Suggested Reading List (Partial)
- Children's Rights/Youth/Foster Care
- Civil Liberties
- Criminal Law/Civil Rights
- Death Penalty
- General Reading
- Legislative/Voting Rights/Democracy
- Environmental Law/Toxic Torts
- Immigrants' Rights
A remarkable documentary that reports of five tortured individuals who suffered most or all of their lives in America's foster-care system. Included are the sagas of teenagers and young adults abandoned in fact or in spirit by their parents, who early on entered the "system," meaning the social-services child- protective system. Each of the children caromed from caseworker to caseworker, from foster home to group home to juvenile detention center, from relatives to friends to the streets. Sometimes the relatives did more damage than the group homes, sometimes the reverse, but the damage was always compounded by rootlessness and rigidity and by the absence (or betrayal) of hope. Toth chose her subjects (Damien and Sebastian, who meet and clash in a group home in North Carolina; Jamie, also from North Carolina; Angel, from Los Angeles; and Bryan, from Chicago) both because their cases seemed representative and because they agreed to talk to her (making them, perhaps, somewhat less representative). She is able to maintain a humane objectivity in documenting their stories—being empathetic without either entirely excusing or blaming the caseworkers, the children (who have burgled, raped, and maimed, abused drugs, engaged in prostitution, and tortured animals), or even their parents, always the likeliest target. An introductory chapter sets up the social stats: increasing numbers of children in care, causes and solutions as they are best understood, mixed messages, and missed diagnoses. There is no formula here for solving the tragic problems; there are only the problems—raw, sad, always frustrating, but sometimes with unexpectedly rewarding resolutions.
This book tells a the story of an epic battle: freedom of religion vs. the drug war. On one side is a Native American who wishes to pursue his religious beliefs involving peyote, on the other is the Oregon attorney general. Both are flawed but admirable men, pursuing truth as they saw it. And Epps is not only a journalist and lawyer, but also a novelist. His ability to describe personalities and anecdotes serves him well, for although this is a legal story, the human stories within it are what make it live.
Best-selling account of the prisoner who took his case to the Supreme Court and forever changed the American criminal justice system. A history of the landmark case of James Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel. Notes, table of cases, index.
“If an obscure Florida convict named Clarence Earl Gideon had not sat down in his prison cell…to write a letter to the Supreme Court…the vast machinery of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed. But Gideon did write that letter, the Court did look into his case…and the full course of American legal history has been changed.” (Robert F. Kennedy)
On the evening of March 10, 1981, 19-year-old Wanda Fay McCoy, her head nearly severed from her body, bled to death on her bedroom floor. The small-town police who investigated the case quickly narrowed their focus on her brother-in-law, Roger Coleman. Their suspicions made sense: Wanda had been raped; Roger had once served time for sexual assault. The facts, at least superficially, all pointed to him as the killer. As the story unravels, though, the case seems less cut-and-dried, and the police's decision to focus so much of their energies on Coleman seems more and more a travesty. Yet, despite growing evidence of his innocence, Coleman was quickly tried, found guilty, and condemned to die. May God Have Mercy documents his long battle with the legal system and the ongoing efforts of his lawyers, as well as the media and numerous private citizens, to prove his innocence. John C. Tucker has written a chilling condemnation of politics as usual that is bound to challenge the assumptions of anyone who believes that the American justice system is concerned primarily with justice. Coleman's story is compelling, disturbing, and overwhelmingly frustrating. Even if you remember the case from its media coverage, you'll be shocked and horrified at this story and at the lack of concern, common sense, and basic humanity the American legal system can possess.
In No Equal Justice, leading constitutional lawyer David Cole conclusively shows that, despite a veneer of neutrality, race and class-based double standards operate in virtually every criminal justice setting, from police behavior, to jury selection, to sentencing. Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a leading thinker on constitutional law, argues that our system depends on these double standards to operate; such disparities allow the privileged to enjoy constitutional protections from police power without paying the costs associated with extending those protections across the board to minorities and the poor.
The double standards themselves inflict even greater costs on society, Cole argues, by compromising the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, and by exacerbating racial divisions nationally. The most potent force in the war against crime is the perceived legitimacy of criminal law, so if large segments of our population lack faith in the system's fairness, the system is bound to fail. Each chapter includes specific suggestions for moving beyond the double standards we have tolerated, and the book concludes with a powerful argument for rebuilding the sense of community that is so essential to a safe and healthy society.
To white Southerners, it was "a heinous and unspeakable crime" that flouted a taboo as old as slavery. To the Communist Party, which mounted the defense, the Scottsboro case was an ideal opportunity to unite issues of race and class. To jury after jury, the idea that nine black men had raped two white women on a train traveling through northern Alabama in 1931 was so self-evident that they found the Scottsboro boys guilty even after the U.S. Supreme Court had twice struck down the verdict and one of the "victims" had recanted.
This innovative and grippingly narrated work of history tells the story of a case that marked a watershed in American racial justice. Or, rather, it tells several stories. For out of dozens of period sources, Stories of Scottsboro re-creates not only what happened at Scottsboro, but the dissonant chords it struck in the hearts and minds of an entire nation.
Forty years ago, a teenaged boy named John Lewis stepped off a cotton farm in Alabama and into the epicenter of the struggle for civil rights in America. The ideals of nonviolence which guided that critical time of American history established him as one of the movement's most charismatic and courageous leaders.
In Walking with the Wind, John Lewis recounts his life with the fierce simplicity for which he is known, both in public and private. It began in rural poverty but within the bosom of a loving and resilient family. It has ranged across almost every battlefield in the most dramatic struggles for racial justice -- from Selma to Montgomery to Birmingham and beyond.
Sister Helen's book mentions along the way all the arguments against the death penalty--that it does not deter; that it is inflicted unequally on the poor, on southerners, on blacks; that it is expensive; . . . that it does not statistically reduce crime; that revenge is an evanescent and spiritually imprisoning satisfaction. The arguments are familiar, though they take on new force in the situations in which she raises them. But it is her experience that is important in the book--the need to serve life in a context of death. She tells her story with a quiet eloquence, not indulging in diatribe or personal attack. Yet we learn, by the narrative's cumulative force, how the killing process hardens, coarsens, corrupts, or deadens those who serve it.
How is it that so many students can enter law school determined to promote liberal ideals and leave three years later to counsel the least socially progressive elements of our society? Kahlenberg focuses on this remarkable transformation in his memoir of his Harvard Law School (HLS) education, chronicling his successful resistance to the pressure to practice corporate law over public-interest law. He describes the debate within the HLS faculty over the Critical Legal Studies movement, essentially a struggle between radical and conservative theorists. But this is also Kahlenberg's own personal story, providing the same inside look at HLS that Scott Turow does in One L -- the anxieties and boredom of class, the peculiarities of professors, and the fixation on grades. Unlike Turow, whose narrative ends with the first year of law school, Kahlenberg writes of his experiences from matriculation to commencement. Richard D. He paints a troubling portrait of his alma mater. The faculty is bitterly divided, prone to temper tantrums and public self-pity.... Whether hustling for academic honors or toadying to Federal judges (who might hire them as law clerks), students are intensely competitive.
This unique book focuses on the cases brought by the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award finalists and winners — trial lawyers who spend their lives fighting for people against power.
By recounting the dramatic facts of these cases, Fighting for Public Justice documents the crucial role of our jury system and trial lawyers in exposing the truth and holding wrongdoers accountable. And it proves, as TLPJ’s founders and members believe, that trial lawyers — working individually and together— can be an enormously powerful force for the public good.
This book may do for associates what Scott Turow's ONE L did for elite law schools. Surely it will become necessary reading for law students and young lawyers entering that world. But it's also a warning shot - a memo to managing partners and hiring committees. You're consuming your young at a fearful pace and a hideous cost.
A passionate, eye-opening challenge to American democracy. Here is a tough-minded exploration of why we're in trouble, starting with the basic issues of who gets heard, who gets ignored, and why. Greider shows us the realities of power in Washington today, uncovering the hidden relationships that link politicians with corporations and the rich, and that subvert the needs of ordinary citizens.
How do we put meaning back into public life? Greider shares the stories of some citizens who have managed to crack Washington's "Grand Bazaar" of influence peddling as he reveals the structures designed to thwart them. Without naiveté or cynicism, Greider shows us how the system can still be made to work for the people, and delineates the lines of battle in the struggle to save democracy. By showing us the reality of how the political decisions that shape our lives are made, William Greider explains how we can begin to take control once more.
In February, 1972, a high earthen dam, filled with coal muck, on the Middle Fork of Buffalo Creek, WV, was overtopped and collapsed, resulting in disastrous flooding that turned the hopes and dreams of a tight-knit, pre-flood downstream community into its worst nightmare. This book is a riveting, blow-by-blow account of the disaster and of the author's slow, methodical progress in building a strong legal case against the owners of the dam. Ultimately the coal company would settle a class action suit brought by the victims for $13.5 million, and thus avoid the negative publicity and savaged reputations that surely would have accompanied a public trial.
You'll never again take the produce on your supermarket shelf for granted after reading this illuminating account. At this point, the incredible shrinking paycheck has become a fact of the American worker's life. Just how little progress some of America's most disenfranchised have made since Civil War days, however, comes poignantly clear in this ably written chronicle of the 700,000 migrant workers who sometimes literally kill themselves to bring food to our tables. The book is comprised of real people talking, interspersed with Rothenberg's statistics and analysis. Although the author might have attacked his topic with an agenda, he was an outreach worker and paralegal for a federally funded legal-services program that represented farmworkers, he instead lets both sides speak. All concerned are remarkably candid, even those who regularly break the law. (Pseudonyms are used.) Contractors, for instance, speak of luring employees to work with drugs, loaning money at inflated rates of interest, and witholding tax and Social Security payments. 'Breaking the law is the only way you can make decent money," says Manuel Gomez, a contractor who finds workers for California growers. He records only some of his workers' hours and pay on the computer, then pockets the money he might otherwise have paid in Social Security or taxes. 'The truth is the worker hardly notices,' he concludes, noting most of them are illegal aliens. 'They don't even use real Social Security numbers, so we're not stealing from the workers. We're just stealing from the government. I don't see it as all that bad.' Altogether, Rothenberg interviews more than 250 people, including workers and their families, border patrolmen,political lobbyists, union organizers, coyotes who smuggle workers across the border, doctors who care for farmworkers, and growers. A fascinating portrait of an invisible class and an evocative mandate for social change.
For Fauziya Kassindja, an idyllic childhood in Togo, West Africa, sheltered from the tribal practices of polygamy and genital mutilation, ended with her beloved father's sudden death. Forced into an arranged marriage at age seventeen, Fauziya was told to prepare for kakia, the ritual also known as female genital mutilation. It is a ritual no woman can refuse. But Fauziya dared to try.
This is her story—told in her own words—of fleeing Africa just hours before the ritual kakia was to take place, of seeking asylum in America only to be locked up in U.S. prisons, and of meeting Layli Miller Bashir, a law student who became Fauziya's friend and advocate during her horrifying sixteen months behind bars. Layli enlisted help from Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law and acting director of the American University International Human Rights Clinic. In addition to devoting her own considerable efforts to the case, Musalo assembled a team to fight with her on Fauziya's behalf. Ultimately, in a landmark decision in immigration history, Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum on June 13, 1996. Do They Hear You When You Cry is her unforgettable chronicle of triumph.