Not every citizen will read this book, but we’d be better off if a good many did.
A veteran of the bench hands down sobering judgments about the U.S. judicial system.
We want to think that when we have our day in court, justice will be served. In this debut collection of essays, Rakoff, drawing on two-plus decades of experience as a federal judge, suggests otherwise, describing a system “beset by hypocritical pretentions, conundrums, paradoxes, and shortcomings.” Our courts, he argues, function differently than how the Founding Fathers intended, contrary to what is portrayed in the media and in opposition to the notions of most Americans. The author comes at his topic from varying angles, arguing that eyewitness testimony is dubious; the death penalty is far from error-free (and more expensive than incarceration); and the amazing forensics portrayed on TV shows are not necessarily based on reliable science. Saliently, he also shows that many accused enter into pleas in which prosecutors hold all the cards, and a compelling minihistory of Chief Justice John Marshall illustrates how his court set the standard for a judicial system “more deferential to the executive branch…than to the legislative branch,” the echoes of which are heard today. Some of these pieces began as articles in the New York Review of Books and remain in that style. Although Rakoff sometimes uses unnecessarily dense language—e.g., “the future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing”—a law degree is not required to follow the narrative, which never slips into screed. As the author makes clear, our justice system affects all of us. We pay dearly—financially and otherwise—when people are imprisoned falsely or for longer than they should be. In addition to laying out the flaws, Rakoff offers practical solutions. Even if you do not agree with his answers, it’s hard to refute his case that we have serious problems that deserve attention.
Not every citizen will read this book, but we’d be better off if a good many did.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-28999-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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