About

I recently retired after 25 years as a judge on the New York Supreme Court. While on the court I continued my career as a writer of non-fiction that began years before when I was a journalist in Washington, D.C. covering Congress and the Supreme Court for several California newspapers. I am the author of two editions of a textbook on Domestic Violence law (Domestic Violence: Law Policy and Practice) and an award-winning biography (Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer, Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2015). My next book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law, will be published in early 2025 by the University of Michigan Press. In addition, I am an adjunct professor of law.

Featured Work

When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law

2025
Book Cover

The Great Charlie Chaplin, icon of Old Hollywood, jumped from the silent screen to the front pages of newspapers around the world in 1944 and 45 – knocking aside news of World War II – with a series of salacious trials involving a young protégé named Joan Barry.

She claimed he was the father of her daughter. He claimed she was a gun-toting stalker. And FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover saw the chance to claim the scalp of an outspoken liberal actor.

The result was Chaplin’s criminal prosecution, and later two civil trials in which Barry falsely accused him of fathering her daughter -- all leading up his to eventual exile from the U.S., an upheaval in the nation's paternity laws, and an early glimpse of powerful movie men behaving badly with star-struck women long before the #MeToo Movement.

Other Works

  • She Can Bring Us Home, Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer

    2015

Awards and Recognition

  • 2016 Colonial Dames of America Book Award for She Can Bring Us Home; Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer
  • 2015 Richard Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography for She Can Bring Us Home; Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer
  • 1983 Worth Bingham Prize for Distinguished Investigative Reporting, for "The New Slush Fund Scandal," published in The New Republic