Near the beginning of The Autobiography of an Execution, David Dow lays his cards on the table. “People think that because I am against the death penalty and don’t think people should be executed, that I forgive those people for what they did. Well, it isn’t my place to forgive people, and if it were, I probably wouldn’t. …
Lawyer Biographies
All Rise is the authorized biography of Alan Page, a remarkable man who became a pioneer for his race without setting out to be one. He grew up in Canton, Ohio, in the shadow of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, into which he would later be inducted after his stellar NFL career. After leading Notre Dame to …
The McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona: An O.K. Corral Obituary (A. C. Greene Series)
On a chilly October afternoon in 1881, two brothers named Tom and Frank McLaury were gunned down on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona, by the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. The deadly event became known as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and in a quirk of fate, the brothers’ names became well-known, but only as bad …
Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA
The “revealing” (The New Yorker) insider history of the CIA from a lawyer with a “front-row seat on the hidden world of intelligence” (The Washington Post). Former CIA director George J. Tenet called Company Man a “must read.”Over the course of a thirty-four-year (1976-2009) career, John Rizzo served under eleven CIA directors and seven presidents, ultimately becoming a …
The gripping story of one American lawyer’s obsessive crusade—waged at any cost—against Big Oil on behalf of the poor farmers and indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest.Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in …
In The Story of My Life recounts, and reflects on, his more than fifty years as a corporate, labor, and criminal lawyer, including the most celebrated and notorious cases of his day: establishing the legal right of a union to strike in the Woodworkers’ Conspiracy Case; exposing, on behalf of the United Mine Workers, the shocking conditions in …
Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first woman justice, was called the most powerful woman in America. She became the axis on which the Supreme Court turned, and it was often said that to gauge the direction of American law, one need look only to O’Connor’s vote. Drawing on information gleaned from once-private papers, hundreds of interviews, and the insight …
While there is no single hero of the Minnesota women’s movement, Rosalie Wahl, the first woman on the Minnesota Supreme Court, changed the way her fellow judges saw the cases they decided. A champion of both women’s rights and civil rights, she brought new attention to the problems that faced women impoverished by divorce, women abused by their …
This book examines the judicial opinions and criminal justice policy impact of Justice John Paul Stevens, the U.S. Supreme Court’s most prolific opinion author during his 35-year career on the nation’s highest court. Although Justice Stevens, a Republican appointee of President Gerald Ford, had a professional reputation as a corporate antitrust law attorney, he immediately asserted himself as …
Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice
“I knew she’d be trouble.”So quipped Antonin Scalia about Sonia Sotomayor at the Supreme Court’s annual end-of-term party in 2010. It’s usually the sort of event one would expect from such a grand institution, with gentle parodies of the justices performed by their law clerks, but this year Sotomayor decided to shake it up―flooding the room with salsa …