2015 Book Review
lawyer really can make a difference.
Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the
World by Linda Hirshman (Harper). I suspect that the subtitle
to this excellent dual biography was foisted on Hirshman, a
lawyer and an accomplished scholar. “Sisters in Law” is not
so much about how the first two women on the Supreme
Court changed the world as about how they held the
barbarians at the gates when it mattered. Hirshman implies
that Justice O’Connor played defense so Justice Ginsburg
could go on offense. Such an interpretation is an injustice
to all three women: the justices and the author are simply
really, really good at their jobs.
Pay Any Price by James Risen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Risen – A Pulitzer Prize winner for reporting – posits the
existence of a “homeland security-industrial complex” to join
the growing pantheon of complexes formed when private
industry performs a government function. Risen chronicles
the rise of a thriving trillion dollar industry feeding on the
destruction of privacy and the decline of a once-great open
society in the Americas. This complex is scary. Risen makes
a compelling case that our efforts at homeland security are
another case of destroying a village to liberate it.
Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court
Nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood
(Knopf). Publishers seem to think that no one will buy a
well-researched, extremely well-written, and important book
unless it chronicles a story that somehow changed the
nation, or the world, or – this really sells – a universe far,
far away. Wil Haygood’s tale of the Marshall nomination
is important, but sometimes the writing is forced and the
research lacking. (Roosevelt was NOT president when World
War II ended.) Even so, the story is important. The book
contains much information that cannot be
found elsewhere. And perhaps the subtitle
hype is necessary.
America’s Biggest Corruption Bust by Terrence Hake
and Wayne Klatt (Ankerwycke). Who doesn’t love to see
corruption weeded out? The 70+ indictments for bribery and
tax evasion that culminate the investigation detailed in this
book, unfortunately, were handed down against 103 lawyers,
judges, and court employees in Cook County, Illinois. The
book is chilling. Even more so given current criticisms of
the investigation of the shooting of Laquan McDonald by
Chicago police.
Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future by
Richard Susskind (Oxfoed University Press). Susskind
positions himself as a futurist focusing on the legal
profession. I have no idea what futurists do, other than make
predictions that give them fame as oracles when they come
to pass. Susskind’s predictions are always entertaining and
thought-provoking. In “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” he seems to
have realized that he could have killed his franchise if the
prediction of his last book, “The End of Lawyers?,” came to
pass. Susskind, the IT advisor to the Lord Chief Justice of
England, argues that legal work can be broken down into
13 processes. So far, lawyers dominate three (strategy,
tactics, advocacy). Clients can (and do) outsource the other
tasks to entities that perform them faster and at less cost.
Whither lawyers? They survive by acquiring skills in risk
management, knowledge engineering, and legal process
analysis.
Michael Jablonski practices political law. He is a Presidential
Doctoral Fellow at Georgia State University in Transcultural
Conflict and Violence, as well as a research affiliate at
Georgia Tech. In 2015 the University of Illinois Press
published “The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy
of Internet Freedom,” which he co-authored with Shawn
Powers.
Abraham: The World’s First (But Certainly
Not Last) Jewish Lawyer
by Alan M.
Dershowitz (Schocken). What author
wouldn’t die for a first sentence like,
“Abraham, the world’s first Jew, was
also the world’s first lawyer, arguing with
God on behalf of the doomed sinners
of Sodom?” I would have loved to have
been in the litigation section of Abraham’s
law firm. They only did the biggest cases.
The research is impeccable and the wit
is intelligent, as in anything Dershowitz
writes.
Operation Greylord: The True Story of
an Untrained Undercover Agent and
The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association
December 2015
THE ATLANTA LAWYER
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