Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Lady Justice

Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Winner of the LA Times Book Prize in Current Interest
An instant New York Times Bestseller!
“Stirring . . . Lithwick’s approach, interweaving interviews with legal commentary, allows her subjects to shine...Inspiring.”
New York Times Book Review
“In Dahlia Lithwick’s urgent, engaging Lady Justice, Dobbs serves as a devastating bookend to a story that begins in hope.” Boston Globe

Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won

In the immediate aftershocks of Donald Trump’s victory over Hilary Clinton in 2016, women lawyers across the country, independently of one another, sprang into action. They were determined not to stand by while the Republican party did everything in their power to pursue devastating and often retrograde policies.
In Lady Justice, Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, illuminates these many heroes of the Trump years. From Sally Yates and Becca Heller, who fought the Muslim travel ban, to Roberta Kaplan, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, to Stacey Abrams, who worked to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians, Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail the women lawyers who worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic presidency in living memory.

A celebration of the legal ingenuity and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time, Lady Justice is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 6, 2022
      Slate legal correspondent Lithwick (coauthor, Me v. Everybody) takes an incisive if uneven look at women who responded to Donald Trump’s election by “upending their lives and their careers and their families to organize a new kind of resistance movement.” Theorizing that women have a “special relationship” with the law because it is “the most conventional way with which to effect radical change,” Lithwick profiles, among others, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, who was fired for refusing to defend Trump’s executive order targeting Muslim travelers, and Robbie Kaplan, a “Jewish, gay, brash commercial litigator from New York City” who won a $26 million lawsuit against the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Though the profiles are full of sharp observations and astute analyses of legal matters, Lithwick’s focus on individual attorneys and activists inadvertently echoes the “Great Man” theory of social change she thinks Americans are “too apt to succumb to.” Much stronger, if more depressing, are the sections she devotes to her own story of sexual harassment by a federal judge and her sense of complicity in upholding “the culture of silence in the legal profession.” Despite its flaws, this evocative study captures the power and fragility of the rule of law. Agent: Tina Bennett, Bennett Literary.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at the online news magazine "Slate" and host of the podcast "Amicus," opens in her usual understated, approachable narrative style, quoting from the first stanza of Paulie Murray's poem, "Dark Testament": "Where men forever crush the dreamers/Never the dream." She proceeds with stories of women attorneys confronting male-dominated legal and legislative systems that often keeps women and minorities from achieving their full measure of civil rights. Some names are familiar--Sally Yates, Anita Hill, Vanita Gupta, and Stacey Abrams--while others are perhaps less so--Robbie Kaplan, Brigitte Amiri, and Nina Perales. Lithwick closes by somberly observing, "We are in a truly frightening moment," but she also notes that ". . . women plus law equals magic." A tough but important listening experience. S.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      Starred review from January 1, 2023

      Slate legal correspondent Lithwick (Me v. Everybody) details the extraordinary efforts of women lawyers who challenged the dismantling of human rights, civil rights, and women's rights during the Trump presidency. This time heralded disheartening setbacks, including the seating of vocally anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court and the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The author describes the efforts of an inspiring group women who fought back: Sally Yates, who refused to sign off on the Trump administration's 2017 "Muslim ban"; Becca Heller, who brought the defense of immigration and refugee rights to U.S. airports; Brigit Amiri, who fought for abortion rights for immigrants in Texas; Roberta Kaplan, who sued neo-Nazis in Charlottesville; Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford, who called out sexual abuse and misconduct; Stacy Abrams, who worked to protect voting rights in Georgia and around the country; and Nina Peralis, who upended plans to coopt the 2020 census. Narrating her own book, Lithwick casts these women as unsung heroes of today, while warning that there still is much work to do to regain lost ground. Her reporting engagingly mixes interviews and legal commentary in an accessible way. VERDICT Inspiring and sobering, this is an essential purchase for all libraries.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Loading