THE MYTH OF MORAL JUSTICE: WHY OUR LEGAL SYSTEM FAILS TO DO WHAT’S RIGHT
“As a diagnostician, Thane Rosenbaum is on target. He paints a picture of a frosty system that blasts the emotion, subjectivity, and complexity out of every dispute brought to its doorstep. Citing the ‘bureaucratic efficiencies’ governing decisions, ‘winner-take-all’ mentality drummed into lawyers and the profession’s ethics, which bear only a glancing familiarity with human morality, he exposes a system that encourages lying, permits truth to be stifled, and allows evil men to roam free. . . . Rosenbaum should be read by every law student in America.”—New York Times Book Review
“Thane Rosenbaum’s moral critique is considerably enriched and enlivened by the connections he makes between our contemporary legal system and our ideas of justice as they have been influenced by the whole of Western arts and letters. . . . His book ought to be required reading in law schools and continuing legal educations classes, if only because at least a few of his readers will be humanized by the experience.”—Washington Post Book World
“Thane Rosenbaum bravely attempts to bring philosophy into the courtroom. . . . If Rosenbaum is serious about reforming the hearts of all people, his best hope is to continue to use his gifts as a novelist to do it. As he surely knows, the world does not need more lawyers. But it can always use a good storyteller.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“An engaging critique of the legal system. . . . Making broad cultural and political references—to Kafka, Camus, Dickens, Shakespeare, Seinfeld, the Sopranos, the O. J. trial, Bush v. Gore, and the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund—Mr. Rosenbaum argues for a legal system that embodies a kind of humanist morality, a system in which the participant’s emotional need to be heard is given as much credence as grievances, crimes and bank accounts.”—New York Observer
“Thane Rosenbaum has done a great service for those of us who love the law but don’t like it. He has grabbed the legal system and, like an old purse, shaken out all the detritus from its depths, then carefully put back in a few essential things. A truly compelling book.”—Stephen J. Dubner, author of Freakonomics and Turbulent Souls