Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All

Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All

Author: Robert L. Tsai

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2024-03-12

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0393867846

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How four Supreme Court cases in recent years—all argued and won by one indomitable lawyer—are central to the pursuit of equal justice in America. Stephen Bright emerged on the scene as a cause lawyer in the early decades of mass incarceration, when inflammatory politics and harsh changes to criminal justice policy were crashing down on the most vulnerable members of society. He dedicated his career to unleashing social change by representing clients that society had long ago discarded, and advocated for all to receive a fair trial. In Demand the Impossible, Robert L. Tsai traces Bright’s remarkable career to explore the legal ideas that were central to his relentless pursuit of equal justice. For nearly forty years, Bright led the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit that provided legal aid to incarcerated people and worked to improve conditions within the justice system. He argued four capital cases before the US Supreme Court—and won each one, despite facing an increasingly hostile bench. With each victory, he brought to light how the law itself had become corrupted by the country’s thirst for severe punishment, exposing prosecutorial misconduct, continuing racial inequality, inadequate safeguards for people with intellectual disabilities, and the shameful quality of legal representation for the poor. Organized around these four major Supreme Court cases, each narrated in vivid and dramatic detail, Tsai’s essential account explores the racism built into the criminal justice system and the incredible advancements one lawyer and his committed allies made for equal rights. An electrifying work of legal history, Demand the Impossible reveals how change can be won in even the most challenging times and how seemingly small victories can go on to have outsized effects.


Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation

Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation

Author: Robert L. Tsai

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0393652033

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“A work of striking political and legal imagination.” —Aziz Rana, author of The Two Faces of American Freedom Robert L. Tsai offers a stirring account of how legal ideas that aren’t necessarily about equality have often been used to overcome resistance to justice and remain vital today. From the oppression of emancipated slaves after the Civil War, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, to President Trump’s ban on Muslim travelers, Tsai applies lessons from past struggles to pressing contemporary issues.


Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781590318737

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The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.


Equal Justice

Equal Justice

Author: Frederick Wilmot-Smith

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0674243730

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A philosophical and legal argument for equal access to good lawyers and other legal resources. Should your risk of wrongful conviction depend on your wealth? We wouldn’t dream of passing a law to that effect, but our legal system, which permits the rich to buy the best lawyers, enables wealth to affect legal outcomes. Clearly justice depends not only on the substance of laws but also on the system that administers them. In Equal Justice, Frederick Wilmot-Smith offers an account of a topic neglected in theory and undermined in practice: justice in legal institutions. He argues that the benefits and burdens of legal systems should be shared equally and that divergences from equality must issue from a fair procedure. He also considers how the ideal of equal justice might be made a reality. Least controversially, legal resources must sometimes be granted to those who cannot afford them. More radically, we may need to rethink the centrality of the market to legal systems. Markets in legal resources entrench pre-existing inequalities, allocate injustice to those without means, and enable the rich to escape the law’s demands. None of this can be justified. Many people think that markets in health care are unjust; it may be time to think of legal services in the same way.


America’s Forgotten Constitutions

America’s Forgotten Constitutions

Author: Robert L. Tsai

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014-04-29

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0674059956

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Robert Tsai’s history invites readers into the circle of defiant groups who refused to accept the Constitution’s definition of who “We the People” are and how their authority should be exercised. It is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists.


Just Pursuit

Just Pursuit

Author: Laura Coates

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1982173769

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"A ... true story and ... account of bias in the courtroom from CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates, recounting her time as a Black female prosecutor for the US Department of Justice"--


Law's Infamy

Law's Infamy

Author: Austin Sarat

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-12-21

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1479812102

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An analysis of how problematic laws ought to be framed and considered From the murder of George Floyd to the systematic dismantling of voting rights, our laws and their implementation are actively shaping the course of our nation. But however abhorrent a legal decision might be—whether Dred Scott v. Sanford or Plessy v. Ferguson—the stories we tell of the law’s failures refer to their injustice and rarely label them in the language of infamy. Yet in many instances, infamy is part of the story law tells about citizens’ conduct. Such stories of individual infamy work on both the social and legal level to stigmatize and ostracize people, to mark them as unredeemably other. Law’s Infamy seeks to alter that course by making legal actions and decisions the subject of an inquiry about infamy. Taken together, the essays demonstrate how legal institutions themselves engage in infamous actions and urge that scholars and activists label them as such, highlighting the damage done when law itself acts infamously and focus of infamous decisions that are worthy of repudiation. Law's Infamy asks when and why the word infamy should be used to characterize legal decisions or actions. This is a much-needed addition to the broader conversation and questions surrounding law’s complicity in evil.


ABA Standards for Criminal Justice

ABA Standards for Criminal Justice

Author: American Bar Association

Publisher:

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 9781570737138

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"Project of the American Bar Association, Criminal Justice Standards Committee, Criminal Justice Section"--T.p. verso.


Race and the Jury

Race and the Jury

Author: Hiroshi Fukurai

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1489911278

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In this timely volume, the authors provide a penetrating analysis of the institutional mechanisms perpetuating the related problems of minorities' disenfranchisement and their underrepresentation on juries.