Making history Book's release celebrated at federal court in Detroit

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By Tom Kirvan

Legal News

It seems only fitting that the March 15 event at the federal courthouse in Detroit was labeled an "historic" occasion by the program's emcee.

After all, the gathering in the chief judge's magnificent "million-dollar courtroom" was a celebration of history, specifically that of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Among the celebrants was law professor David Chardavoyne, author of "The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan: People, Law, and Politics," a book published by the Wayne State University Press and commissioned in part by the court's Historical Society.

The book's official release coincided with the Ides of March, but there are no parallels to be drawn from that chance meeting on the Roman calendar. Julius Caesar is nowhere to be found in Chardavoyne's book, which offers an informative and enriching look at the court from its origin in 1837 to the present day.

Mike Lavoie, president of the Historical Society for the U.S. District Court and an attorney at Butzel Long, served as emcee of the March 15 reception and did offer a different historical perspective to be considered, however.

"I begin by noting that today is an historic event," said Lavoie, a former assistant federal prosecutor who earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame. "That recognition was reinforced last weekend when I happened to be at Notre Dame where I saw a photograph of the 1930 commemoration of Notre Dame's then new stadium. That stadium now has some 82 years of memories of contests. This book is like that stadium - only it holds the memories of the legal contests of this court; not 82 years, but almost 175 years worth of memories. And these are memories of not mere athletic contests, but of legal contests that go to development and the heart of our history and society."

Chardavoyne, who teaches at Wayne State University Law School and the University of Detroit School of Law, has spent the past four years researching and writing the book, poring over thousands of court documents and case materials from historical libraries far and wide.

"It is a book I very much wanted to write since I became involved with the Historical Society 10 years ago," Chardavoyne said during his remarks at the March 15 reception. "It truly has been a labor of love."

The author of "A Hanging in Detroit," a book detailing the case surrounding the last execution under Michigan law, Chardavoyne said his latest work could have been a "three-volume set" based on the vast number of "interesting cases and stories that I discovered" during the research phase.

In chronological order, Chardavoyne "charts the history of the court, its judges, and its major cases in five parts: The Wilkins Years, 1837 to 1870; The Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age, 1870 to 1900; Decades of Tumult, 1900 to 1945; The Era of Grand Expectations, 1946 to 1976; and A Major Metropolitan Court, 1977 to 2010."

Chardavoyne paid special tribute to U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, calling him the "inspiration" for the book, noting that the distinguished federal jurist helped conceive of the idea of a "court history many years before I became involved with the project and whose characteristic energy and persistence kept the idea alive."

Judge Cohn, praised by emcee Lavoie as "the gold medal champion for this project and for advancing education among lawyers and the public at large about this court's history," wrote the foreword to the book and was among the featured speakers at the reception.

"Why write a history of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan?" asked Judge Cohn.

His response was drawn from words arising out of the Judicial Conference of the United States in 1988:

"Knowing how things came to be the way they are contributes substantially to any assessment of current effectiveness and to appreciating the promise of proposals for change."

Published: Tue, Mar 20, 2012

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