Writ is a legal commentary website on the topic of the law of the United States hosted by FindLaw

FindLaw

FindLaw is a business of Thomson Reuters that provides online legal information and online marketing services for law firms. FindLaw was created by Stacy Stern, Martin Roscheisen and Tim Stanley in 1995, and was acquired by Thomson West in 2001....

. Writ publishes at least one new column by one of its regular columnists every business day, and frequently posts a second column by a guest columnist. The regular columnists are all notable attorneys; almost all are law professors, most with an endowed chair; some are former law clerks from the U.S. Supreme Court; some are past or present federal prosecutors; one is a former Counsel to the President; one is a novelist, and one is the current director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program of Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

. The guest columnists also tend to be law professors or seasoned attorneys. The columnists comment both on notable ongoing court cases and recent court decisions, as well as on current events.

Writ also publishes occasional book reviews, on books of both legal and more general interest; the book reviewers are likewise academically inclined attorneys.

Writ is free, and maintains all of its material from its inception in a free archive.

Although Writ is known mainly among legal circles, its columnists tend to be prolific authors who reach a broad audience. Many have published books as well as frequent articles and op-eds in newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

, The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

, U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...

, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Slate

Slate (magazine)

Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...

. One Writ columnist, Marci Hamilton, was the first guest on The Daily Show

The Daily Show

The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...

in its new studio in 2005; columnist Edward Lazarus also appeared on The Daily Show in 2006.

Writ is available online, but has published just two columns since December 30, 2010.

Writ's regular columnists

• Akhil Amar
• Vikram Amar
  Vikram Amar
  Vikram David Amar is professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the UC Davis School of Law . Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court of the...
  
  
• Bart Aronson
• Sherry Colb
• John Dean
  John Dean
  John Wesley Dean III is an American lawyer who served as White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. In this position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover-up...
  
  
• Michael C. Dorf
  Michael C. Dorf
  Michael C. Dorf is an American law professor and a noted U.S. constitutional law scholar. He is currently a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Professor Dorf has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts...
  
  
• Joanna Grossman

• Marci Hamilton
  Marci Hamilton
  Marci Hamilton is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair of Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a widely-regarded scholar in constitutional law. She is an expert on and advocate for the U.S. Constitution's required separation of church and state....
  
  
• Julie Hilden
  Julie Hilden
  Julie Cope Hilden is a novelist and lawyer. She grew up in Hawaii and New Jersey and now lives in Los Angeles. She attended Harvard College, Yale Law School, and has an M.F.A. from Cornell University....
  
  
• Edward Lazarus
  Edward Lazarus
  Edward Lazarus is a lawyer and writer who was named Chief of Staff of the Federal Communications Commission on June 29, 2009. He went to the FCC from the Los Angeles office of the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld....
  
  
• Joanne Mariner
• Anita Ramasastry
  Anita Ramasastry
  Anita Ramasastry is a law professor at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle and a director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology. She is also a regular columnist for the online legal commentary Writ....
  
  
• Anthony Sebok

Books by Writ columnists

• Akhil Reed Amar. America's Constitution: A Biography. ISBN 1400062624
• Akhil Reed Amar. The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction
• Sherry Colb. When Sex Counts: Making Babies and Making Law. ISBN 0742551504
• John Dean. Conservatives Without Conscience. ISBN 0670037745
• John Dean. Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. ISBN 031600023X
• John Dean. Warren G. Harding. ISBN 0805069569
• John Dean. The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court. ISBN 0743226070
• John Dean. Blind Ambition. ISBN 0671812483
• Michael C. Dorf. Constitutional Law Stories. ISBN 1587785056
• Michael C. Dorf. On Reading the Constitution. ISBN 0674636260
• Marci Hamilton. God vs. the Gavel : Religion and the Rule of Law. ISBN 0521853044
• Julie Hilden. Three. ISBN 0452284430
• Julie Hilden. The Bad Daughter : Betrayal and Confession. ISBN 1565121856
• Edward Lazarus. Closed Chambers : The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court. ISBN 0140283560
• Edward Lazarus. Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States, 1775 to the Present. ISBN 0803279876
• Joanne Mariner. No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons.
• Anthony Sebok et al. Legal Positivism in American Jurisprudence. ISBN 0521480418