Wilbert Rideau, an award-winning journalist who spentforty-four years in prison, delivers a remarkable memoir of crime,punishment, and ultimate triumph. After killing a bank teller in a moment of panic during a botchedrobbery, Wilbert Rideau was sentenced to death at the age ofnineteen. He spent several years on death row at Angola before hissentence was commuted to life, where, as editor of the prisonnewsmagazine The Angolite, he undertook a mission to expose andreformLouisiana's iniquitousjustice system from the inside. Vivid,incisive, and compassionate, this is a detailed account of prisonlife and a man who accepted responsibility for his actions andworked to redeem himself. It is a story about not giving up;finding love in unexpected places; the power of kindness; and theability to do good, no matter where you are.
One Saturday morning in February 1972, an impoundment dam ownedby the Pittston Coal Company burst, sending a 130 million gallon,25 foot tidal wave of water, sludge, and debris crashing intosouthern West Virginia's Buffalo Creek hollow. It was one of thedeadliest floods in U.S. history. 125 people were killed instantly,more than 1,000 were injured, and over 4,000 were suddenlyhomeless. Instead of accepting the small settlements offered by thecoal company's insurance offices, a few hundred of the survivorsbanded together to sue. This is the story of their triumph overincredible odds and corporate irresponsibility, as told by GeraldM. Stern, who as a young lawyer and took on the case and won.
There is no more powerful, detested, misunderstood AfricanAmerican in our public life than Clarence Thomas. SupremeDiscomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas is a hauntingportrait of an isolated and complex man, savagely reviled by muchof the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society,internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and ruralpoverty in Georgia, to elite educational institutions, to thepinnacle of judicial power. His staunchly conservative positions oncrime, abortion, and, especially, affirmative action have exposedhim to charges of heartlessness and hypocrisy, in that he ishimself the product of a broken home who manifestly benefited fromracially conscious admissions policies. Supreme Discomfort is a superbly researched and reportedwork that features testimony from friends and foes alike who havenever spoken in public about Thomas before—including a candidconversation with his fellow justice and ideological ally, AntoninScalia. It offers a long-overdue windo
Simple Justice is the definitive history ofthe landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the epicstruggle for racial equality in this country. Combining intensiveresearch with original interviews with surviving participants,Richard Kluger provides the fullest possible view of the human andlegal drama in the years before 1954, the cumulative assaults onthe white power structure that defended segregation, and thestep-by-step establishment of a team of inspired black lawyers thatcould successfully challenge the law. Now, on the fiftiethanniversary of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that endedlegal segregation, Kluger has updated his work with a new finalchapter covering events and issues that have arisen since the bookwas first published, including developments in civil rights andrecent cases involving affirmative action, which rose directly outof Brown v. Board of Education.
From prosecuting (and defending) murderers in the Bronx tohandling the public and private problems of Manhattan’s elite, Mouthpiece recounts the colorful adventures of New YorkCity’s ultimate legal operator. “In the pages before us, the Counselor tells a saga’s worth oftales of the city. As the saying goes, he’s got a million ofthem.” — Tom Wolfe, from his Introduction Edward Hayes is that unusual combination: the likable lawyer, onewho could have stepped off the stages of Guys and Dolls or Chicago . Mouthpiece is his story—an irreverent,entertaining, and revealing look at the practice of law in moderntimes and a social and political anatomy of New York City. Itrecounts Hayes’s childhood in the tough Irish sections of Queensand his eventual escape to the University of Virginia and then toColumbia Law School. Not at all white-shoe-firm material, Hayesheaded to the hair-raising, crime-ridden South Bronx of themidseventies—first as a homicide prosecutor and then as a defenseattor
People with disabilities forging the newest and last humanrights movement of the century.
“The best legal read . . . in decades. A brilliantlyentertaining work, both for the lawyer and the layman.” Washington Times Robert S. Bennett has been a lawyer for more than forty years. Inthat time, he’s taken on dozens of high-pro?le and groundbreakingcases and emerged as the go-to guy for the nation’s elite. BobBennett gained international recognition as one of America’s bestlawyers for leading the defense of President Bill Clinton in thePaula Jones case. He has always fought for justice. This is hisstory. Born in Brooklyn and an amateur boxer in his youth, Bennett hasoften brought his street-?ghter’s mentality to the courtroom. Hiscase history is a who’s who of ?gures who have dominated legalheadlines: superlobbyist Tommy Corcoran, former secretaries ofdefense Clark Clifford and Caspar Weinberger, Marge Schott, and,most recently, New York Times reporter Judith Miller and formerWorld Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. Throughout the telling of his life in court, Be
Can the police strip-search a woman who has been arrested fora minor traffic violation? Can a magazine publish an embarrassingphoto of you without your permission? Does your boss have the rightto read your email? Can a company monitor its employees'off-the-job lifestyles--and fire those who drink, smoke, or livewith a partner of the same sex? Although the word privacy does notappear in the Constitution, most of us believe that we have aninalienable right to be left alone. Yet in arenas that range fromthe battlefield of abortion to the information highway, privacy isunder siege. In this eye-opening and sometimes hair-raising book,Alderman and Kennedy survey hundreds of recent cases in whichordinary citizens have come up against the intrusions ofgovernment, businesses, the news media, and their own neighbors. Atonce shocking and instructive, up-to-date and rich in historicalperspective, The Right to Private is an invaluable guide toone of the most charged issues of our time.
In this remarkable book, a national bestseller in hardcover,Sandra Day O’Connor explores the law, her life as a Supreme CourtJustice, and how the Court has evolved and continues to function,grow, and change as an American institution. Tracing some of theorigins of American law through history, people, ideas, andlandmark cases, O’Connor sheds new light on the basics, exploringthrough personal observation the evolution of the Court andAmerican democratic traditions. Straight-talking, clear-eyed,inspiring, The Majesty of the Law is more than a reflection onO’Connor’s own experiences as the first female Justice of theSupreme Court; it also reveals some of the things she has learnedand believes about American law and life—reflections gleaned overher years as one of the most powerful and inspiring women inAmerican history.
The Real ACT is the only book with insider test-taking tipsand strategy, practice tests, and insight from the makers of theACT. This comprehensive guide has everything one needs to knowabout the ACT-test content, structure, and format info! The only guide that includes 5 previously administered,full-length ACT tests written by the actual test maker (including 2NEW practice tests) ACT content and procedures you'll follow when actually taking thetest Valuable information about tuition payment plans All the question types you can expect to find on the ACT Suggestions on how you might approach the questions andPeterson's tried-and-true test-taking strategies and tips
In pursuit of fairness at any cost, we have created a societyparalyzed by legal fear: Doctors are paranoid and principalspowerless. Little league coaches, scared of liability, stopvolunteering. Schools and hospitals start to crumble. The commongood fades, replaced by a cacophony of people claiming their“individual rights.” By turns funny and infuriating, this startling book dissects thedogmas of fairness that allow self-interested individuals to bullythe rest of society. Philip K. Howard explains how, trying to honorindividual rights, we removed the authority needed to maintain afree society. Teachers don’t even have authority to maintain orderin the classroom. With no one in charge, the safe course is toavoid any possible risk. Seesaws and diving boards are removed.Ridiculous warning labels litter the American landscape: “Caution:Contents Are Hot.” Striving to protect “individual rights,” we ended up losing muchof our freedom. When almost any decision that someone disagreeswi
'We have no choice but to go fight,' WaLty said,his voice still hoarse, his delivery slow. 'We try to piecetogether some proof. We go to court and fight Likehell, and when we Lose we can tell our clients that we foughtthe good fight. In every Lawsuit,somebody wins, somebody Loses.Sure, we'll get our butts kicked, but at this point I'drather walk out of the courtroom with my head upthan deal with sanctions and malpractice claims.'
For the first time, a collection of dissents from the mostfamous Supreme Court cases If American history can truly be traced through the majoritydecisions in landmark Supreme Court cases, then what about thedissenting opinions? In issues of race, gender, privacy, workers'rights, and more, would advances have been impeded or failuresrectified if the dissenting opinions were in fact the majorityopinions? In offering thirteen famous dissents-from Marbury v. Madison andBrown v. Board of Education to Griswold v. Connecticut and Lawrencev. Texas, each edited with the judges' eloquence preserved-renownedSupreme Court scholar Mark Tushnet reminds us that court decisionsare not pronouncements issued by the utterly objective, they are infact political statements from highly intelligent but partisanpeople. Tushnet introduces readers to the very concept of dissentin the courts and then provides useful context for each case,filling in gaps in the Court's history and providing an overview ofthe issues at
Sweeping and important.... Provides a fascinating vision ofjustice and history. --The Washington Post Book World From the head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission comes alandmark study of the ways in which prejudice has shaped Americanjustice from the Civil War era to the present. With an ear tuned tothe social subtext of every judicial decision, Mary Frances Berryexamines a century's worth of appellate cases, ranging from anineteenth-century Alabama case in which a white woman was deniedher divorce petition because an affair between a white man (herhusband) and a black woman (his lover) was "of no consequence," tosuch recent, high-profile cases as the William Kennedy Smith andO.J. Simpson trials. By turns shocking, moving, ironic, and tragic,each tale ends in the laying down of law. And because the lawperpetuates myths of race, gender, and class, they are stories thataffect the lives of us all.
With profound insight into the complexities of the humanexperience, Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport organized a mass ofresearch to produce a landmark study on the roots and nature ofprejudice. First published in 1954, The Nature of Prejudice remainsthe standard work on discrimination. Now this classic study isoffered in a special unabridged edition with a new introduction byKenneth Clark of Columbia University and a new preface by ThomasPettigrew of Harvard University.Allport’s comprehensive andpenetrating work examines all aspects of this age-old problem: itsroots in individual and social psychology, its varieties ofexpression, its impact on the individuals and communities. Heexplores all kinds of prejudice-racial, religious, ethnic, economicand sexual-and offers suggestions for reducing the devastatingeffects of discrimination.The additional material by Clark andPettigrew updates the social-psychological research in prejudiceand attests to the enduring values of Allport’s original theoriesand