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Today in History (1862) - The U.S. government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation. On the same day in 1865, the Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000 black troops, granting them freedom with the consent of their owners. Lee surrendered a few weeks later. |
For the first time, someone in the real world has recommended that I buy Eugene Volokh's Academic Legal Writing, recently released in a second edition. Amazon sells it for $20.50, and the positive reviews on which site include recommendations from IsThatLegal.org and co-blogger Dennis N. Morgan.
Cheap alternatives abound: the professor also has printouts of Volokh's PowerPoint summary, and there's always Volokh's "Writing to Think Like a Lawyer" contribution to the De Novo symposium.
UPDATE: OK, this professor clearly reads blogs. The writing assignment nicks its opposing arguments from the Becker-Posner blog. Question: Is it cheating to look at these materials?