Overview

“Mythologies,” writes veteran human rights lawyer Michael Tigar, “are structures of words and images that portray people, institutions, and events in ways that mask an underlying reality.” For instance, the “Justice Department” appears, by its very nature and practice, to appropriate “justice” as the exclusive property of the federal government. In his brilliantly acerbic collection of essays, Tigar reveals, deconstructs, and eviscerates mythologies surrounding the U.S. criminal justice system, racism, free expression, workers’ rights, and international human rights. Lawyers confront mythologies in the context of their profession. But the struggle for human liberation makes mythology-busting the business of all of us. The rights we have learned to demand are not only trivialized in our current system of social relations; they are, in fact, antithetical to that system. With wit and eloquence, Michael Tigar draws on legal cases, philosophy, literature, and fifty-years’ experience as an attorney, activist, and teacher to bust the mythologies and to argue for real change. Praise for Michael Tigar’s legal career: “Tireless striving for justice stretches his arms towards perfection.” —William J. Brennan, Supreme Court Justice

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9781583677421

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Michael Tigar has worked for over fifty years with movements for social change as a human rights lawyer, law professor, and writer. He has taught at law schools in the United States, France, South Africa, and Japan, and is Emeritus Professor at Duke Law School and American University Washington College of Law. He has authored or co-authored fourteen books, three plays, and scores of articles and essays. His book, Law and the Rise of Capitalism, first published by Monthly Review Press, has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish, and Chinese.

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