MEET THE JUDGES

Benjamin Brafman is the principal of Brafman & Associates in New York City and specializes in criminal law with an emphasis on white-collar criminal defense. He has represented a wide range of high-profile celebrities, business leaders, lawyers and other professionals in significant criminal cases throughout the country.

Denny Chin is a judge for the New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He served as a judge for the Southern District of New York from 1994 through 2010, and presided over cases involving, for example, Megan’s Law, the Million Youth March, Al Franken’s use of the phrase “Fair and Balanced” in the title of a book, the Naked Cowboy, the Google Books settlement, the United Nations Oil for Food Program, an Afghan warlord charged with conspiring to import heroin, and the guilty plea and sentencing of financier Bernard L. Madoff.

Susana Darwin is a lawyer who serves as executive editor of ABA Business Law Section book publishing. She has been active in politics for more than 25 years and currently focuses on the quality and diversity of Illinois’ judiciary as a member of the executive committee of Cook County’s Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening. Darwin is also a filmmaker, having recently completed the narrative short film Hatboxes, which she wrote and directed.

Daniel J. Kornstein is a founding partner of Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard in New York City. Kornstein is a graduate of Yale Law School, a past president of the Law and Humanities Institute and past chair of the Committee on Law and Literature of the New York County Lawyers Association. He has published seven nonfiction books and numerous articles about law.

David Lat is the founder of Above the Law, a legal news website, and the author of a forthcoming novel, Supreme Ambitions (ABA Flagship).

Jon Malysiak is an executive editor for the Flagship imprint of ABA Publishing, the book publishing division of the American Bar Association. During his 16-year career in publishing, he has worked in a variety of editorial capacities including owning his own literary agency where he represented a variety of authors to top publishers. When Jon isn’t acquiring new projects or editing manuscripts, he is busy launching the production of his first play, Children of Privilege, which is scheduled to debut this fall.

Michael P. Maslanka practices employment law in Dallas. He also writes a column called the Literate Lawyer.

Roz Myers, J.D., M.A., teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice on subjects related to jurisprudence, crime victimization, restorative justice, and the moral gap between justice and law. As a writer and editor, she has served for more than 17 years as the managing editor and legal columnist for journals published by Civic Research Institute, and her work in other areas of law has appeared in publications by West, Matthew Bender, and other major legal publishers. She is a doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center of CUNY, focusing on hate crimes and responsive legislation.

Peter Orner is the author of the just published new story collection, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge (Little, Brown, 2013) as well as two novels, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and Love and Shame and Love. Orner’s first book, Esther Stories won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America, about immigration, and Hope Deferred, set in Zimbabwe. Orner has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds a JD from Northeastern University. Currently, Orner is a Professor at San Francisco State University. He lives in Bolinas, California.

Herman Palarz is a Los Angles trial lawyer and an avid reader. Palarz is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Law, a past-president of the Beverly Hills Bar Association and a member of the ABA’s Screening Committee for the Silver Gavel Awards.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist and law professor at Fordham University, where he is director of the Forum on Law, Culture & Society. He also is the editor of Law Lit: From Atticus Finch to The Practice: A Collection of Great Writing About the Law. Rosenbaum’s favorite stage play is Macbeth.

Paul Washington is senior vice president, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary of Time Warner Inc. A graduate of Fordham Law School, Washington clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and David H. Souter. He is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and serves on the boards of several cultural, civic and professional nonprofit organizations.

Ralph Weber is a Milwaukee trial lawyer who has tried many multi-week trials in diverse subject areas during his 30-year career. He has taught Trial Advocacy at Marquette University Law School for more than 15 years and created The Trial Science Institute, a jury research facility. Weber also co-edited the best-selling Dear Americans: Letters from the Desk of Ronald Reagan (Doubleday, 2003).

Michelle Zierler’s legal career has included stints at Miramax Films, Canal+ (in Paris) and Playboy Entertainment. A graduate of New York University’s law school, she is the director of program in Law and Journalism and professor of legal writing at New York Law School and an avid patron of the arts.