American Legal System

A guide to the American legal system, told through the story of two actual court cases. The Steps to the Supreme Court takes a lively, narrative approach to the subject by following two real cases - one civil, one criminal - as they work their way through the system, all the way up to the Supreme Court. Written by a member of the Supreme Court bar, this book brings the legal system to life in a practical, accessible, and compelling way.

Law has played a central role in American history. From colonial times to the present, law has not just reflected the changing society in which legal decisions have been made - it has played a powerful role in shaping that society, though not always in positive ways. Eminent legal scholar G. Edward White offers a compact overview that sheds light on the impact of law on a number of key social issues.

Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in United States history, from the government's 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn't changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City's Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide.

Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice". Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen? In The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past 70 years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy.