Sunday, January 18, 2009

“Until Proven Innocent” On Law Prof’s Top 5 List

In today’s WSJ Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz praises five books recounting “momentous legal cases.”

Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson’s "Until Proven Innocent" (Thomas Dunne, 2007) is one of them.

Dershowitz says - - -

"Until Proven Innocent," an account of the Duke lacrosse case, should be ranked high among works that disprove the notion that those charged with serious crimes are invariably guilty and that those who are acquitted somehow beat the system.

Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson pillory not only the prosecutor in the supposed sexual-assault case -- he was eventually disbarred after charges against the three players were dropped before going to trial -- but also the president of Duke University and those on his faculty who were willing to sacrifice innocent students as a bizarre form of racial reparation.

The Duke case demonstrates how contemporary political correctness, run amok, can deform the legal system just as dramatically as other prejudices have in the past.

Dershowitz’s entire op-ed is here.

Congratulations to Taylor and Johnson for more well-deserved recognition of their outstanding book.

And a thank you to cks who gave me the heads up on the Dershowitz op-ed.


5 comments:

Expat(ish) said...

What would be shocking would be for this to be on a Duke Law prof top-10 list!

-AC

Anonymous said...

Where were the Duke law professors while the lacrosse frame was unfolding?

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see if and at what law schools the case wil be studied. With a daughter and future daughter-in-law attending law schools at the present (both in the south) I have asked them to relate any references that their professors make to the case. So far, zero.

anon 3:09:

My guess is that the Duke Law professors were as absent as were the majority of the Duke professors who knew in their hearts that a framing was unfolding but were too coardly to make a stand. The banality of evil was (and for the most part) still alive and well among the ivy covered walls of Duke and its various components.
cks

Anonymous said...

My 'take on the Duke Faculty collective response to the Rape Hoax is that of an acquaintance describing IQ/intelligence at Ann Arbor."We treat it like a Silent But Deadly fart by the university president.In other words,ignore it,hold your breath and hope it will go away."
Corwin
PS.He's in the psych department at U M

Anonymous said...

The banality of evil perfectly describes the frame and those who remained silent.