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How Can You Represent Those People?
How Can You Represent Those People? is the first-ever collection of essays offering a response to the 'Cocktail Party Question' asked of every criminal lawyer. A must-read for anyone interested in race, poverty, crime, punishment, and what makes lawyers tick.
- GenresLawNonfictionPolitics
239 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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322 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 29, 2013
This is just so good.
To a budding public defender, grabbing this collection is the equivalent of snagging a stack of collector baseball cards or signed memorabilia for the avid sports fan. So too is like a crash course in validating the driving force behind your academic, professional, and personal pursuits. This is a book of powerhouses, all of whom fight with the utmost ferocity against the powers that produce the all-too-pervasive injustices, inequities, and plain unfairness.
The essayists' resumes strike both fear and longing into a young reader's heart. How can I ever do what they have done? Follow in the giant footsteps that they have lain? Fight the fights with half the fervor they have mustered? Time and time again? At the same time, there may be no more appropriate reading of shooting for the moon and falling among the stars. One cannot help but believe that after decades of battling that they too will lay steps for others to follow. After all, the strongest drive that I've found for this work has come from working with those who have already committed to do it.
The essays range from the technical to the personal, the ferocious to the reasoned. Everyone comes with their own story, and every one leaves readers with their own answers. Many do provide answers, others do not do so as directly. But, then again, as Robin notes, it might not be necessary to give answers. Those asking probably haven't though that hard about it themselves. And, those scrambling for this book likely have, and to them, to me, the answers seem obvious.
An awesome collection.
To a budding public defender, grabbing this collection is the equivalent of snagging a stack of collector baseball cards or signed memorabilia for the avid sports fan. So too is like a crash course in validating the driving force behind your academic, professional, and personal pursuits. This is a book of powerhouses, all of whom fight with the utmost ferocity against the powers that produce the all-too-pervasive injustices, inequities, and plain unfairness.
The essayists' resumes strike both fear and longing into a young reader's heart. How can I ever do what they have done? Follow in the giant footsteps that they have lain? Fight the fights with half the fervor they have mustered? Time and time again? At the same time, there may be no more appropriate reading of shooting for the moon and falling among the stars. One cannot help but believe that after decades of battling that they too will lay steps for others to follow. After all, the strongest drive that I've found for this work has come from working with those who have already committed to do it.
The essays range from the technical to the personal, the ferocious to the reasoned. Everyone comes with their own story, and every one leaves readers with their own answers. Many do provide answers, others do not do so as directly. But, then again, as Robin notes, it might not be necessary to give answers. Those asking probably haven't though that hard about it themselves. And, those scrambling for this book likely have, and to them, to me, the answers seem obvious.
An awesome collection.
January 16, 2015
This book is a must-read for lawyers and anyone else who wants to know why criminal lawyers represent "those people." Some of the essays are a little dry, but each author provides multiple answers to the question, often drawing upon their own experiences as public defenders or defense attorneys to do so. A fascinating read.
March 11, 2019
The perspectives shared in this collection are diverse, insightful, and crucial to understanding the American criminal justice system. The contributors represent a vast array of experience and expertise and shed light onto the complexities of the work of criminal defense attorneys. Like The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, this compilation is rife with facts and first hand accounts that expose the gravity of institutional prejudice towards racial minorities, people living in poverty, individuals suffering from mental illnesses, and more.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in pursuing a career within the legal system, specifically those concerned by the pervasive systemic biases that exacerbate inequality in the enforcement of the law throughout society.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in pursuing a career within the legal system, specifically those concerned by the pervasive systemic biases that exacerbate inequality in the enforcement of the law throughout society.
December 7, 2025
Im not an essay reader, I'm not an aspiring lawyer. Im not a professional anything. But I found this to be inspiring, approachable, and utterly humane.
I really loved it.
I really loved it.
July 10, 2016
Really interesting, inspiring collection with a broad range of perspectives and rationales. There's some heavier legal reasoning, gutting stories about the government abusing terrorist defendants, lots of New Jim Crow type stats and stories, a challenge to expand your mercy and humane consideration to sex offenders, all sorts. The terrorism section, the more personal stories and the essay about Judaism and the necessity for defense were my favorite.
I loved that the public defenders mentioned as inspiration 1. fighting bullies on the playground 2. being a magnet for random strangers in trouble and 3. having an ingrained distaste for inequality to the extent that you don't like it when your fave sports team wins by too much. I feel all of those things and seriously considered putting them in my law school application but they felt too trivial.
I loved that the public defenders mentioned as inspiration 1. fighting bullies on the playground 2. being a magnet for random strangers in trouble and 3. having an ingrained distaste for inequality to the extent that you don't like it when your fave sports team wins by too much. I feel all of those things and seriously considered putting them in my law school application but they felt too trivial.
May 22, 2024
I remember when I first told people I wanted to be a lawyer I used to be asked all the time how I would morally be able to handle representing say, a murderer, for example. This book is a collection of incredibly worded and thought-out answers to questions like that one. I think it is an essential read for anyone who wants to be an attorney and anyone who feels they could not "morally" represent any defendant given to them. These essays serve as a reminder that justice for all includes even those we feel are morally reprehensible, and offering them the due process and human rights they deserve is just as much part of the process.
I wish I could just give people this book any time I talk about wanting to be a public defender because I think it explains my rationale really well, especially the essay about working in the D.C. juvenile system.
I wish I could just give people this book any time I talk about wanting to be a public defender because I think it explains my rationale really well, especially the essay about working in the D.C. juvenile system.
September 13, 2019
In a word: essential. In a few words: this collection offers approachable, candid, and insightful takes on the critical foundations of fairness and dignity that underpin any good society, set alongside the corruption, racism, and willful ignorance that has set the prison-industrial complex and a trigger-happy plea-bargain system as the norms in a society that needs, needs, needs to do better. This book tells us we can indeed see better days, if only we inform ourselves and listen in ways the best of the contributors in this collection call us to, every day, regardless of who is speaking, what they may or may not have done, and the situations they came from, which, of course, could be the voices, acts, and conditions that find any of us.
December 9, 2017
Recommended read for all Criminal Lawyers.
August 4, 2018
Interesting collection of essays answering one of the legal industry’s toughest questions. A good variety of unique opinions, but gets repetitive.
December 7, 2014
I read this as a "recommended" book before starting at Georgetown law and am therefore biased and cognizant of it regarding the positive portrayal of georgetown clinics and professors. Not withstanding the sometimes weaker writing, I learned a lot about the depressing realities of US asylum law as well as some Kenyan history. I only wish that policy was able to better respond to reality.
October 28, 2014
This was given to me by the editor and is a direct account of my occupation. In other words, I'm the choir and they're tossing chunk after chunk of red meat at me. Still, for lawyers, most of the writing is actually quite good. For another, there are a number of ways I could make a living, this book accurately distills why I choose this particular fight.
August 22, 2016
The inclusion of Alan Dershowitz is so disgusting. Dershowitz just shat out some imbecilic zealous advocacy bullshit (Freedom of Speech! Rah Rah America! Lawyering is Like Surgery! I Loved To Kill A Mockingbird! etc)
Otherwise a good collection focusing on racial injustice in the CJS. Think more attention could have been paid to gender and gendered crimes.
Otherwise a good collection focusing on racial injustice in the CJS. Think more attention could have been paid to gender and gendered crimes.
January 6, 2026
One word: Necessary
This collection of essays offers an insightful take on the critical foundations of human dignity and fairness that we often obscure in the criminal justice system. The true question that is posed throughout this book is “how can you fail to defend [those people]”
This collection of essays offers an insightful take on the critical foundations of human dignity and fairness that we often obscure in the criminal justice system. The true question that is posed throughout this book is “how can you fail to defend [those people]”
December 16, 2014
Daughter Meghan Shapiro has an essay in this. Great read!
April 14, 2016
This was right ON. I've worked with prosecutors and public defenders, both in and out of court. This was nice.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews