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OverviewA memoir that is also a compelling page-turner, """"Philadelphia Freedom"""" is the poignant, informative, often inspiring account of renowned civil-rights lawyer David Kairys' personal quest for achieving social justice during the turbulent 1960s and 70s.""""Philadelphia Freedom"""" brings us intimately and directly into Kairys' burgeoning law career and the struggles of the 60s as his professional and private life navigated the turmoil and promise of the civil rights and antiwar movements.Many of the cases Kairys took on involved discrimination and equal protection, freedom of speech, and government malfeasance. Kairys is perhaps most well known for his victory in the Camden 28 draft board case, in which the FBI set up a sting of the Catholic anti-war left at the behest of the highest levels of government.The stories and cases range from nationally important and recognizable - the family of the scientist the CIA unwittingly gave LSD in the 1950s; the leading race discrimination case against the FBI; Dr. Benjamin Spock's First Amendment case before the Supreme Court; the city handgun lawsuits Kairys conceived - to those he encountered in his early work as a public defender. The characters include public figures such as FBI Directors J. Edgar Hoover and Louis Freeh; CIA Director William Colby; Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter; New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer; U.S. Attorneys General Edward Levi and John Mitchell; Georgia Governor Lester Maddox; Pennsylvania Governor, former Philadelphia Mayor and Democratic National Committee chair Ed Rendell; Philadelphia Mayor and Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. But some of the most memorable are not well known, involving regular people caught up in the often heartless machinery of the courts and legal system.Though it reads like a novel, with all the elements of character, plot, and suspense, """"Philadelphia Freedom"""" also has historical significance as a firsthand account of the 1960s and 70s and contains social commentary about race as well as insights and major perspectives on the nature and social role of law. Full Product DetailsAuthor: David KairysPublisher: The University of Michigan Press Imprint: The University of Michigan Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.713kg ISBN: 9780472116386ISBN 10: 047211638 Pages: 448 Publication Date: 15 August 2008 Audience: Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Professional & Vocational , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Awaiting stock  The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you. Table of ContentsReviewsPhiladelphia Freedom is the spellbinding tale of an idealistic young lawyer coming of age in the political cauldron of the 1960s and 70s. From his immersion in the civil rights movement to his determined court battles to quell criminal violence by Philadelphia police, Kairys recounts how he helped make history in the city of brotherly love. --William K. Marimow, Editor and Executive Vice President, Philadelphia Inquirer, and recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes --Bill Marimow (6/4/2008 12:00:00 AM) David Kairys is one of the grand long-distance runners in the struggle for justice in America. His brilliant legal mind and superb lawyerly skills are legendary. This marvelous book is his gift to us! --Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Princeton University, award winning author of Race Matters --Cornel West (5/19/2008 12:00:00 AM) David Kairys' compelling book properly explains the vital role that civil rights attorneys play in our system of justice. --Judge John E. Jones III, United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, presided in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case --Judge John Jones III (6/4/2008 12:00:00 AM) In the current climate of political deception and the trampling of our civil rights, Kairys' compelling book is a clenched fist, a prayer for social justice and a call to conscience. --Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist and former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and recent bestselling author of The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, And The Redemptive Power of Music --Steve Lopez (6/4/2008 12:00:00 AM) Readers interested in the civil rights movement, critical legal studies, or Philadelphia and American history will find these memoirs a valuable read. --National Lawyers Guild Review, Traci Yoder --Traci Yoder National Lawyers Guild Review With engaging, insider stories of innovative legal strategies of a truly creative lawyer, this book evokes the ebullient spirit of progressive social change launched in the 1960s and should be read by aspiring and practicing lawyers as well as anyone interested in American social history. It reads like a suspense novel and reveals how novel legal and political thinking can and does make a real difference to individuals and to the quality of justice. --Martha Minow, Jeremiah Smith Jr., Professor of Law, Harvard Law School --Martha Minow (5/14/2008 12:00:00 AM) ""Philadelphia Freedom is the spellbinding tale of an idealistic young lawyer coming of age in the political cauldron of the 1960s and 70s. From his immersion in the civil rights movement to his determined court battles to quell criminal violence by Philadelphia police, Kairys recounts how he helped make history in the city of brotherly love."" --William K. Marimow, Editor and Executive Vice President, Philadelphia Inquirer, and recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes --Bill Marimow (6/4/2008 12:00:00 AM) ""David Kairys is one of the grand long-distance runners in the struggle for justice in America. His brilliant legal mind and superb lawyerly skills are legendary. This marvelous book is his gift to us!"" --Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Princeton University, award winning author of Race Matters --Cornel West (5/19/2008 12:00:00 AM) ""David Kairys' compelling book properly explains the vital role that civil rights attorneys play in our system of justice."" --Judge John E. Jones III, United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, presided in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case --Judge John Jones III (6/4/2008 12:00:00 AM) ""In the current climate of political deception and the trampling of our civil rights, Kairys' compelling book is a clenched fist, a prayer for social justice and a call to conscience."" --Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist and former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and recent bestselling author of The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, And The Redemptive Power of Music --Steve Lopez (6/4/2008 12:00:00 AM) ""Readers interested in the civil rights movement, critical legal studies, or Philadelphia and American history will find these memoirs a valuable read."" --National Lawyers Guild Review, Traci Yoder --Traci Yoder ""National Lawyers Guild Review"" ""With engaging, insider stories of innovative legal strategies of a truly creative lawyer, this book evokes the ebullient spirit of progressive social change launched in the 1960s and should be read by aspiring and practicing lawyers as well as anyone interested in American social history. It reads like a suspense novel and reveals how novel legal and political thinking can and does make a real difference to individuals and to the quality of justice."" --Martha Minow, Jeremiah Smith Jr., Professor of Law, Harvard Law School --Martha Minow (5/14/2008 12:00:00 AM) Recollections of a career devoted to fighting for social justice.Kairys (Law/Temple Univ.; With Liberty and Justice for Some, 1993, etc.) has sifted through hefty files of documents to reconstruct events in and out of court and to re-create conversations with clients, witnesses, judges and other lawyers. The result is a fully fleshed-out memoir of life on the front lines of the civil-rights movement. Beginning as a public defender, the author was not yet a member of the bar when he took up the cause of James Jiles, an escapee from a chain gang who was facing extradition to Georgia. Through legal research, impressive powers of reasoning and persuasion, plus sheer chutzpah, Kairys carried the day in this case as he would in many future ones. In 1971, with funding from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, he and a partner opened a private practice that owed much of its work to, as Kairys puts it, the brutality and lawlessness of the Philadelphia police. When a group of Catholic antiwar activists broke into a draft-board office in nearby Camden, N.J., his firm defended the Camden 28, a case that drew national attention and revealed that the FBI had provided the tools for the break-in. The Bureau took it on the chin again when Kairys represented a black man in a racial discrimination suit against the FBI. He sued the CIA on behalf of the family of a scientist who died a week after a CIA researcher gave him a dose of LSD secretly mixed in a drink. The book's drama comes from these high-profile cases, including a free-speech suit brought by Dr. Benjamin Spock that went to the Supreme Court, but the author's account of how he managed to bring about changes in bail procedures and methods of jury selection are equally absorbing and provide a disturbing picture of the workings of the courts.Easy reading, pleasantly suffused with the idealism and activism of '60s and '70s. (Kirkus Reviews) Author InformationDavid Kairys is Professor of Law at Beasley School of Law, Temple University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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