Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer’s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All

Boston University law professor Tsai (Practical Equality) takes an admiring look at the professional legacy of civil rights lawyer Stephen Bright, depicting him as a fierce and creative advocate on behalf of those caught up in America’s criminal justice system. Born in 1948 and currently a law professor at Yale, Bright spent almost four decades leading the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that provides legal aid to death row convicts. Tsai narrates Bright’s consequential career with a focus on the four death penalty cases he argued before the Supreme Court between 1988 and 2017—all four of which he won. Three of the cases centered on manipulation of the jury process to exclude minorities, while the fourth, McWilliams v. Dunn, dealt with the rights of intellectually disabled defendants to representation in court by an independent mental health expert. Each case revealed bias in the criminal justice system (including direct and dire abuses of power, like how one Georgia district attorney prepared a document explicitly explaining how to underrepresent African Americans and women on juries). Tsai’s tight focus on one lawyer’s uphill battle against inequity is inspiring, especially as it expands outward to track the implications of each victory. Readers interested in criminal justice reform will want to check this out. (Mar.)