Guest Blogger: Susan A. Bandes

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Susan A. Bandes (left) as today's guest blogger.
Susan is a Distinguished Research Professor of Law, as well this year as a Wicklander Fellow, at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, where she teaches Criminal Procedure, Federal Courts, and Law and Literature.
She's a pioneer in the emerging study of the role of emotion in law; New York University Press published the anthology on the subject that she edited, The Passions of Law, in 2000. Susan's also noted for her scholarship in federal jurisdiction, criminal procedure, and civil rights.
Having earned her B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and her J.D. from the University of Michigan, Susan practiced at the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender and as staff counsel for the Illinois American Civil Liberties Union before joining the DePaul faculty.
Her recent pro bono activities include acting as co-reporter for the Constitution Project’s bipartisan Death Penalty Initiative, which produced the report Mandatory Justice: Eighteen Reforms to the Death Penalty (2001), and serving on the advisory board for a study of the Cook County, Illinois, criminal justice system, described here and conducted by the Chicago Appleseed Fund.
In her guest post below, Susan discusses the comparative criminal justice analysis that she undertakes in Protecting the Innocent as the Primary Value of the Criminal Justice System, her forthcoming review of a new book on innocence and criminal justice. For reasons she sets out in a further post below, Susan dedicates her contribution to the late newspaper columnist Molly Ivins, who joins other IntLawGrrls transnational foremothers in the list below our "visiting from..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

Molly Ivins, foremother

(Thanks to guest blogger Susan A. Bandes for her guest post and this this tribute to our newest foremother)

I would like to dedicate my guest contribution to the newspaper columnist Molly Ivins (right), who, as IntLawGrrls earlier posted, died from breast cancer in January 2007 at the age of 62. Ivins grew up in Houston. She earned a master’s degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her first newspaper jobs were at The Houston Chronicle and The Minneapolis Tribune, now The Star Tribune. In 1970, she became co-editor of The Texas Observer. In 1976, her writing landed her a job at The New York Times. In The Times' newsroom she wore blue jeans, went barefoot,and brought her expletive-named dog. Ivins' syndicated column, published in about 350 newspapers, derided those whom she thought acted too big for their britches. Her New York Times obituary said:

She was rowdy and profane, but she could filet her opponents with droll precision.

She herself said to People magazine:

'There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.'

Her focus was Texas, a state she labeled “reactionary, cantankerous and hilarious,” run by legislatures who were “reporter heaven.”
Ivins wrote much about one of Texas' most famous political families, the Bushes. She and journalist Lou Dubose wrote two best-selling books: Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (2000) and Bushwhacked: Life in George Bush's America (2003). When she died, her subject issued a statement that said he “respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase.” The then-President added:

'Her quick wit and commitment to her beliefs will be missed.'

On January 11

On this day in ...
... 2007, Molly Ivins (right) published a column entitled Stand Up Against the Surge, in which she urged readers to work to stop the Iraq War (which, in her view, the United States already had lost) by, among other things, taking part in a Washington peace march set for January 27. It would be her last column: the day before that scheduled march, the fiery, Texas-based political commentator, who'd been battling breast cancer since 1999, was admitted to hospital in Austin. She died on January 31, 2007, at age 64.
... 1909 (100 years ago today), in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root (then also serving as the 1st President of the American Society of International Law; 3 years later to win the Nobel Peace Prize) and British Ambassador James Bryce signed a treaty establishing mechanisms for pacific settlement of disputes involving waters, and water quantity and quality, at the U.S.-Canada border. The Boundary Waters Treaty is administered by an International Joint Commission, today comprising 5 men and 1 woman -- the latter is Irene B. Brooks (left), U.S. Section Chair.