Law Biography

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.

Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice". Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen? In The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past 70 years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy.

Nathaniel Carter was stunned by the verdict: guilty - with 25 years to life in prison. To the police, it was an open-and-shut case. To Carter's family and a few concerned friends, it would become a crusade for justice.

Jim Gash's comfortable life as a Los Angeles lawyer and law professor nearly ensured that he and Henry, a Ugandan boy languishing in prison for two murders he didn't commit, would never meet. Henry was losing hope and prayed for a sign from God. Halfway around the world, Jim listened to best-selling author of Love Does Bob Goff encourage lawyers to use their legal training to help imprisoned children in Africa. Jim felt an irresistible urge to respond to this call.

Author Bryan Garner's friendship with Justice Scalia was instigated by celebrated writer David Foster Wallace and strengthened over their shared love of language. Despite their differing viewpoints on everything from gun control to the use of contractions, their literary and personal relationship flourished. Justice Scalia even officiated at Garner's wedding. In this humorous, touching, and surprisingly action-packed memoir, Garner gives a firsthand insight into the mind, habits, and faith of one of the most famous and misunderstood judges in the world.

Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is a Black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist. Corey Robin - one of the foremost analysts of the right - delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches.

A lively collection of wilder-than-fiction poaching stories from across Canada and the US, including insights from investigating officers involved in real poaching situations: Get ready to hear some of the wildest true crime imaginable. Showcasing fish and wildlife poaching stories from every province and territory in Canada and every state in the United States, decorated fishery officer Randy Nelson offers a thrilling look into a dangerous industry.

On a November night in 1990, Cathy Robertson is murdered in her home outside Chillicothe, Missouri. After law enforcement conduct a haphazard investigation, the sheriff’s office puts the case in the hands of a Kansas City private eye with his own agenda. In a close-knit town still reeling from the aftereffects of the farming crisis, friends and neighbors abruptly fracture into opposing camps. Mark Woodworth, a Robertson family neighbor, eventually receives four life sentences for a crime that a growing group of local supporters believe he didn’t commit.

The Gwinnett County, Georgia, Police Department was formed by tough, honorable men who were brought in to clean up the county after the sheriff made moonshining his personal business. Late one night in spring of 1964, the police in Gwinnett County - and everywhere - learned just how far that respect would go in saving their lives in a tight spot. Officers Jesse Gravitt, Ralph Davis, and Jerry Everett responded to a report of suspicious activity on a desolate country road named Arc. What they found was a kind of criminal they were completely unprepared for.

El fascinante libro de Selenny Espinal, RAÍCES Y ALAS, relata sus luchas desde una infancia difícil en República Dominicana hasta una "mejor" vida en los Estados Unidos. Selenny luchó contra el acoso escolar, la discriminación y una vida familiar problemática debido a la pobreza y las expectativas sociales.

In 2009, Jared Fishman was a young prosecutor working on low-level civil rights cases in the justice department when a file landed on his desk. That folder contained two items: a story from The Nation magazine looking into mysterious deaths in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and an autopsy report for a man named Henry Glover, whose charred remains were found in a burned-out car two weeks after the storm. The autopsy report, bafflingly, listed no cause of death.

As William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.” This observation seems especially true in matters of family, when the fury between generations is often never resolved and instead secretly carried, a wound that cannot heal. For David Berg, this is truer than for most, and once you listen to the story of his family, you will understand why he held it privately for so long and why the betrayals between parent and child can be the most wrenching of all.

John Marshall (1755 - 1835) was arguably the most important judicial figure in American history. As the fourth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from 1801 to 1835, he helped move the Court from the fringes of power to the epicenter of constitutional government. His great opinions in cases like Marbury v. Madison and McCulloch v. Maryland are still part of the working discourse of constitutional law in America.

In Sicily, on March 12, 1909, four gunshots thundered in the night. Two men fled, and investigators soon discovered who they had killed: Giuseppe Petrosino, the legendary American detective whose exploits in New York were celebrated even in Italy. Veteran New York City journalist and historian Paul Moses explores the lives of the nationally celebrated detectives who followed in the slain Petrosino's footsteps as leaders of the New York City investigative squad: Anthony Vachris, Charles Corrao, and Michael Fiaschetti.

This fascinating book covers true tales in the life and career of a Sheriff's Department captain in New Hanover County, North Carolina. Mark Vincent was the captain of the county jail for most of his career but that title was sorely inadequate in describing what his job entailed. The stories run the gamut from humorous to frightening to sad to unbelievable. But truth, as is often stated, is stranger than fiction. If you think there is nothing new under the sun in law enforcement, well, there is always something. Mark Vincent has had a remarkable career, but it's certain there are many days ...

When Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court in 1991, he found with dismay that it was interpreting a very different Constitution from the one the framers had written - the one that had established a federal government manned by the people's own elected representatives, charged with protecting citizens' inborn rights while leaving them free to work out their individual happiness themselves, in their families, communities, and states.

"No more dramatic courtroom scene has ever been enacted," reported the Syracuse Herald on May 22, 1915, as it covered "the greatest libel suit in history", a battle fought between former President Theodore Roosevelt and the leader of the Republican party. Roosevelt, the boisterous and mostly beloved legendary American hero, had accused his former friend and ally, now turned rival, William Barnes of political corruption. The furious Barnes responded by suing Roosevelt for an enormous sum that could have financially devastated him.

In this very personal work - adapted from the original number one best seller, which the New York Times calls "as compelling as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so" - acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom.

Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500.

Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison - a work that represents the harrowing experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.