For millions of Americans, the law offers no help at all. Restraining orders are unenforced, abusive police hide behind qualified immunity, and citizens live in fear of senseless violence. How is it that we have so many laws, yet so little protection?
In The Lawless Society, leading legal scholar Robin West exposes a civic disease hiding in plain sight: The law is incapable of protecting our basic legal and civil rights, even when they've clearly been violated. The reason? Our fundamental rights have been undermined by decades of court rulings, special interests, and willful misreadings of our constitution. Blending history with razor-sharp analysis, West dissects our government's refusal to stop many forms of criminal and civil harm--including domestic violence, gun violence, discrimination, and negligence--that put the most vulnerable among us at risk.
Penetrating and morally urgent, West illuminates the true costs of lawlessness and the path toward a more accountable vision of justice.
W. W. Norton & Company
978-1-324-07375-8