BOOKS: The Fear of Too Much Justice

In their forth­com­ing book, ​“The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts,” renowned death-penal­ty attor­ney Stephen B. Bright and legal schol­ar James Kwak describe the many ways in which the U.S. legal sys­tem fails to uphold the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of defen­dants, espe­cial­ly poor defen­dants and peo­ple of color.

Bestselling author John Grisham said of the book, ​“Only Steve Bright could write such a clear and poignant indict­ment of crim­i­nal injus­tice in America. For forty years he’s waged hand-to-hand legal com­bat to pro­tect the poor and inno­cent, and to expose the truth behind cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, wrong­ful con­vic­tions, cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors, incom­pe­tent judges, and all the oth­er bad actors who have ruined our sys­tem.” In the fore­word, Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson calls the book ​“An urgent­ly need­ed analy­sis of our col­lec­tive fail­ure to con­front and over­come racial bias and big­otry, the abuse of pow­er, and the mul­ti­ple ways in which the death penalty’s pro­found unfair­ness requires its abolition.”

Bright is a law pro­fes­sor at Georgetown University and Yale University. He was the long-time direc­tor of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Kwak is the vice chair of the Board of the Southern Center for Human Rights and the author of sev­er­al books on eco­nom­ics and pub­lic pol­i­cy. The Fear of Too Much Justice will be released on June 20, 2023.