You watched The People v. O.J. Simpson. Now read the explosive inside story in this behind-the-scenes account of the trial. From June 13, 1994, to October 3, 1995, Robert Shapiro stood in the middle of a drama that held millions of Americans in thrall. In this book, the architect of the defense strategy tells the inside story of the O.J. Simpson trial from the beginning. With candor, wit, and compassion, the man who assembled the "dream team" brings to light the details of what has been called "the trial of the century," giving us revealing glimpses of the defendant and the others whose names have become so familiar: Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Marcia Clark, Judge Lance Ito, Chris Darden. Search for Justice deepens our understanding of the role and duty of a defense attorney, the "reasonable doubt" conclusion of the jury, and the place this story occupies in our culture.
The Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia research project (coordinated by Zubaan and supported by the International Development Research Centre) brings together, for the first time in the region, a vast body of knowledge on this important - yet silenced - subject. Six country volumes (one each on Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and two on India, as well as two standalone volumes) comprising over fifty research papers and two book-length studies, detail the histories of sexual violence and look at the systemic, institutional, societal, individual and community structures that work together to perpetuate impunity for perpetrators. The essays in this volume examine history and contemporary politics to understand the root causes of sexual violence in Sri Lanka. They look at the polarization created around ethnic and linguistic identities during the three-decades of ethnic conflict, but also scrutinize the routine violence of communities towards their own women in daily life. The authors argue that in this transitional post-war phase, Sri Lankan women must not only be treated as victims, but as agents of change. The writers highlight a hitherto unaddressed aspect of sexual violence: that of the structures that enable impunity on the part of perpetrators, be they security personnel and paramilitary forces, members of armed rebel groups, gangs, local politicians and police or ordinary citizens including close family members. They demonstrate how impunity for perpetrators is both a failure of the formal justice process and a product of individual, community and social conditions and indeed the choices that victims and families make that promote silence over truth. At the end of more than a quarter century of conflict that has left some 100,000 dead, 50,000 women-headed households struggling to survive, as well as countless victims and survivors of sexual violence, the calls for justice can no longer be ignored.
A close reading of each of the six figures with an analysis of some overarching questions such as the liminal condition of political transitions and the nature of justice.
U.S. intervention in the Philippines began with the little-known 1899 Philippine-American War. Using the war as its departure point in analyzing U.S.—Philippine relations, Vestiges of War retrieves this willfully forgotten event and places it where it properly belongs—as the catalyst that led to increasing U.S. interventionism and expansionism in the Asia Pacific region. This seminal, multidisciplinary anthology examines the official American nationalist story of "benevolent assimilation" and fraternal tutelage in its half century of colonial occupation of the Philippines. Integrating critical and visual art essays, archival and contemporary photographs, dramatic plays, and poetry to address the complex Philippine and U.S. perspectives and experiences, the essayists compellingly recount the consequences of American colonialism in the Philippines. Vestiges of War will force readers to reshape their views on what has been a deliberately obscure but significant phase in the histories of both countries, one which continues to haunt the present. Contributors: Genara Banzon, Santiago Bose, Ben Cabrera, Renato Constantino, Doreen Fernandez, Eric Gamalinda, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Jessica Hagedorn, Reynaldo Ileto, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, Paul Pfeiffer, Christina Quisumbing, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Kidlat Tahimik, Mark Twain, and Jim Zwick.
The civil rights era was a time of pervasive change in American political and social life. Among the decisive forces driving change were lawyers, who wielded the power of law to resolve competing concepts of order and equality and, in the end, to hold out the promise of a new and better nation. The Search for Justice is a look the role of the lawyers throughout the period, focusing on one of the central issues of the time: school segregation. The most notable participants to address this issue were the public interest lawyers of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, whose counselors brought lawsuits and carried out appeals in state and federal courts over the course of twenty years. But also playing a part in the story were members of the bar who defended Jim Crow laws explicitly or implicitly and, in some cases, also served in state or federal government; lawyers who sat on state and federal benches and heard civil rights cases; and, finally, law professors who analyzed the reasoning of the courts in classrooms and public forums removed from the fray. With rich, copiously researched detail, Hoffer takes readers through the interactions of these groups, setting their activities not only in the context of the civil rights movement but also of their full political and legal legacies, including the growth of corporate private legal practice after World War II and the expansion of the role of law professors in public discourse, particularly with the New Deal. Seeing the civil rights era through the lens of law enables us to understand for the first time the many ways in which lawyers affected the course and outcome of the movement.
In 1954, two college students were hiking along a creek outside of Boulder, Colorado, when they stumbled upon the body of a murdered young woman. Who was this woman? What had happened to her? The initial investigation turned up nothing, and the girl was buried in a local cemetery with a gravestone that read, "Jane Doe, April 1954, Age About 20 Years." Decades later, historian Silvia Pettem formed a partnership with law enforcement and forensic experts and set in motion the events that led to Jane Doe's exhumation and eventual identification, as well as the identity of her probable killer. The 2023 paperback edition includes an epilogue with updated information on how the mystery finally was solved.
** Chosen by Oprah Daily as one of the Best Books to Pick Up in May 2021 ** 'Fast-paced but nuanced ... impeccably researched ... a much-needed book' The Guardian ''[S]o dystopian and apocalyptic that you can hardly believe what you are reading. ... But the story [it] tells is an essential one, with just a glimmer of hope in it. Because of the work of Ellsworth and many others, America is finally staring this appalling chapter of its history in the face. It's not a pretty sight.' Sunday Times A gripping exploration of the worst single incident of racial violence in American history, timed to coincide with its 100th anniversary. On 31 May 1921, in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mob of white men and women reduced a prosperous African American community, known as Black Wall Street, to rubble, leaving countless dead and unaccounted for, and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed. But along with the bodies, they buried the secrets of the crime. Scott Ellsworth, a native of Tulsa, became determined to unearth the secrets of his home town. Now, nearly 40 years after his first major historical account of the massacre, Ellsworth returns to the city in search of answers. Along with a prominent African American forensic archaeologist whose family survived the riots, Ellsworth has been tasked with locating and exhuming the mass graves and identifying the victims for the first time. But the investigation is not simply to find graves or bodies - it is a reckoning with one of the darkest chapters of American history. '[A] riveting, painful-to-read account of a mass crime that, to our everlasting shame ... has avoided justice. Ellsworth's book presents us with a clear history of the Tulsa massacre and with that rendering, a chance for atonement ... Readers of this book will fervently hope we take that opportunity.' Washington Post
A nonfiction mystery dwelling on timeless themes: an individual’s stand against corruption, the complexity of the human heart. Whether gunning down a warthog, raising the beams he'd hewn himself for a new church, or standing up for landless refugees and abused girls, Father John Kaiser was a figure larger than life. He was fierce in his commitments, devoted to the poor and displaced, and fearless—what some would call reckless—in the pursuit of justice. For this he was beloved by his parishioners, seen as a loose cannon by his superiors in the church, and despised by Kenya's strongmen under the tyrannical leadership of Daniel arap Moi. When Kaiser was discovered dead on a remote roadside in the bush, the FBI ruled it a suicide. Kenyans were sure he'd been murdered. In a new Kenya, post-Moi, it would fall to Charles Mbuthi Gathenji, a prominent dissident and the son of a man himself murdered for his beliefs, to find out what really happened to Father John Kaiser.
