The Board of the Judicial Family Institute sponsors a seminar for Chief Justices and their families at semiannual meetings of the Conference of Chief Justices. These sessions involve selection of an author and certain of his/her works for pre-conference reading. The sessions are led by the author and are intended to assist judges and their families in exploring complex questions raised by the selected publications.
The scripts or talking points of the authors who facilitate these sessions are posted to this website to provide other judicial families with the unique insights of the authors.

Overview of Law and Literature Programs Co-Sponsored by the Judicial Family Institute for the Conference Of Chief Justices (PDF)

As her historic career winds down, Sandra Day O'Connor recalls her Stanford anxiety, her first job, and the pain and privilege of blazing the trail.  See http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/janfeb/
features/oconnor.html

2012 Midyear Meeting, Wilmington, Delaward: Simmie Know, "The Painting of a Judicial Portrait"

Simmie Knox is a graduate of Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mr. Knox worked for the original Museum of African Art in Washington, DC and taught at various colleges, universities, and public schools in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Columbia in the early 1970s while he also painted and exhibited as an abstract artist. He participated in the Thirty-Second Biennial of Contemporary American Painting at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Since 1983, Knox has been self-employed and specialized in oil portraiture. He has been commissioned by private individuals, organizations, and institutions to paint portraits of elected officials, cabinet members, supreme court justices, judges, respected civic leaders, clergy, educators, military officers, business leaders, sports figures, entertainment celebrities, and private individuals. Mr. Knox was the first African American artist selected to paint the official portrait of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and the official White House portraits of a President and First Lady. Painting the portraits of Justice Thurgood Marshall, President William Jefferson Clinton, and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were pivotal moments in Knox's art career. Simmie Knox is married, the father of three children, and has one grandchild. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

2011 Summer Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia: Mark Curriden, "Contempt of Court, The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism"

This book concerns the case of Ed Johnson, a black man who was wrongly convicted of rape in 1906 and sentenced to death in Tennessee.　The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution, but a violent mob, responding to the court’s "interference," drag Johnson from his cell and lynched him.

2011 Summer Meeting, Washington, D.C.: Mary Kay Ricks, Escape on the Pearl - A Reading That Took Place in a Most Appropriate Location

Mary Kay Ricks’ well-regarded novel chronicles the attempt by 77 slaves to escape to the North from Washington, D.C. by hiding on a sailing ship called the Pearl in 1848. Escape on the Pearl tells the story of this heroic bid for freedom through the intimate story of two young sisters, Mary and Emily Edmonsons, who would ultimately trade servitude in elite Washington homes for slave pens in three states. Daniel Drayton, a pioneering abolitionist and one of the lead orchestrators of the slave escape and Edward Sayres, pilot of the Pearl, set sail on April 15, 1848, towards the Chesapeake Bay but due to difficult sailing conditions, slave owners eventually caught the Pearl.

2010 Winter Meeting U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Thomas: Mina Orenstein presented an exhibition of Camille Pissarro in the Caribbean, 1850-1855: Drawings from the Collection at Olana.

A thirty-year resident of the Virgin Islands, Ms. Orenstein has spent most of her life involved in the visual and performing arts and publishing.  In early 1994, she was privileged to begin work on Camille Pissarro in the Caribbean, a ground breaking exhibition of early Pissarro works that had been lost to the world for over 100 years. This exhibition which was shown first in St. Thomas, then at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan and at the state Museum in Albany, NY, was produced with support from Chase Manhattan as a part of the Bicentennial Celebration of the historic Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas

2010 Summer Meeting Vail, Colorado: Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War

Thomas Andrews provides the first full-fledged environmental history of Colorado's labor struggle, the spiraling violence between coal miners and mining companies during the Ludlow Massacre and the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913-1914.The Ludlow Massacre of 1914, an infamous event in American labor history is the subject of this bold and detailed story of the impact of the coal mining industry on miners, the land, unions and the industry.  A recent mine disaster in West Virginia  that killed 29 miners  underscores the importance of this book which reviewers have described as “stunning,” “intriguing” and “fascinating”.

2009 Winter Meeting Scottsdale, Arizona: Gordon Campbell, Attorney, Parsons Behle & Latimer, Salt Lake City, Utah and author of “Missing Witness” Gordon Campbell on Authoring Missing Witness http://jfi.ncsconline.org/missingwitness.html

A Thriller in Scottsdale, Online with the JFI, Vol. 1, No.2 (2009) read more…

A Spellbinding Thriller by Christine Alexander, Online with the JFI, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2009) read more…

2009 Summer Meeting Santa Fe, New Mexico:  Hampton Sides reflected on his book, Blood and Thunder . In New Mexico, where I live, the Navajos are a powerful presence. They're the largest tribe in the United States, living on the largest reservation, a domain as big as all of New England. Yet very few Americans are aware of their tangled, bloody history with the U.S. government.  It's the story of what has come to be called Manifest Destiny, the self-righteous conviction that the United States had a divine right to control the continent from coast to coast.

Hampton Sides Rocks JFI, Online with the JFI, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2010) read more…

2008 Winter Meeting Williamsburg, VA: William M. Kelso, Jamestown, the Buried Truth. The speaker chronicles a historical treasure rediscovered in America’s backyard.

2008 Summer Meeting Anchorage, Alaska:  Anthony Lewis, is a prominent liberal intellectual, writing for The New York Times op-ed page and The New York Review of Books, among other publications, he discusses his book, Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment

2007 Winter Meeting New Orleans, Louisiana:  Floyd Abrams reflected on his book Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment. Penguin Books 2000. The late Senator Moynihan described  Mr. Abrams as “The most significant First Amendment lawyer of our age.”

2007 Summer Meeting Mackinac Island, MI:  In 1958, Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker using the pen name Robert Traver, wrote the best-seller Anatomy of a Murder, later made into a movie starring Jimmy Stewart.  The story explores criminal prosecution in a Michigan Upper Peninsula county, varying notions of right and wrong, witness coaching, an insanity defense, courtroom tactics, attorney/client relationships, the economics of small town law offices, as well as personal and professional integrity.

"An Anatomy of Anatomy of a Murder" by Frederick Baker, Jr. (PDF)

2006 Winter Meeting Amelia Island, Florida:  Marsha Dean Phelts discussed her book An American Beach for African Americans, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL, a historical account of Amelia Island, one of the few beaches in America previously accessible to African Americans.

2006 Summer Meeting Indianapolis, Indiana:  Renowned Lincoln scholar and collector Chief Justice Frank Williams of Rhode Island focused on features of Abraham Lincoln's early days using Lincoln's Youth: The Indiana Years, Seven to Twenty One, by Louis A. Warren.

2005 Winter Meeting New York City, New York:  Kenneth R Feinberg, Special Master of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, presented material from his book, What is Life Worth? The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 published 2006.

2005 Summer Meeting Charleston, South Carolina:  Attorney and Historian Robert N. Rosen, Judge Alexander Sanders, Attorney Richard M. Gergel, and Judge Joseph F. Anderson, highlighted South Carolina's jurists who upheld the rule of law against the tide of popular opinion: Judge Matthew J. Perry (who also spoke), United States Associate Justice William Johnson, Judge John Belton O'Neal, Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright, and Judge J. Waites Waring.  Books featured were A Short History of Charleston by Robert N. Rosen, 2nd ed. and Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times and His Legacy by W. Lewis Burke and Belinda F. Gergel, 2004

2004 Winter Meeting San Francisco, California:  Warren Christopher, former US Secretary of State, presented material from his autobiography Chances of a Lifetime published in 2001 by Scribner. “Warren Christopher is the kind of public servant the Founders imagined--- a man of principle, integrity, loyalty and public spirit.” Michael Beschloss.

2003 Summer Meeting San Juan, Puerto Rico: Anthony Lewis,
Commentary on Gideon's Trumpet spoke on the content and impact of his book Gideon's Trumpet, the true story of an impoverished man convicted of a crime he did not commit.  Lewis was optimistic about ongoing improvement in the availability and quality of legal counsel for the poor, and the need to persevere in that effort. http://jfi.ncsconline.org/lewis1.html