Law on Trial

“Ossei-Owusu writes with ease and grace. This makes a cloistered world accessible to the lay reader and serves as an invaluable glimpse of how inequality is maintained in America.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Law On Trial is an incisive, surprising, and deeply insightful account of how lawyers play a key role in sustaining inequality and injustice. Shaun Ossei-Owusu begins with this counterintuitive claim and then takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the training and practice of lawyers from his vantage point as an “unlikely insider”—a young Black Ivy League law professor. He is one of the most important legal scholars of his generation, and the book is both brilliant and highly readable. You’ll never think of law the same way again after reading it.” – Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation“In this sharp and engaging work, Shaun Ossei-Owusu—one of the nation’s leading scholars of the legal profession—delivers a bold critique of lawyers and the law schools that shape them.” – James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own“Law on Trial is a bold indictment of an American legal system that betrays its own ideals—and a rare insider’s view of the lawyers complicit in its inequities. At once personal testimony and systemic critique, Ossei-Owusu dismantles the myths of legal neutrality and delivers an essential call to imagine—and demand—a more equitable order.” – Dorothy Roberts, author of Torn Apart, How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World“Shaun Ossei-Owusu has produced a revelatory study of how the American legal profession mirrors and magnifies social inequalities. Law on Trial dissects the myriad ways in which lawyers protect powerful interests, obscure inconvenient truths, and normalize injustice—all while telling the public, and themselves, that they are fighting the good fight. Panoramic in scope yet rich in detail, unsparing in its criticisms yet never self-righteous, this book deserves to be read by every law student.” – David Pozen, author of The Constitution of the War on Drugs“Law on Trial is both an insider’s treasure house of information and an outsider’s tell-all of the inner workings of the US legal system. Ossei-Owusu thoroughly explores and exposes how legal education, law firms, and the regulatory state skew toward maintaining the status quo while seeming to the untrained outside eye as neutral arbiters of justice. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the law perpetuates inequality.” – Mehrsa Baradaran, author of The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap“Beautifully written, exhaustively researched, and cogently argued, this wonderfully accessible book meets the moment in every possible way. It takes you on a remarkably textured journey inside law school classrooms, the chambers of judges, and the offices of lawyers—prosecutors and defense attorneys, corporate lawyers and public interest advocates—to unmask the normality and ordinariness with which the legal profession produces inequality across every dimension of social life. Law On Trial is a book not only for lawyers and law students. It is a book for all of us” – Devon W. Carbado, author of Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment“A generation-defining critique and roadmap for transformation, Law on Trial challenges all of us to critically examine our role in the system and what we can do to make real law’s promise of equal justice for all. A call to radically reimagine how we understand and teach law in a deeply flawed democracy, this book could not be more urgent and timely. It should be required reading for all 1Ls.” – Scott Cummings, author of An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles“Have you ever had the uneasy feeling that the American ‘justice’ system is operated by and for the haves at the expense of the have-nots? If so, Law on Trial is the book for you. Shaun Ossei-Owusu takes us on a brutal, but accurate, tour of a broken American legal system from law school to Wall Street to public defenders and every stop in between. Ossei-Owusu keeps it raw like sushi and uses his own unique journey from the Bronx to teaching in the Ivy League to shine a piercing light in the darkness. Bracing and brave, we are lucky to have this book.” – Ben Barton, author of The Credentialed Court: Inside the Cloistered, Elite World of American Justice“Law on Trial is required reading for every dreamer going to law school to change the world—and for anyone who wants to understand the divides that fracture our society. Shaun Ossei-Owusu’s tell-all tale is a sobering account of the legal system’s shortcomings as could only be told by an insider working in the belly of the beast.” – Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court“This book pulls back the curtain on the legal profession to expose the myths we cling to and the deeper injustices that are often overlooked or willfully ignored. Shaun Ossei-Owusu executes the rare feat of offering a book that blends personal narrative with scholarly rigor and arresting humor. This is the book I wish I had before law school and the one I’d hand to anyone who wants an accessible primer on how our legal system fails.” – Bernadette Atuahene, author of Plundered“Law on Trial is a brilliant socio-legal analysis of the relationship between law and systems of inequality. Ossei-Owusu’s monumental achievement is his capacity to draw on his own lived experiences coming from the communities that law most often neglects. The writing is as lyrical as it is percussive. Law on Trial is a once-in-a-generation accomplishment that echoes the most beautiful but devastating hip-hop ballad. Scholars, students, and the public will be captivated by this masterful book.” – Laura Beth Nielsen, author of Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality“Law on Trial lays bare how law professors, law firms, government lawyers, and even public interest attorneys routinely take steps —intentionally and unconsciously—to ignore and promote inequalities and unfairness in the law…Nuanced and rigorous while also being conversational and even humorous, this book is a must-read for every law student, professor, lawyer, and person who cares about inequality and injustice in the legal system.” – Eve Primus, Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law, at the University of Michigan and the Director of MDefenders and the Public Defender Training Institute

Shaun Ossei–Owusu is a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and research interests include criminal law, civil rights, legal ethics, the welfare state, and the business of law firms. He has previously held appointments at Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.