A former anchor on Court TV, Crier is the author of bestsellers The Case Against Lawyers and A Deadly Game: The Untold Story of the Scott Peterson Investigation.

Raised in Dallas, Crier attended the University of Texas at the tender age of sixteen, got her law degree from the Southern Methodist University School of Law in two and a half years, and became and became an assistant District Attorney before she was twenty-five. In 1984 she became a State District Judge in Dallas, becoming the youngest elected state judge in Texas' history, and by 1989, Crier launched her TV career with CNN. She hosted the evening newscast The World Today and her own talk-show Crier & Company but in 1993 she moved to ABC News to act as a correspondent for 20/20, where she made a name for herself with her groundbreaking segment "The Predators," which explored nursing home abuses throughout the country. In 1996 she switched gears again, becoming one of the founding anchors for the Fox News Channel but spent the most time with Court TV, from 1999-2007 on her show Catherine Crier Live. Although the show was cancelled when Court TV transitioned to TruTV, she still makes numerous appearances on various networks as a guest panelist.

These days, Crier seems to have focused more on her writing career, which began in 2002 with her best-selling book The Case Against Lawyers. She's since released nearly half a dozen more books, all with a political or investigative tinge, blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, and has even started her own current events blog, Patriot Acts. [Image via Getty]