The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer (Paperback)

"Meltsner [was] near the epicenter of the battle to eliminate legal segregation [that] placed him on a fascinating professional trajectory. In The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer, he presents a thoughtful, wide-ranging, historically rich account of how that experience shaped him." -- "Boston Globe "

"Anyone interested in the study of law will be interested in this book, but particularly those who are curious about the development of civil rights law, the state of the death penalty, and the behind-the-scenes story of how race and class interact with education will not want to miss Michael Meltsner's marvelous, nuanced, psychologically penetrating, entertaining, and legally sophisticated account of his experience as a civil rights lawyer, litigator, teacher, and citizen." -- Victor Navasky, Publisher Emeritus of the "Nation" and Delacorte Professor of Magazine Journalism at Columbia University

"For the sociolegal scholar in a post--civil rights era... Michael Meltsner's memoir of his professional life as a lawyer with the Legal Defense Fund is a layered treat. One part is romantic indulgence, a glimpse back into a time when civil rights had some progressive clout.... A second part is a confirmation, clarification, and sometime challenge to many of our central theories about cause lawyering on behalf of progressive social movements and the power that the courts had and still have to remake our political worlds." -- "Law and Politics Book Review "

"[Meltsner's] book reflects the breadth of his practical experience and the depth of his intellectual acumen, enlivened by fresh insights. It is, at the simplest level, a chronicle and an autobiography of someone who was close to theleading civil rights lawyers of our times, engaged in cutting-edge legal issues, from integration to the death penalty to the right of counsel. As interesting as this is (and it is), more importantly Meltsner engages in a rigorous analysis of what has, and has not, been accomplished by those committed to using the law as a tool for social change. He does so with enormous respect for the differing opinions that have emerged with the passage of time, as he grapples with the contradictions that underlie these issues." -- "American Lawyer "

"The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer" is Michael Meltsner's vivid account of how, as a lawyer for Muhammad Ali, for the doctors who ended Jim Crow at American hospitals, and for scores of death row inmates, he became such a deeply involved activist in the civil rights movement.

Focused on the inside story of law reform, the book contains portraits of some larger-than-life figures, including Thurgood Marshall, William Kuntsler, and the charismatic black law professor Derrick Bell, as well as of unheralded movers and shakers such as the attorney C. B. King of Albany, Georgia, and Margaret Burnham, who as a young lawyer representing Angela Davis got caught in a racial and generational crossfire.

Michael Meltsner, former Guggenheim Fellow and Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy, has been a Professor of Law at Columbia and Harvard Law Schools and Dean at Northeastern School of Law, where he is currently Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law. Author of "Cruel and Unusual," the authoritative history of the Legal Defense Fund's campaign to abolish the death penaIty, and a novel "Short Takes," he is also a licensed marriage andfamily therapist. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.