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Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System
Bottom of the pile
20
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
25/100Critics
15/100Scholars
Author:
Jed S. Rakoff
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
February 16, 2021
A senior federal judge's exploration of some of the paradoxes that define the judiciary today: among them, why innocent people plead guilty, why high-level executives aren't prosecuted, why you won't get your day in court, and why the judiciary is curtailing its own constitutionally mandated power.
What The Reviewers Say
Rakoff reaches far beyond corporate boardrooms to highlight an array of shortcomings within the criminal justice system.
... well-informed and provocative.
Highlighting both contemporary and historical influences, Rakoff breaks down the assumptions and expectations many Americans hold about justice and how it is served.
The book tends to be repetitive and it loses focus at times, likely because each chapter was once a stand-alone essay previously published in the New York Review of Books. The latter half of the work is dedicated to complex constitutional issues, and the main thesis of judicial failure to ensure justice served for both the innocent and the guilty is lost.
