Samuel Johnson’s 300th Birthday

Samuel JohnsonToday is Samuel Johnson’s 300th birthday.

After nine years of work, Samuel Johnson published a major dictionary of English words in 1755.  One of the key features of A Dictionary of the English Language was that Dr. Johnson used quotations from books where a particular word was used to illustrate the word’s meaning.

Why should a law school be interested in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary and his 300th birthday?  On the way to work this morning, I heard a BBC radio program (aired on NPR) about Dr. Johnson’s dictionary.  On that show, the commentators discussed how Dr. Johnson’s dictionary is important to the United States Constitution because it was the dictionary most often used during the time the Constitution was drafted.  Jack Lynch also refers to Dr. Johnson’s influence on documents related to the founding of this country in his 2005 New York Times article.  For further reading on this topic, Henry Hitching’s book, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary:  The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, looks promising.

Does anyone know of examples where legal advocates have cited Dr. Johnson’s dictionary to interpret the law?

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Mastering the Art of Legal Writing

childsWednesday night I went to see the movie Julie & Julia, which is about a writer, Julie, who blogs about working her way through chef Julia Child’s famed cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year.  I loved everything about the movie, and as such, I’m starting off this blog post with a discussion of the movie.  (This post was actually originally entitled “Best Brief Awards.”) 

One of my favorite scenes was when Julie pulled her first roasted whole chicken out of the oven.  I roasted my first whole chicken this summer.  Like Julie, who felt like a “lobster killer” when she boiled three live lobsters for Lobster Thermidor, I must admit that I felt a bit like an executioner when I ordered my organic hand-fed chicken through our CSA, Backyard Bounty.  Guiltily, I asked Farmer Laura how she knows which chickens are ready for slaughter.  She said she knows it’s time when the chickens start to bite her.  (I guess the lesson there is “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”)  At home with my chicken, I tried to do the chicken justice by dressing it with olive oil and sprigs of thyme and rosemary from our garden.  I felt Julie’s same sense of pride and excitement when I opened the oven door and a perfect golden-brown roast chicken appeared from the oven.

Watching the movie reminded me of how students develop in their legal writing classes. 

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Legal Writing Monograph Series

13156535v1_240x240_Front_Color-BlackLast year, the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Board of Directors created a Monograph series.  The Monograph’s first electronic volume is now available on the LWI website.  The focus of this first volume is “The Art of Critiquing Written Work.”  Our own Professor Alison Julien worked on this project.  Professor Jane Kent Gionfriddo stated in a post to the LWI listserv that the volumes “will focus on a specific topic relevant to teaching, curriculum, scholarship or status of Legal Writing professionals and will include substantial, well-developed pieces of scholarship in the form of law review articles or book chapters that have been previously published elsewhere.”

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