No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System

Description

No Equal Justice is the seminal work on race- and class-based double standards in criminal justice. Hailed as a "shocking and necessary book" by The Economist, it has become the standard reference point for anyone trying to understand the fundamental inequalities in the American legal system. The book, written by constitutional law scholar and civil liberties advocate David Cole, was named the best nonfiction book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and the best book on an issue of national policy by the American Political Science Association. No Equal Justice examines subjects ranging from police behavior and jury selection to sentencing, and argues that our system does not merely fail to live up to the promise of equality, but actively requires double standards to operate. Such disparities,Cole argues, allow the privileged to enjoy constitutional protections from police power without paying the costs associated with extending those protections across the board to minorities and the poor.

David Cole is the George Mitchell Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation. He is the author of No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System, the American Book Award-winning Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, and The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable and is a co-author (with James Dempsey) of Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security and (with Jules Lobel) of Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, both published by The New Press. He lives in Washington, D.C.

"No Equal Justice makes a strong case that we have tolerated a law enforcement strategy that depends on the exploitation of race and class divisions." -The New York Times Book Review