices on legal writing. Bryan Garner, editor of Black’s Law Dictionary, interviews Justices Roberts, Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer and Alito talk about the importance of legal writing, their literary influences, brief writing, academic writing and more.

Read the interviews.

More from NPR

The United States Supreme Court does not allow photography during its sessions. Only two known photographers have been able to take photographs of the Court in session. Both did it by hiding their cameras.

The most famous of these photos was taken by Erich Salomon. In 1932 Fortune magazine hired Salomon, a German photographer, to make a photographic tour of America.  To get a photo of the Supreme Court he faked a broken arm and hid the camera in his sling.

Salomon had an interesting career as a photographer. He was a law student, receiving his law degree in 1913. He served in the German army in WWI, was captured and spent four years in a French POW camp. He tried a number of careers before he became a photographer, including running a car and motorcycle hire business where he offered to drive customers around on a motorcycle and give them legal advice at the same time. He eventually went to work for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, a German newspaper, where he started his photography career by hiding a camera in his hat to take photos of a murder trial.

He eventually became famous for his photos of international conferences, specializing in capturing the rich and powerful in unguarded moments, often by hiding his camera or himself. Politicians joked that international conferences couldn’t start until Salomon arrived with his camera.

When the Nazis came to power, Salomon left Germany for the Netherlands, but when the Germans invaded the Netherlands he and his family were sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed in 1944.

For more information on Erich Salomon see:

http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/supreme-court-in-session/

http://www.comesana.com/english/salomon.php

http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/6100

Mary Ann Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1823. Her father, Abraham Doras Shadd was an abolitionist and prominent member of the free black community in Wilmington. The Shadds  lived in Delaware until Mary Ann was 10 years old when her family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania probably because there were better educational opportunities for black children there than in Delaware. Mary Ann returned to Wilmington for a time and taught school in West Chester, Norristown, and New York city.

After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 the Shadd family moved to Canada, where Mary Ann started a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman and a school. She married Thomas F. Cary and had two children. She eventually returned to the United States, and after the Civil War moved to Washington, D.C. where she taught school and wrote for newspapers. She also was an activist for women’s suffrage. In 1883 she graduated from Howard University School of Law becoming the second African American woman to graduate from law school.

Wikipedia

Mary Ann Shadd Cary House in Washington DC

Michigan lumber baron Wellington R. Burt left an unusual will barring all of his children and grandchildren from inheriting his fortune. This year, 21 years after the death of his youngest grandchild his descendants will finally inherit.

This gives several news outlets the opportunity to try to explain the rule against perpetuities. The Daily Mail decides to just blame it all on a curse. I guess that’s easier to explain. I don’t think you can get away with answering “it’s a curse” on a law exam though.

In case you still need more information, here’s a CALI podcast on the rule.

Biggs House, Wilmington

This house at 1310 W. 14th St in Wilmington is today an apartment building near Trolley Square. But in the early 1900s it was the boyhood home of John Biggs Jr. Biggs, born in 1895, was a Wilmington attorney who eventually became chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After his marriage, Biggs moved from the house on 14th St to Wooddale, an estate west of Wilmington.

Editorial board of the 1917-1918 Princeton Tiger. Biggs is center front, Fitzgerald behind him

But perhaps Biggs’ most interesting claim to fame is that he was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Princeton roommate. Biggs and Fitzgerald shared an interest in literature and writing, working on the Princeton literary magazine together. Biggs later wrote several novels and short stories.

Ellerslie, Edgemoor Delaware

In 1927, Fitzgerald was having trouble concentrating on his writing. Biggs convinced him that he should move somewhere quieter and less literary than New York or Hollywood. Somewhere boring. Somewhere like Delaware. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda rented a mansion near Wilmington called Ellerslie. However, Fitzgerald was still distracted from his writing, taking the train to New York for the weekend and throwing raucous house parties at Ellerslie. Zelda took ballet lessons in Philadelphia. They lived in Delaware for two years off and on until they moved to Europe. Ellerslie was eventually torn down and is today the site of the DuPont Edge Moor plant. When Fitzgerald died in 1940, Biggs served as executor of his estate.

Much of this information is from the only biography of Biggs: Seymour I. Toll. A Judge Uncommon: A Life of John Biggs, Jr. Legal Communications, Ltd, 1993.

The Wall Street Journal has a story about Houston lawyer Mark Lanier. He’s playing a small part as himself in a new movie called ‘Puncture‘ that just had its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film is based on a true story of a drug addicted lawyer’s battle against a syringe manufacturer.

I can’t find any information on when the film will be released but sounds like it could be interesting.

Delaware was the last state to admit women to the Bar (except possibly Alaska, but that depends on which source you check). Not until 1923, when the state constitution was amended to permit women to be “officials of the state” could women become lawyers. Sybil Ursula Ward and Evangelyn Barsky were both admitted to the state bar in that year.

Sybil Ursula Ward was  from a family of prominent Delaware lawyers. Once admitted to the bar she worked for her family’s law firm Ward & Gray, which is today Potter Anderson & Corroon. She was also the first woman elected to the Wilmington City Council.

Evangelyn Barsky was the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. Her father was a successful merchant. She practiced law with her brother Victor and in 1935 became assistant city solicitor in Wilmington. She was also active in the Republican Party. Unfortunately she was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.

Sources:

Jacqueline Paradee Mette. “Women in the Delaware Bar” in The Delaware Bar in the Twentieth Century. The Delaware State Bar Association. 1994

Jewish Women in America: An American Historical Encyclopedia. Routledge. 1998

Jewish Women’s Archive, Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Today’s local legal history site is not exactly a tourist attraction. It is currently a bed and breakfast. Faunbrook, in West Chester, was the home of the Darlington family, including Isabel Darlington, the first woman admitted to the Chester County Bar and one of the earliest woman lawyers in Pennsylvania.

Isabel’s father Smedley Darlington was a Congressman and a wealthy man but an economic panic in 1893 cost him a large part of his fortune. Isabel seems to have decided it would be a good idea if she entered a profession as an independent means of support. She started attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, finished the three year course in 18 months, and was admitted to the bar on October 4, 1897.

She went into practice with her brother in law, Thomas Butler, in West Chester, handling estate, property and commercial cases. Probably her most prominent client was Pierre S. du Pont. Ms. Darlington handled the transaction when P.S. du Pont purchased Longwood. She practiced law for many years until her death in 1950.

Much of the information in this post comes from this Philadelphia Inquirer article.

William Chandler, Chancellor of Delaware’s influential Court of Chancery has announced his retirement. He has been on the Court for 22 years. Chandler recently gave the keynote address at a Widener corporate law symposium.

The News Journal, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomburg have more information.

Located at Independence Mall in Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center is a museum dedicated to the US Constitution. It has an interesting collection of interactive exhibits about the Constitution, a theatrical performance called “Freedom Rising,” and sculptures of all of the signers of the Constitution, including the delegates from Delaware.

The Constitution Center also presents changing exhibits. The current exhibit is “Spies, Traitor, Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America.”

ABA Journal has announced the winners of their 3rd annual Peeps in Law diorama contest. Top prize went to “Don’t Touch My Peeps, Man” a diorama featuring traveling Peeps and the TSA.  Interestingly, two of the finalists in the Washington Post “Peeps Show” contest also featured the TSA.

Photo by wolfrage

The Pulitzer Prize winners for 2011 have been announced. A number of the winners covered law related subjects.

Investigative Reporting – Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for an investigation of the Florida property insurance system.

Local Reporting – Frank Main, Mark Konkol and John J. Kim of the Chicago Sun-Times for a story on crime and justice in Chicago

National Reporting – Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica for an investigation of Wall Street practices that led to the financial meltdown.

International Reporting – Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of The New York Times for a series on the corrupt justice system in Russia.

Editorial Writing – Joseph Rago of The Wall Street Journal for a series of articles critical of the new federal health care law.

Feature Photography – Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times for a series of photos depicting the innocent victims of gang violence in Los Angeles.

History – Eric Foner. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (W.W. Norton & Company). We have this book available at the Widener Law Library.

All of this year’s winners are listed on the Pulitzer Prize website.

If you have a little spare time why not take a local legal history tour? The New Castle County Courthouse Museum located in historic New Castle, Delaware is one of the oldest surviving courthouses in America. It was built in 1732 and served as New Castle County’s Courthouse until 1881 when the courts moved to Wilmington. It also served the federal courts and was Delaware’s original state capital building.

The cupola of the New Castle County Courthouse was used as the center of the 12 mile circle that created Delaware’s unique circular northern border.

Probably the most famous trial held in the Courthouse was the 1848 trial of abolitionists Thomas Garrett and John Hunn on a charge of aiding fugitive slaves. They were found guilty and heavily fined, but both were undeterred and Garrett declared in court, “I say to thee and to all in this court room, that if anyone knows a fugitive who wants shelter send him to Thomas Garrett and he will befriend him.”

The Courthouse Museum has limited hours, so be sure to check before you go.

While you’re in New Castle you can also visit the George Read House, built by the son of George Read, attorney and signer of the US Constitution. The New Castle Common has a statue of William Penn holding a key, a turf and twig and a container of water. These are symbols used in the ancient common law ceremony of “livery of seisin” which was used to convey land.