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 Judge Janice Law writes from her unique position as former Texas criminal court judge and journalist. She has worked as both a federal and state prosecutor, and has also done indigent criminal defense. Before becoming an attorney, she worked for 14 years as a journalist, including as a stringer for The New York Times. Her journalistic work is included in Professional Newswriting by Dr. Hiley Ward, (1985) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; The Mass Media by Dr. William L. Rivers (1975) Harper and Row; and The Effete Conspiracy and Other Crimes by the Press by Ben H. Bagdikian (1972) Harper and Row. She currently serves as a visiting judge.
Yield, A Judge’s Fir$t-Year Diary (2006), takes readers behind the bench, into chambers, and into the courtroom where Judge Janice Law weaves the electrifying narrative of her rookie year on a county criminal court bench in America's fourth largest city. Yield has been selected for the 2006 National Press Club Book Fair & Authors Night Nov. 15 in Washington, D.C. It is the second consecutive year her literary work has been recognized by the prestigious journalists' group.
Accepting a suggestion from instructors at New Judges’ School, Janice Law, a former print journalist, kept a meticulous daily diary of her explosive first year as judge in Harris County, (Houston) Texas, Criminal Court No. 5. Yield, A Judge’s Fir$t-Year Diary takes readers behind the bench, into chambers, and into the courtroom to find out what it’s really like to be a judge.
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Yield awarded Honorable Mention in 2007 national competition sponsored by Public Safety Writers, a literary group of police, firefighters, EMS and others. www.policewriter.com
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Her first book, Sex Appealed (2005) was honored by being selected for the annual Book Fair & Authors' Night sponsored by the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on Nov. 17, 2005. Authors submitted about 600 books to the NPC committee which chose approximately 60 for the prestigious event.
When Deputy Joseph Richard Quinn and three other veteran Harris County, Texas sheriff’s deputies with guns drawn, burst into a southeast apartment the night of September 17, 1998, searching for a black male with a gun, their shocking discovery in the back bedroom triggered a chain of events resulting in a June 26, 2003 United States Supreme Court decision declaring unconstitutional laws criminalizing consensual same sex sodomy.
Sex Appealed is Judge Janice Law’s intriguing portrayal of the events and personalities surrounding that night and the aftermath. It is a non-fiction narrative of sex, jealousy, betrayal, ambition, murder, politics--and an elite Ivy League legal team of a New York based national homosexual rights organization whose skill and devotion resulted in the high court’s controversial decision in Lawrence v. Texas. 
Judge Law unravels a fascinating account based on original research--personal interviews with both key and behind-the-scenes figures, many of whom have never spoken publicly: the arresting officers, defendants, attorneys, judges, and Republican party leaders in Harris County who put pressure on Texas judges they felt strayed from the Party line that consensual same sex sodomy should remain criminal.
Judge Law explores pervasive rumors that the events of September 17, 1998, were a prearranged, orchestrated set-up designed to test Texas Penal Statute 21.06--a too perfect case.
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Janice Law
