Legal Affairs, a new magazine "at the intersection of law and life" that is being published in association with the Yale Law School, will distribute its inaugural issue April 2.
Aimed at a general audience, Legal Affairs will explore the law in the broader context of culture, politics and society.
Noting the Law School's longstanding commitment to public service, Dean Anthony Kronman says that helping to start and support such a magazine strengthens the school's involvement in civic life.
"Legal Affairs will fill a void in the publishing world, treating the law with the literate clarity and accessible intelligence that other magazines treat science, business and foreign policy," says Kronman. "This magazine marks the start of something new for the legal profession and for our society. I am proud that the Yale Law School can be a part of it."
The idea for Legal Affairs grew out of a project started in 1994 by Boris Bittker, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale and a preeminent legal scholar. Bittker had grown concerned about the legal academy's lack of interest in what he calls "the link between law and actual life."
The scholar spent a year developing and then publishing a prototype of a journal, titled The Yale Survey of Current Legal Issues, which aimed "to bring the fruits of academic legal scholarship" to the attention of lawyers outside the academy. Seven years later, Bittker's idea has reached fruition with the founding of Legal Affairs.
Legal Affairs and the Law School share a unique relationship. The Law School helped provide start-up support to Legal Affairs, and the magazine is described on its masthead as "A Magazine of Yale Law School." Yet Legal Affairs is editorially independent and separately incorporated as a nonprofit enterprise. It is housed in its own offices in the newly revived downtown area along Broadway.
The magazine will be published six times a year. Articles in the first issue of Legal Affairs include the cover story by the magazine's senior editor, Emily Bazelon '93 B.A., '00 J.D., about how Chief Justice Aharon Barak has transformed the Israeli Supreme Court; an exclusive article by author Christopher Buckley '75 B.A. excerpted from his forthcoming comic novel "No Way To Treat A First Lady"; and an essay by Jeffrey Rosen '91 J.D., legal affairs editor of The New Republic, about the history and meaning of the term "fighting words."
The magazine's editor, Lincoln Caplan, is the Knight Senior Journalist at the Law School. Caplan came to Legal Affairs from U.S. News & World Report, where he was one of the magazine's top editors.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Caplan has written widely about the law. He was a staff writer for The New Republic and The New Yorker and has written five books. Among them are "The Tenth Justice: The Solicitor General and the Rule of Law," a groundbreaking work about the government's chief courtroom lawyer and about politics and law, and "Skadden: Power, Money & the Rise of a Legal Empire," a best-selling portrait of a large, influential New York law firm, which explores the transformation of the legal profession into a global business.
Caplan's writing has earned a range of awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pope Foundation Award for outstanding accomplishments in investigative journalism and a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association for outstanding public service.
He has drawn on his writing experience as a teacher at Yale. He alternates between teaching two courses, one at the Law School called "Annals of the Law: Nonfiction Writing about Legal Affairs," the other an advanced nonfiction writing course for the English department called "Reporting as Storytelling."
"The work we're doing at Legal Affairs is related to the kinds of writing I teach in both courses," Caplan says. "In the magazine, we are exploring the humanity of the law and the drama of ideas that give it such vitality. I try to teach my students about the importance of these animating forces."
To manage the business side of Legal Affairs, Caplan recruited a former U.S. News colleague, Lisa Smith, who is the new magazine's publishing director. The senior editors are Emily Bazelon and James Ryerson, who was formerly an editor at Lingua Franca.
Jessica Helfand and William Drentell, an award-winning team based in northwest Connecticut, created the magazine's design. Helfand teaches at the Yale School of Art.
A key factor in the creation of Legal Affairs, notes Caplan, has been the support of the Law School and its dean. "Yale's support, and Tony Kronman's support especially, have been tremendous," the editor says. "The magazine wouldn't exist without his remarkable vision and backing."
Kronman chairs the magazine's corporate board, and Law School faculty members Akhil Amar, Harlon Dalton, John Langbein and Kate Stith also serve on the board. Other board members include James Fallows, the national correspondent of The Atlantic Monthly; Patti Saris, a U.S. district court judge in Boston; and Seth Waxman, a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C., who is a 1977 graduate of Yale Law School and a former solicitor general of the United States.
Linda Koch Lorimer, vice president and secretary of the University, notes, "This is an exciting venture for the Law School and for all of us who will benefit from reading this new periodical. As a graduate of the Law School myself, I am particularly proud of the launch of this project."
For more information, visit the Legal Affairs website at www.legalaffairs.org.
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