Synopses & Reviews
Since 1989, there have been over 200 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. On the surface, the release of innocent people from prison could be seen as a victory for the criminal justice system: the wrong person went to jail, but the mistake was fixed and the accused set free. A closer look at miscarriages of justice, however, reveals that such errors are not aberrations but deeply revealing, common features of our legal system.
The ten original essays in When Law Fails view wrongful convictions not as random mistakes but as organic outcomes of a misshaped larger system that is rife with faulty eyewitness identifications, false confessions, biased juries, and racial discrimination. Distinguished legal thinkers Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., and Austin Sarat have assembled a stellar group of contributors who try to make sense of justice gone wrong and to answer urgent questions. Are miscarriages of justice systemic or symptomatic, or are they mostly idiosyncratic? What are the broader implications of justice gone awry for the ways we think about law? Are there ways of reconceptualizing legal missteps that are particularly useful or illuminating? These instructive essays both address the questions and point the way toward further discussion.
When Law Fails reveals the dramatic consequences as well as the daily realities of breakdowns in the law's ability to deliver justice swiftly and fairly, and calls on us to look beyond headline-grabbing exonerations to see how failure is embedded in the legal system itself. Once we are able to recognize miscarriages of justice we will be able to begin to fix our broken legal system.
Contributors: Douglas A. Berman, Markus D. Dubber, Mary L. Dudziak, Patricia Ewick, Daniel Givelber, Linda Ross Meyer, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Austin Sarat, Jonathan Simon, and Robert Weisberg.
Review
“Algernon Austin offers sweeping, occasionally defiant, essays on the state of Black social and political thought. Achieving Blackness will provoke, inspire, irritate, and educate its readers. Austin may well be setting the agenda for a new generation of race theorists.”
-Charles Lemert,author of Dark Thoughts: Race and the Eclipse of Society
Review
“Austin does a magnificent job of advancing the field and pushes the scholarly conversation in exciting and productive directions. Beautifully written, this truly is a groundbreaking piece of work and will have a major impact on the field because it challenges leading theorists and well-established theories of race and difference.”
-David N. Pellow,author of Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago
Review
“This highly informed work addresses a complicated and difficult topic in light of solid research and common sense. It should become required reading for those who are interested in clear definitions and balanced views.”
-Wilson J. Moses,author of Creative Conflict in African American Thought
Review
“This book is engagingly written from start to finish, and, since (Austin) draws upon- and often debunks- views of other scholars, I felt like I was eavesdropping at a symposium which grew heated at times. . . . I also must confess this is the most compelling reading I've done this year.”
-Gerri Gribi,Curator, AfroAmericanHeritage.com
Review
“Algernon Austin offers sweeping, occasionally defiant, essays on the state of Black social and political thought. Achieving Blackness will provoke, inspire, irritate, and educate its readers. Austin may well be setting the agenda for a new generation of race theorists.”
- Charles Lemert, author of Dark Thoughts: Race and the Eclipse of Society
“Algernon Austin offers sweeping, occasionally defiant, essays on the state of Black social and political thought. Achieving Blackness will provoke, inspire, irritate, and educate its readers. Austin may well be setting the agenda for a new generation of race theorists.”
“Austin does a magnificent job of advancing the field and pushes the scholarly conversation in exciting and productive directions. Beautifully written, this truly is a groundbreaking piece of work and will have a major impact on the field because it challenges leading theorists and well-established theories of race and difference.”
“This highly informed work addresses a complicated and difficult topic in light of solid research and common sense. It should become required reading for those who are interested in clear definitions and balanced views.”
“This book is engagingly written from start to finish, and, since (Austin) draws upon- and often debunks- views of other scholars, I felt like I was eavesdropping at a symposium which grew heated at times. . . . I also must confess this is the most compelling reading I've done this year.”
Review
“When Law Fails provides a timely lesson in why we must remain diligent in our oversight of the legal system. This compelling collection of essays provides a stark reminder of the human cost of failure and provides a roadmap for addressing inequities in our legal system.”
-Congressman John Conyers,
Review
“Ogletree and Sarat include some of the best contemporary scholars within the field of law and society in this collection that highlights numerous historical examples of laws failure to bring justice. The detail of each contribution is nearly flawless, as is the analysis. This edited volume is a wonderful addition to the various fields within jurisprudence. . . . Highly recommended.”
-Choice,
Review
“Ogletree and Sarat have assembled an outstanding group of contributors for these original essays.”
-Library Journal,
Review
“. . . the essays are interesting, informative and thought-provoking.”
-New York Law Journal,
Review
“The advent of DNA evidence has revealed serious flaws in the criminal justice system, resulting in the conviction of innocent people. Anyone concerned about correcting the unfairness and imbalance in the system should read this book.”
-Steve Bright,President, Southern Center for Human Rights
Synopsis
Achieving Blackness offers an important examination of the complexities of race and ethnicity in the context of black nationalist movements in the United States. By examining the rise of the Nation of Islam, the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the “Afrocentric era” of the 1980s through 1990s Austin shows how theories of race have shaped ideas about the meaning of “Blackness” within different time periods of the twentieth-century.
Achieving Blackness provides both a fascinating history of Blackness and a theoretically challenging understanding of race and ethnicity.
Austin traces how Blackness was defined by cultural ideas, social practices and shared identities as well as shaped in response to the social and historical conditions at different moments in American history. Analyzing black public opinion on black nationalism and its relationship with class, Austin challenges the commonly held assumption that black nationalism is a lower class phenomenon. In a refreshing and final move, he makes a compelling argument for rethinking contemporary theories of race away from the current fascination with physical difference, which he contends sweeps race back to its misconceived biological underpinnings. Achieving Blackness is a wonderful contribution to the sociology of race and African American Studies.
About the Author
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., is Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute at Harvard Law School. He is co-editor (with Austin Sarat) of
From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America and
When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice (both from NYU Press).
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is author or editor of more than seventy books, including ,When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition and (with Charles Ogletree) The Road to Abolition? On the Future of Capital Punishment (NYU Press, 2009).