Law School 411: Books & Films on Law & Law School

When the news broke about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Caswell “Cash” Harrison was all set to drop out of law school and join the army… until he flunked the physical. Instead, he’s given the opportunity to serve as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. He and another clerk stumble onto a potentially huge conspiracy aimed at guiding the court’s interests, and the cases dealing with the constitutionality of the prison camps created to detain Japanese-Americans seem to play a key part. Then Cash’s colleague dies under mysterious circumstances, and the young, idealistic lawyer is determined to get at the truth. His investigation will take him from the office of J. Edgar Hoover to an internment camp in California, where he directly confronts the consequences of America’s wartime policies. Kermit Roosevelt combines the momentum of a top-notch legal thriller with a thoughtful examination of one of the worst civil rights violations in US history in this long-awaited follow-up to In the Shadow of the Law.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch -- "Scout" -- returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past -- a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience.

Noa P. Singleton sits on death row. She never spoke a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ended with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, having accepted her fate, she sits on death row in a maximum-security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date. She is visited by a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is a heartbroken mother of the victim and now wants to see the death penalty delayed--if only Noa reveals her motive. Inextricably linked by murder but with very different goals, both women wrestle with the sentences life itself can impose while they confront the best and worst of what makes us human.

A humorous satire about a television judge who becomes a Supreme Court Justice.

Captivating legal thriller written by the great, great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. The novel is centered on the lives of overworked associates at the powerful D.C. law firm Morgan Siler. The associates work long hours on a pro bono murder case and a class action lawsuit and slowly are transformed from young idealistic attorneys to worn out realists.

Dickens' novel, originally published in twenty monthly installments in 1852 and 1853, is built around an attack on the English Court of Chancery. It is viewed by many as the single greatest attack on law, lawyers, and the legal system in the English language.

Shakespeare's tale of a Jewish moneylender examines themes of justice and the bias of legal systems.

Capote's best-selling true crime novel examines the complex psychological relationship between two parolees who together commit a mass murder, as well as the lives of the victims and the effect of the crime on the community where they lived. In Cold Blood is regarded by critics as a pioneering work of the true crime genre.

Harper Lee's American classic explores issues of class and racial inequality in the Deep South of the 1930s. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, is a moral hero to many readers, as well as a model of integrity for the legal profession.