The Constitution and the Future of Criminal Justice in America. Edited by John T. Parry and L. Song Richardson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 348 pp. $36.99 paper.

• Date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12131
• Published date: 01 March 2015

may f‌ind many of his nonlegal examples hard to follow. The legal

examples, including detailed dissections of appellate briefs and clos-

ing arguments, are also older than might be preferable. Of course

law is more backward-looking than many disciplines, but the use of

some examples from within the past decade would have made the

text more accessible and appealing to younger readers.

One particular legal example, which Meyer draws on repeatedly

throughout the text, is particularly puzzling. This is the criminal

trial of Louie Failla, who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in

prison for racketeering and who only avoided dying in prison

because he obtained a compassionate release due to medical issues.

While this case is quite compelling as an example of how the defense

and the prosecution can make two different tales out of the same

raw material, the defense’s storytelling was clearly less successful

than Failla would have desired. What Meyer does not address in

relation to this example is that the most compelling legal storytelling

in the world is useless if it cannot secure the desired outcome for the

client. As I read and contemplated these examples, my thoughts

kept returning to Janet Malcolm’s (2011) incisive treatment of court-

room storytelling. Meyer mentions an earlier version of Malcolm’s

text in passing, but his work would have been prof‌itably improved

by the application of his narrative framework to her reporting.

References

Malcolm, Janet (2011) Ipigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial. New Haven: Yale

University Press.

***

The Constitution and the Future of Criminal Justice in America. Edited

by John T. Parry and L. Song Richardson. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2013. 348 pp. $36.99 paper.

Reviewed by Thomas P. Crocker, University of South Carolina, School

of Law

The Constitution and the Future of Criminal Justice in America asks the

question, “what is the future of constitutional criminal law in the

United States?” (p. 2). In seventeen chapters, the volume provides

Book Reviews 287