"This is a book of courtroom war stories, drawn from my forty years of experience as an obscure lawyer for the underdog and the downtrodden." So begins Renegade for Justice, a memoir of a public interest lawyer driven by the cause of justice. While the stories Stephen Saltonstall tells are entertaining, they are also instructive, providing, as he says, "an insider look at the American justice system, which is rigged against the poor and people of color and tolerates police perjury."Renegade for Justice begins by telling the story of how and why a privileged kid from Cambridge, Massachusetts, broke from family tradition and devoted his professional life to defending the defenseless in a justice system that is crippled by systemic injustice. Activist lawyer Stephen Saltonstall brings readers into the world of criminal defense by recounting narratives of his cases, including a successful attack on a Massachusetts death penalty statute, appeals of two notorious homicide cases (a serial murderer and a cop-killer), an effort to save the life of a little boy whose parents refused to give him the medical treatment he needed for acute lymphocytic leukemia, free speech cases for students and an environmentalist carpenter, litigation to save critical black bear and neotropical migratory songbird habitat from US Forest Service clear-cutting, and more. In a system biased against the public interest and the underprivileged, Saltonstall gives people a model for practicing values-based law. Channeling the spirit of radicals like William Kunstler, Saltonstall writes not only for activists who want to better understand our society, but also for those thinking about becoming a lawyer. As he writes in the preface, "I hope my stories will challenge those of you-you know who you are, you who dream of soft landings in the glittering halls of boring, soul-free law firms doing the bidding of the uber-rich and powerful-to visualize the alternative, a career that's built on cases and causes that further the public interest, human rights, and care of the natural world.

This book tells the dramatic story of twenty-eight law students—one of whom was the author—who went south at the height of the civil rights era and helped change death penalty jurisprudence forever. The 1965 project was organized by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sought to prove statistically whether capital punishment in southern rape cases had been applied discriminatorily over the previous twenty years. If the research showed that a disproportionate number of African Americans convicted of raping white women had received the death penalty regardless of nonracial variables (such as the degree of violence used), then capital punishment in the South could be abolished as a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Targeting eleven states, the students cautiously made their way past suspicious court clerks, lawyers, and judges to secure the necessary data from dusty courthouse records. Trying to attract as little attention as possible, they managed—amazingly—to complete their task without suffering serious harm at the hands of white supremacists. Their findings then went to University of Pennsylvania criminologist Marvin Wolfgang, who compiled and analyzed the data for use in court challenges to death penalty convictions. The result was powerful evidence that thousands of jurors had voted on racial grounds in rape cases. This book not only tells Barrett Foerster’s and his teammates story but also examines how the findings were used before a U.S. Supreme Court resistant to numbers-based arguments and reluctant to admit that the justice system had executed hundreds of men because of their skin color. Most important, it illuminates the role the project played in the landmark Furman v. Georgia case, which led to a four-year cessation of capital punishment and a more limited set of death laws aimed at constraining racial discrimination.

Crisscrossing Manhattan, Jeremy, a New York lawyer uneasy with success, confronts his doubts through a series of encounters with the hard-edged, unpredictable life of the city. Revealed through these meetings, friendships and events are war stories of the courtroom and of the analytic couch; memories of Lenny Bruce and Jackie Robinson; the wiles of clever lawyers, Washington in-fighters, of a boss called the Soft Killer, of celebrity poker players and would-be reformers; recollections of frontier Israel and rural Georgia in the sixties. Behind Jeremy lies a brash West Side youth spent amid ethnic gangs and McCarthyism, the special ways of an only child, an idealist out of phase...

These are a few ingredients of the provocative milieu of "Short Takes," Michael Meltsner's unsettling first novel about a lawyer for whom love and work are always intertwined, a man who no longer believes in rules but continues to live by them. Jeremy is a lover who refuses to let go, a New Yorker at odds with the harsh pace and fractious spirit of his city until in the end he negotiates his own terms.

Previously published in hardcover by Random House, this novel is newly republished in paperback and eBooks by Quid Pro Books.

""Short Takes," Michael Meltsner's engaging and extremely well written first novel, creates a character of enormous vitality and considerable charm: funny, caring, searching and all-too-humanly paradoxical."
-"Boston Globe"

"In 'The Trial' Kafka's Joseph K. tries to discover what sort of crime he is charged with. In 'Short Takes' Jeremy tries to discover his innocence. The difference is interesting... 'Landscape is character, ' according to Henry James, and some of 'Short Takes' is about Jeremy's relationship to New York City. 'The most abiding problem I have about New York, he says, is the need to explain it. In Manhattan, no one can suspend disbelief... problems are too large for solution and can only be managed.'" -"The New York Times"

"The real triumph of "Short Takes" is that it not only rings true but affirms the pleasures of lawyering... Confusion is the hallmark of modern times--and deep down, both Mr. Meltsner and Jeremy are aware that the ambiguities of urban life and lawyering have a vast richness." -Tamar Lewin, in "National Law Journal"

The true and gripping account of the nine-year struggle by a small band of lawyers to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Its new edition features a 2011 Foreword by death penalty author Evan Mandery of CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as a new Preface by the author. The mission, plotted out over deli sandwiches in New York's Central Park in the early 1960s, seemed as impossible then as going to the moon: abolish capital punishment in every state. The approach would fight a war on multiple fronts, using multiple strategies. The people would be dedicated, bright, unsure, unpopular, and fascinating. This book is their personal history: not only the cases and the arguments before courts, the death row inmates and their victims, the judges and politicians urging law and order - this is the true account of the real-life lawyers from the inside. The United States indeed went to the moon, and a few years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. The victory was long-sought and sweet, and the pages of this book vividly let the reader live the struggle and the victory. And while the abolition eventually became as impermanent as the nation's presence on the moon, these dedicated attorneys certainly made a difference. This is their story. As Evan Mandery writes in his new Foreword, "In these pages, Meltsner lays bare every aspect of his and his colleagues' thinking. You will read how they handicapped their chances, which arguments they thought would work (you may be surprised), and what they thought of the Supreme Court justices who would decide the crucial cases. You will come to understand what they perceived to be the basis for support for the death penalty, and, with Meltsner's unflinching honesty, what they perceived to be the inconsistencies in their position." Mandery concludes: "It is my odd lot in life to have read almost every major book ever written about the death penalty in America. This is the best and the most important. Every serious scholar who wants to advance an argument about capital punishment in the United States - whether it is abolitionist or in favor of the death penalty, or merely a tactical assessment - cites this book. It is open and supremely accessible." And the author's "constitutional vision was years ahead of its time. His book is timeless." Part of the Legal History & Biography Series from Quid Pro Books, the new editions (in print and ebook formats) feature embedded pagination from previous editions, allowing continuity in all new formats and across all prior printings. This book has been adopted in many classes in colleges and law schools, but it is not written just for lawyers and students - it is not burdened with legal jargon and heavy legal analysis. It is accessible to a wide audience and tells the personal stories of the people involved, as well as examining the strategies and the legal and political nuances of death penalty litigation in the United States.