aThe notion . . . that miscarriages of justice are not simply
idiosyncratic instances, but are rather part of the ordinary
machinery of law, is a crucial insight, one that deserves this kind
of book-length treatment.a
--James MaMartell, author of "Subverting the Leviathan: Reading
Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat"
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 lawasability 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.
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