The Mother Court by James D. Zirin

"The Mother Court" is where some of the nation's greatest trials took place. Linda Fairstein's glib praise-blurb on the back of this book ends with: "It would be criminal not to read this book." In a way, she's right, because aside from dusty (anyone want to pay for Alger Hiss information when it's on Wikipedia) cases, and the lack of juicy murder stories, there's some very interesting chapters on the mechanics of the criminal justice system. This includes how a lawyer chooses a jury, and "the lost art of cross-examintion"

The book probably will be best appreciated by those interested in becoming a lawyer, or those who already work in the legal system...people who can appreciate the technical jargon that is sometimes part of this raconteur's stories. Most involve famous cases, but also some lesser known lawyers and judges who hopped up and down the building steps at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

I confess (not words you normally here in a courtroom) to have not hopped those steps very often. I think I was there as a photographer during the Woody Allen v Mia Farrow matter. My own encounter with the well-remembered Judge Sweet, was when I was called to jury duty and facing the prospect of a several months of Mafia testimony. Usually writers don't get picked...lawyers figure it's easier to sway a housewife or a plumber. But somehow we reached the end of the process and I was one of the 12 facing an interminable sentence. A few days...ok. But months? And months? A very heavy toll for a freelancer to bear. Blind Justice herself didn't seem to care about how much money I'd be losing during the projected months of delays, or snore-inducing testimony about tax receipts. Judge Sweet routinely declared that if anybody had anything further to say, better say it now.

And so I raised my hand and said, "I believe that most lawyers are just as guilty as the criminals."

This got me excused.

My story is not in this book of course, but for fans of high-profile and important cases held before Judge Sweet, Judge Friendly, and other less-amusingly named judges, James D. Zirin offers his interpretations, and very often first-hand recollections. While Fairstein calls his writing style "informative, riveting, accessible and uplifting," the fact remains, he's a lawyer first, and the point is to be fair and balanced and not lurid. This might not appeal to the casual reader or "Perry Mason" fan, who might expect, at the very least, some juicy put-downs of Roy Cohn complete with vengeful snark about the man's hypocrisy. This includes his open hatred and put-downs of gays, despite (as someone else put it in some other publication) his sexual interest in being "...the biggest catcher since Yogi Berra."

Zirin's more tasteful remark: "Roy Cohn died of complications from AIDS a month after his disbarment, lying to the end about the nature of his ailment and the high-risk behavior that had brought it about." In a footnote, he mentions that those who want to know more about his "deeply closeted homosexuality" should read Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America."

Zirin's take on the professional Cohn:

"Roy could get away with anything — at least for a while, until things caught up with him. His glibness was amazing. I once saw him argue an appeal in a New York appellate court. The presiding justice opened the proceeding in a way that seemed quite ominous for Cohn. "Mr. Cohn, in your brief at page 31, you cite the case of Jones v Smith. My law clerks and I have searched the authorities for Jones v. Smith, and we can find no report of the case wehre you cite it — indeed no report of it anywhere. Are you sure that this case exists?"

Without blinking an eye, Cohn responded, "I'll have a letter on your Honor's desk at 10 tomorrow morning."

Zirin blithely wanders through the Linda Lovelace "Deep Throat" case and Mayor Giuliani's spirited attack on the "obscenity" of an oil and elephant dung painting at a local museum, without once cracking a joke or pun. He ends that chapter by noting:

"Outside of child pornography, which is properly viewed as criminal, there is now little legal activity in the field of art censorship....Contemporary community standards of what is obscene have become porous, perhaps because of the Internet. Indeed, the Internet, where pornography is freely available with epithetic descriptions and explicitly graphic videos, has made censorship virtually impossible.Only its dull repetitiveness and superfluous specificity differentiates pornography from the irrelevant sex scene of the modern cinema. What once was X has become R; Rhas become PG-13; the really dirty films have become NR- not even rated at all. We now have a new normal."

Aside from chapters on sex, and on Roy Cohn (but not on both at the same time), there's "U.S. v Official Corruption," organized crime, libel cases, "Some of My Favorite Judges," "The Red Scare" (including Alger Hiss) and of course his mentor Bob Morgenthau, who wrote the book's foreword. Most of this is handled as a law professor might; with enthusiasm for the subject at hand, and less interest in being entertaining about it. After all, it's history. Zirin is more amusing when it comes to choosing some of the cases he was personally involved in, and most certainly in getting the last laugh on some of the judges he found frustrating, if not weird.

"One of the weirdest judges I knew was Irving Ben Cooper. Like the fictional Captain Queeg in Wouke='s "The Cain Mutiny, he was a Freudian delight..."

"...In one robing room conference I attended during a trial, he whirled on a junior lawyer: "Ive noticed you out there smirking at me. You don't understand. I'm here for life. The trouble with you...is that you think the judge is a schmuck."

It's those little moments of anecdotal chicken fat that lubricate this tome and keep it from being totally dry.