A Voice for Independent Authors
― E.A. BUCCHIANERI
REVIEWING TODAY: WITH JUSTICE FOR SOME BY LISE PEARLMAN
“Progress has never been linear.”
One of the most difficult things to bear is blatant injustice. Not just difficult to suffer or to witness, such raw unfairness is also uncomfortable to read about. Judge Lise Pearlman, in her masterful and exquisitely researched book, With Justice for Some, still manages to convey throughout her troubling historical account of our nation’s most significant and bitter trials the silver lining, though tarnished, of a tortured path to progress. Pearlman’s work is not strident, nor angrily polemic. It is a highly objective and rigorously academic revisiting of the often shameful practices tainting an otherwise admirable jurisprudence. And though historically-remembered and celebrated legal heroes sometimes surface to inch us forward, sadly they are usually too ahead of their own time to foster true justice in the moment.
From the assassination of William McKinley to the Scopes Monkey Trial to the Lindbergh Baby Kidnap/Killing, the focus of Judge Lise Pearlman’s fascinating look into “Politically Charged Criminal Trials in the Early 20th Century That Helped Shape Today’s America,” is spellbinding and meticulously detailed, as well as hugely relevant to American justice as it stands today. Ms. Pearlman is fastidious about addressing drama vs. politics, injustice vs. progressive consequences, and historical context vs. modern attitudes regarding those horrid traits in the American psyche that continue to raise their ugly heads, even if now more subtly expressed. Bigotry and blatant xenophobia are the most frequent villains in this often-controversial contest for American justice, but Lise Pearlman offers a spellbinding front row seat to any curious, uncomfortable, yet sure-to-be-affected spectators.
WITH JUSTICE FOR SOME
Joel R. Dennstedt – Top Reviewer for Readers’ Favorite
