And the Walls Came Tumbling Down : Greatest Closing Arguments Protecting Civil Libertie

by Michael S Lief; H. Mitchell Caldwell

• ISBN13: 9780743246668
• ISBN10: 0743246667
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-21
• Publisher: Scribner

Summary

From the authors of the critically acclaimed Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury comes a collection of closing arguments that spans 250 years and eight landmark trials that have redefined civil rights in America and profoundly affected our society.Every day millions of Americans enjoy the freedom to decide what they do with their property, their bodies, their speech, and their votes. However, the rights to these freedoms have not always been guaranteed. Our civil rights have been assured by cases that have produced monumental shifts in America's cultural, social, and legal landscape over the past three centuries.Until now, the closing arguments from these trials have been unavailable to the lay reader -- except in the lasting effects of the decisions that they influenced. But here the authors have collected some of the most pivotal and exciting closing arguments in history -- from the Amistad case, in which John Quincy Adams brought the injustice of slavery to the center stage of American politics, to the Susan B. Anthony decision, which paved the way to success for women's suffrage, to the Larry Flynt trial, in which the porn king became an unlikely champion for freedom of speech.One instance demonstrates how bad lawyering can make bad law -- the Carrie Buck case, in which the Supreme Court upheld the forced sterilization of women, a decision still on the books today.Each of the eight chapters presents a case in the context of American society -- then and now -- and includes a brief historical introduction, a biographical sketch of the attorney involved, an analysis of the closing argument, and a summary of the impact of the trial's conclusion on its participants and our country. In clear, jargon-free prose, Michael S Lief and H. Mitchell Caldwell make these pivotal, society-changing cases come to vibrant life for every reader -- fully revealing the trials that have helped resolve America's most complex civil issues and define our lives.

Author Biography

H. Mitchell Caldwell is a professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
To Be or Not to Be	5	(56)
Karen Ann Quinlan and the Right to Die
The Amistad Odyssey	61	(48)
American Courts Decide If a Free Man Can Be Forced into Slavery
Enemy Within	109	(54)
Radio Star John Henry Faulk Challenges the McCarthy-Era Blacklist
A Woman's Rightful Place	163	(43)
Susan B. Anthony Casts a Vote and Battles for the Ballot
The Truth Shall Set You Free	206	(36)
The English Crown and Colonial Government Try Muzzling Newspaper Publisher John Peter Zenger and the Fledgling American Press
The Porn King and the Preacher	242	(57)
Larry Flynt Takes on the Moral Majority and Becomes an Unlikely Champion for Free Speech
What Price Too High?	299	(56)
One Woman's Fight for Survival against Cancer---and Her HMO
Cleansing the Gene Pool	355	(36)
Carrie Buck's Forced Sterilization and the Limits on Reproductive Freedom
Index	391

Excerpts

Introduction September 11, 2001. November 22, 1963. December 7, 1941. Americans of all ages remember where they were, what they were doing, when they first became aware of monstrous acts of murder and war. In an instant, everything changed. With a thunderclap -- the whine of jet engines, a rifle shot, and the screams of the doomed -- the nation loses its innocence yet again.But not every momentous paradigm shift is announced by the thundering hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.Other events, more subtle, have changed the way we live. Profound, tectonic shifts in America's cultural, social, and legal landscape have taken place far removed in time and space from the glare of the media, experienced by a relative few who witnessed history being made. And, like a pebble tossed in a pond, these seemingly insignificant events -- writ small upon a canvas larger than any could then imagine -- send ripples out in ever-increasing circles, affecting us in ways impossible to foretell.A woman walks into a voting booth, casts her ballot, and is arrested by the police for the crime of voting. An anguished family asks a doctor to let their daughter die with dignity, only to be told the law won't allow it, the patient's wishes be damned. State doctors decide a young woman they deem of below-average intelligence must not be allowed to pass her defective intellect on to her children and order her forcibly sterilized.Years later, another woman casts her ballot without giving it a second thought and a man sits with his wife and signs a Do Not Resuscitate order before his operation. Every day millions of Americans enjoy the freedom to decide what they shall do with their property, their body, their speech, their vote, as a result of hard-fought battles won or lost over the last 150 years in courtrooms from Maine to California.When our society has attempted to untangle the Gordian knots of slavery or the right to die, the political process has often proved unable or unwilling to address these complex issues. Stepping into the breech were the men and women of the bar. When legislators will not or cannot legislate, Americans have turned to the judicial system. And so lawyers and judges have often been the first to tackle some of the most vexatious dilemmas to confront this nation. With twenty-twenty hindsight, we can say that sometimes they got it right (freeing the Amistad slaves), and sometimes they got it wrong (sterilizing Carrie Buck). But, again with hindsight, we know that these trials have helped bring us closer to resolving profound and complex problems that have faced the American people.The process has not changed over time. In the courtroom, the fundamentals of our democratic heritage and our future come together. It begins like this: The testimony is done; the witnesses have left. While the jurors sit waiting, an expectant hush falls over the room. The trial lawyer strides into the well and stands before them, pauses, then begins speaking. The jurors listen to the skillful interweaving of testimony, facts, storytelling, and analogy, some swept up in the words and rhythms of the advocate's argument, some taking notes, others just watching.The argument reaches a climax as the attorney asks, sometimes demands, that the jurors do the right thing. Then they retire to mull over all that they've seen and heard. And when they return to the courtroom, the judge asks, "Have you reached a verdict?" The foreperson stands and answers, "We have, Your Honor."Tension mounts. "What say you in the matter before this court?" As the answer echoes throughout the courtroom, the lives of all Americans are affected.We have collected summations from trials that have, without overstating the case, changed the way we live our lives. The arguments we have chosen for this book deal with issues that have defined our civil rights. Selected for the impact they have had upon American societ