Douglas Whaley

I’ve written many legal works (books, articles, student guides, etc.) and two novels (“Imaginary Friend” and “Corbin Milk,” both available on Amazon), and when I was much younger I made stabs at writing plays and musicals, none of which I showed to anyone.  But the first real play I’ve written with the idea of actually getting it performed has just been accepted for a production next year here in Columbus, Ohio.  The play is called “The Turkey Men,” and it has its origin in a true story from the Civil War.  In 2011 I read in the Columbus Dispatch a column by John Switzer.  He's the newspaper's retired Weather Columnist, and he occasionally writes folksy pieces about nature or local events in central Ohio.  I've enjoyed his musings for years, and was very interested when on May 22 of that year he wrote a Memorial Day piece about two graves in Pleasant Cemetery in Madison County.  One is that of a Confederate soldier named Frank Chick ...

Okay, it’s a joke.   As far as I know Donald Trump is not currently planning to breach our agreement to buy a huge chunk of what is now the United States from France, as we signed a contract to do in 1803.   Thomas Jefferson negotiated that deal with Napoleon and it was a pretty good one, so I suspect the Donald will keep it.   But all the other contracts our country has signed with nations all over the world are no longer as secure. Donald Trump has announced that the United States of America will breach the contract it negotiated with the Republic of Iran even though all the experts attest that Iran has obeyed its commitment under that treaty.   Phrased another way: they keep their word and we won’t keep ours.   As I write that statement I have trouble believing it.   The United States?   Renouncing a treaty in 2018 that it just signed its name to in 2015, a mere three years ago?   At the same time Donald Trump plan...

In law school the books students buy for classes are called casebooks not textbooks.  Why?  Because  they’re filled with reprinted decisions from various courts, accompanied by textual explanations, diagrams, and/or quotations from articles or books.  I now have written seven casebooks since 1980, all of them still alive in newer forms since their original publication.  My casebook on Commercial Law is in its eleventh edition; the one with the smallest number of editions is Debtor and Creditor Law (largely bankruptcy), only in its sixth edition.  This blog post explains how I got into writing casebooks and why my books have a certain reputation that causes some experts to turn up their noses when those Whaley books are mentioned. One of the courses I taught when I first walked into a law school classroom (January of 1970) was Commercial Paper (sometimes called “Negotiable Instruments”), which deals with checks and promissory notes.  ...

It’s the opening night for SRO’s production of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy “August: Osage County” here in Columbus, Ohio.   In just a few hours I will appear in the opening scene and perform a ten minute monologue (interrupted by occasional dialogue with two other characters), and then I will be done.   My part is the patriarch in an Oklahoma family who gives the little talk that is delivered in the Prologue to the three act play.   Then he commits suicide and the rest of the show involves his large family trying to figure out why.   The character is named Beverly Weston (yes, “Beverly” is a man’s name in various parts of the United States and Great Britain), and his character is what Alfred Hitchcock called a “McGuffin”: something in the plot that the characters care about but the audience does not. [See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin for more; I think it’s interesting that the bars that are in the lobby of some AMC ...