The People's Lawyer reviewed in The Progressive Populist

BOOK REVIEW by Seth Sandronsky

Affirming Justice Post-9/11

In a post-9/11 world, a “new normal” exists in the US. It tilts in no small way towards the power of government’s three branches. The trio focuses, almost obsessively, on national safety and security. Against that backdrop, Albert Ruben’s new book amplifies the strengths and weaknesses of a progressive institution involved in civil liberties and human rights struggles for nearly five decades.

In The People’s Lawyer: The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Fight for Social Justice, From Civil Rights to Guantánamo, he chronicles the roots and branches, people and ideas, propelling this beacon for the rights of the accused no matter their alleged crimes.

Ruben has written no hagiography. For instance, he sheds light on messy internal rifts and shifts, weaving the personal and political, of the actors and factors of the CCR, then and now. Along the way, Ruben makes clear the organization’s original mission to affirm and create more justice for oppressed blacks deprived of voting and human rights in the Deep South during the 1960s. A linchpin of this approach was the “Dombroski strategy,” using federal injunctions to thwart criminal charges by state prosecutors….

Read the entire review in The Progressive Populist