Bibliophilia: the reading list for book lovers
Bibliophilia is a weekly post of recommended reading for law students and lawyers. The list will comprise both fiction and non-fiction books with as much variety as possible. We’re also happy to take reader submissions from you so get reading!
Author: Laurence Leamer
Genre: Non-fiction, historical, crime, race
On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car, hunting for a black man. The young men were members of Klavern 900 of the United Klans of America. They were seeking to retaliate after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict in a trial involving a black man accused of the murder of a white man. The two Klansmen found nineteen-year-old Michael Donald walking home alone. Hays and Knowles abducted him, beat him, cut his throat, and left his body hanging from a tree branch in a racially-mixed residential neighborhood….On behalf of Michael’s grieving mother, Morris Dees, the legendary civil rights lawyer and co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil suit against the members of the local Klan unit involved and the UKA, the largest Klan organization….Based on countless interviews and extensive archival research,The Lynching brings to life two dramatic trials, during which the Alabama Klan’s motives and philosophy were exposed for the evil they represent. In addition to telling a gripping and consequential story, Laurence Leamer chronicles the KKK and its activities in the second half the twentieth century, and illuminates its lingering effect on race relations in America today. [source]
The author also had a podcast on the American Bar Association Journal website recently. You can listen to it here.
Author: Salleh Buang
Genre: Non-fiction, historical, law, case study
This important and well-researched compilation of cases and materials on Malaysia Legal History was first published more than 20 years ago and had proved to be very popular and useful to first year student in the local universities. The author who taught the subject as part of the course on “Malaysia Legal System”, compiled these cases and materials in one handy volume to prevent students from having to spend too much time in search of them in the library. As can be seen form this latest second edition, the cases and materials have continued to grow over the years-rendering the subject more complex, but at the same time, making it more interesting and challenging. A wise man once said “History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” This compilation should tell us not only where we came and the circumstances that had brought us here to this particular point in time. It should also teach us to prepare for the future. [source]
Author: Baz Dreisinger
Genre: Non-fiction, journalism, social justice, crime
Baz Dreisinger goes behind bars in nine countries to investigate the current conditions in prisons worldwide…Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, Incarceration Nations is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world….Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America’s most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex….examines the world behind bars with equal parts empathy and intellect….Incarceration Nations concludes with climactic lessons about the past, present, and future of justice. [source]
There’s also a trailer/mini-interview by the author here.
Author: Eliott Behar
Genre: Non-fiction, history
On April 5, 1999, local police in Serbia found a truck floating half-submerged in the Danube River. When they pulled it to shore and opened the cargo hold they found it filled with human bodies. The truck, and the bodies, then disappeared.
The full picture would only emerge years later, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia investigated and prosecuted the chief architects of the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. It exposed a stunning secret campaign to murder Kosovo Albanians and systematically hide the evidence by transporting their bodies hundreds of kilometres away….
Title: The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials
Author: Telford Taylor
Genre: Non-fiction, history, memoir, war crimes
In 1945, the Allied nations agreed on a judicial process, rather than summary execution, to determine the fate of the Nazis following the end of World War II. Held in Nuremberg, the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi Party, the British, American, French, and Soviet leaders contributed both judges and prosecutors to the series of trials that would prosecute some of the most prominent politicians, military leaders and businessmen in Nazi Germany. This is the definitive history of the Nuremberg crimes trials by one of the key participants, Telford Taylor, the distinguished lawyer who was a member of the American prosecution staff and eventually became chief counsel. In vivid detail, Taylor portrays the unfolding events as he “saw, heard, and otherwise sensed them at the time, and not as a detached historian working from the documents might picture them.”… [source]
Author: Tim Maga
Genre: Non-fiction, history, war crimes
In the years since the Japanese war crimes trials concluded, the proceedings have been coloured by charges of racism, vengeance and guilt. In this controversial book, Tim Maga contends that in the trials good law was practiced and evil did not go unpunished. The defendents ranged from lowly Japanese Imperial Army privates to former prime ministers….Keenan and his compatriots adopted criminal court tactics and established precedents in the conduct of war crimes trials that still stand. Maga reviews the context for the trials, recounts the proceedings, and concludes that they were, in fact, decent examples of American justice and fairy play. [source]
Author: Anthony Lewis
Genre: Non-fiction, history, social justice
…the story behind Gideon v. Wainwright, in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that criminal defendants have the right to an attorney even if they cannot afford it…. [source]
Fifty years ago a poor, indignant prisoner in Florida wrote a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court – in pencil, on lined prison paper – saying that he had been denied the right to a lawyer when convicted. The court agreed to hear his case and held that the Constitution required the government to provide counsel in all serious criminal cases for defendants too poor to afford one. Clarence Earl Gideon won the right to a new trial, this time with a lawyer, and a jury acquitted him in just over an hour. [source]
