2
The annual ABA convention begins one month ago today. Setting a new record, several featured speakers have actually finished talking.

7
Happy 47th birthday to Corbin Bernsen, L.A. Law’s Arnie Becker.

9
Forty-four years ago, the historic Civil Rights Act of 1957 is signed into law, establishing a civil rights division at the Department of Justice and authorizing the attorney general to investigate complaints of civil rights violations.

13
On this day in 1978, Ford Motor Company is hit with an indictment for reckless homicide and criminal recklessness in the deaths of three teens whose ‘73 Pinto burst into flames in an accident. Though Ford is found innocent on all charges, the case becomes a consumer advocacy landmark.

17
Raise the roof, dog! It’s Constitution Day!

22
Three hundred nine years ago today, eight “witches” die in the last hanging of the Salem witch trials. It has never been proved that any of the eight was an ancestor of Leona Helmsley, Shannen Doherty or Martha Stewart.

25
On this day in 1981, Reagan nominee Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in as the Supreme Court’s first woman justice.

28
Flogging is abolished as a form of punishment in the U.S. Navy 151 years ago today. A good, healthy browbeating is still condoned.

29
On this day twelve years ago, actress Zsa Zsa Gabor is convicted of battery for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer who pulled over her Rolls-Royce during a traffic stop. Fellow L.A.P.D. officers still repress a snicker whenever they see this man.

30
Four years ago, judge David Perez orders creditors acting on the wrongful-death judgment against O.J. Simpson to return a grand piano to Simpson’s mother. Perez rules that the $20,000 instrument is not Simpson’s property but a gift given by O.J. to his mother. One year, eleven months, and 27 days earlier, Johnnie Cochran, Mark Fuhrman, and a Los Angeles jury give O.J. Simpson a far more valuable gift.

—Kristina Dell

If I made the laws…

It wouldn’t be so easy to get a driver’s license. Most people can’t drive—that bugs the heck out of me. When you’re in the left lane, either go fast or move over and let people pass. It’s the passing lane.

—Michael Strahan
Six-foot-five, 275-pound defensive end for the NFC champion New York Giants. The 2001 NFL season starts on September 9.

Books

A Trial by Jury
by D. Graham Burnett
Knopf, 183 pages; $21

Jurors, like dreamers, believe everyone wants to hear their story. We don’t. Tales of prolonged forced confinement with 11 strangers, though always memorable to the confined, are almost never interesting to the rest of us.

D. Graham Burnett’s A Trial by Jury is the delicious exception. First, there’s the alleged crime itself: the murder of a gay man, who may or may not have been a drag queen, by the defendant, who may or may not have been duped by the victim’s sexual identity and may or may not have been defending himself from attempted rape. Then, there are the agonizing deliberations over four sequestered days. Finally, there’s Burnett’s trenchant observations on the difference between law and justice, between what the state demands and what the heart dictates. All this in a tight 183 pages. A Trial by Jury is a smart, keenly understood, and elegant look at a peculiarly American institution.
—Daniel Altman