Law

Blind Goddess brings together the most significant writings of practitioners, professors, and advocates to make sense of what is perhaps the nation’s most astonishing and shameful achievement: the highest per capita incarceration of its citizens anywhere in the world, compounded by the shockingly disproportionate imprisonment of poor people of color. Although there is growing awareness of the huge fiscal cost of mass incarceration, the moral, human, and social devastation of racially skewed law enforcement remains largely unrecognized.

The experts and scholars in this collection elucidate the impact of race on each stage of the criminal process, from policing and prosecuting to jury selection, sentencing, prison conditions, and opportunities to reenter society. Including selections from critically acclaimed New Press books such as The New Jim Crow, Let’s Get Free, and Race to Incarcerate, alongside passages from other leading contemporary works, from Amy Bach’s Ordinary Injustice to Robert Perkinson’s Texas Tough, Blind Goddess provides easy access to a wealth of cutting-edge analyses and solutions.

An essential volume for the general reader, Blind Goddess is also an ideal reality-check for students of criminal law.

Called a “dazzlingly reported, supremely elegant” work by The Observer, The Big Eddy Club is an award-winning journalist’s exposé of race, injustice, and serial murder in the Deep South—Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with an investigative edge. Over eight bloody months in the mid-1970s, a serial rapist and murderer terrorized Columbus, Georgia, killing seven affluent, elderly white women—almost all members of the Big Eddy social club for the town’s elite. Carlton Gary, an African American man currently on death row for what came to be known as “the stocking stranglings,” came within four hours of being executed in December 2009.

The Big Eddy Club connects Gary’s late-twentieth-century trial with racially charged trials in Columbus of a previous era, to explore the broad topic of racial justice in the American South. This paperback edition includes an all-new afterword detailing the recent discovery of potentially exonerating evidence, which led to Gary’s last-minute stay of execution and will likely result in a new trial.

In Law Lit, acclaimed novelist and law professor Thane Rosenbaum delves into our cultural obsession with the law, exploring how the legal system has historically captivated the imagination of artists and the attention of readers—from Oedipus Rex to today’s courtroom thrillers.

This handsome volume, which TV anchor Jack Ford called “marvelously entertaining and enlightening,” collects the iconic and the unexpected, each piece reminding us of the passion for justice, the struggle to do right, and the belief in the power of language that lie at the heart of the law. Were you inspired by Atticus Finch’s closing remarks in To Kill a Mockingbird? Read them here, along with Portia’s poetic maneuverings in The Merchant of Venice, the famously heated cross-examination from A Few Good Men, and Bob Dylan’s controversial protest song “Hurricane.”

With dozens of selections, including fiction, essays, and even film scripts, Law Lit is a dazzling collection that transcends place and time, from ancient Greece and foggy London to the narrow streets of Prague and the spectacle of an Alabama courthouse, offering an enlightening look at how lives can be laid bare before the bench.

In the wake of September 11, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department has presided over an unprecedented assault on the civil liberties established in the Bill of Rights. Enacted in haste and, at times, in partial secrecy, the legislation and orders have not been carefully examined, and their implications are only now beginning to surface. Not since the internment of Japanese Americans during the 1940s have we witnessed such abridgment of American rights.

While the loss of liberties has been met with apathy by the press and public alike, the lawyers and analysts in Lost Liberties provide a detailed, comprehensive look at the USA Patriot Act, chronicling the destructive impact of crackdowns on thousands of Americans and revisiting the ugly history of political repression in times of crisis. Featuring original contributions from David Cole, Michael Tomasky, Nancy Chang, Kenneth Roth, and Anthony Romero, Lost Liberties will be a critical text for those who want to know in advance the long-term implications of these drastic measures.

Lawyers brings together thirty-five outstanding excerpts and articles on the legal profession in the first reader to address the whole range of vital questions concerning lawyers and their increasing impact on all aspects of society. Are lawyers merely hired guns or are they morally responsible for the clients they represent? Who does and does not obtain legal services? How does law school make students more conservative? Can law contribute to the creation of a more just society?

Comprehensive and provocative, Lawyers offers a broad overview, critically examining the occupation’s claim to professional status, describing dramatic changes both at home and abroad, and looking at the ways lawyers govern and monitor themselves. The book also examines who is admitted to the bar, emphasizing those long excluded—women and racial minorities—and the range of jobs lawyers perform, especially the two extremes of private practice: solo or small firms, and megafirms with thousands of employees in offices around the world.

Lawyers is the perfect book for a country of would-be Clarence Darrows—and their many admirers and critics.

McLibel is the unlikely but true story of how a pamphlet called “What’s Wrong with McDonald’s?” led to the longest trial in British history. In what has become front-page news around the globe, the trial pitted the multibillion dollar corporation against five members of London Greenpeace accused by McDonald’s of libel. Three activists capitulated and apologized; two persevered.

McLibel tells the story of the “McLibel Two” and the two-and-a-half-year trial in which the jeans–clad and impoverished defendants represented themselves against the best powdered-wig lawyers McDonald’s could buy.

Does the fast-food chain exploit children? Depress wages? Level South and Central American rain forests? Subject its cattle and chicken to mass slaughters? A final chapter explores these allegations and details the $98,000 verdict against the activists Morris and Steel, which is widely viewed as a moral victory for the defendants and a public relations fiasco for McDonald’s.

Environmental reporter John Vidal covered all two and a half years of the trial. In the tradition of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, he brings this David and Goliath story to life, shedding light on the corporate machinations of a secretive multinational company, the British legal system, and the implications for any individuals inclined to critique a $30-billion-a-year powerhouse.