 | The U.S. Supreme Court is one of the subscribers to Legal Affairs magazine, which recently won a presitigious award for feature writing. |
A year ago the Law School helped launch a journalistic experiment of sorts -- a magazine that tackles important legal issues facing society today in a way that is both comprehensive and comprehensible to a general audience.
That publication, Legal Affairs, is nearing its first anniversary, having been judged a success in the court of public opinion.
"We've had a great first year," says the magazine's editor, Lincoln Caplan, the Knight Senior Journalist at the Law School. "We've received positive feedback from the media, the legal community and our readers that has surpassed our expectations, and we've made a good start in building success in the marketplace."
The magazine has filled a unique niche among publications. In fact, when Legal Affairs was launched last year, Korva Coleman of NPR's "All Things Considered" said, "There's never been a magazine about the law minus the legalese written for non-lawyers and lawyers alike. Enter Legal Affairs."
Legal Affairs has received favorable reviews from The Nation, The Weekly Standard, The Boston Globe, the New York Daily News, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, C-SPAN, CNN and others. The Columbia Journalism Review named it as the first of "Ten Winners You Might Have Missed."
The magazine counts among its subscribers the U.S. Supreme Court and other influential judicial bodies, and Legal Affairs has been used as a teaching tool by leading institutions. Harvard, Yale and Georgetown law schools have used the magazine in criminal law classes; Pepperdine University has used the publication to teach business classes; and New York University School of Law has used it in international law classes.
Legal Affairs recently received its first award, winning first place for feature writing by Brendan Koerner '96 B.A. in the National Headliner Awards. In addition, for their work in the magazine, Koerner and Legal Affairs senior editor Emily Bazelon '93 B.A., '00 J.D. are finalists for the Livingston Awards, among the most prestigious awards in journalism.
While Legal Affairs received start-up support from the Law School and is described on its masthead as "A Magazine of Yale Law School," the magazine is editorially independent and separately incorporated as a non-profit enterprise. However, it continues to have close ties to the University. It has published the work of several Yale students, faculty and alumni; several of its staff members are graduates of the University, including Bazelon, senior editor John Swansburg '00 B.A. and Ann Nguyen '02 B.A.; and the magazine offers three or four internships a semester to students from Yale College and the Law School.
Legal Affairs' special anniversary issue, which hits the newsstands on May 6, features a cover story by Daniel Brook '00 B.A. exploring the First Amendment issues raised by the Carol Vance Unit, a prison in Texas that uses faith-based programming to help rehabilitate its inmates. In another story, Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation discusses how integration by class, not race, can fix schools in poor cities, focusing on the landmark Connecticut ruling in the Sheff case written by Ellen Peters, former Yale Law School professor and one-time chief justice of the State Supreme Court. Still other stories explore what happens when lawyers try to fix doctors' mistakes; why the Dalai Lama's push to modernize in Tibet cost one of his closest colleagues his life; how the Bush administration could gain the trust of the Iraqi people, and the world, by obeying the international law of occupation after the war ends; and why a community in Louisiana refused to live next door to a Shell Oil factory.
For more information about Legal Affairs, visit the magazine's website at www.legalaffairs.org.
T H I S
Magazine celebrates its first
year with award and acclaim
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