February 23, 2020

Happy Black History Month! Today’s book rec is A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law. This is a transcript of a discussion between Sherilynn Ifill (from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), Loretta Lynch (the former US Attorney General), Bryan Stevenson (a death penalty criminal defense lawyer), and Anthony C. Thompson, a law professor. It’s a fascinating conversation about the challenges of fighting for racial justice within the legal system, and how to address things like protecting civil rights, and fighting against poverty, discrimination, the outright racism of the (then newly elected) Trump administration, and how to reclaim the narrative from anti-public, anti-Black, anti-poor viewpoints that currently dominate. These are some of the smartest people working in law just talking about their experiences and their beliefs and their ideas, and it’s a great read for anyone interested in using the legal apparatus to move society forward.