FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“A persuasive plea on behalf of the fading American trial, which is so much a part of our imagined world that we can hardly conceive of its disappearance. Robert Burns’s statement of what we stand to lose if this institution disappears is powerful and moving. This book should start the sort of conversation about the trial that ought to take place among lawyers and any others concerned about the state of justice in our culture.”
James Boyd White, author of Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force

“Written by one of America’s leading analysts of the legal trial… The Death of the American Trial offers an account of what would be lost if trials were to vanish. Robert Burns is hardly neutral in his reaction to this prospect. After reading his lucid and engaging prose, it is hard to imagine that anyone could remain neutral. His scholarship is as impeccable as his argument is compelling. Bravo!”
Austin Sarat, author of When the State Kills

The Death of the American Trial
By Robert Burns

From the trial of O. J. Simpson to classic films like 12 Angry Men and the seemingly endless incarnations of Law & Order, jury trials real and imagined continue to play a powerful role in American culture. Their role in American justice, however, is shrinking rapidly, as juries decide a smaller fraction of criminal and civil cases with each passing year. In The Death of the American Trial, Robert Burns warns that this decline could lead not only to the loss of a vaunted institution, but also to the dangerous erosion of American democracy. The trial, Burns argues, is one of our greatest public achievements. Demonstrating how trials have always provided a defense against encroaching secrecy and bureaucracy, he lays out the profound consequences of losing an institution that so perfectly embodies democratic governance. As one federal judge put it, the jury is the ”canary in the mineshaft; if it goes, if our people lose their inherited right to do justice in court, other democratic institutions will lose breath too.“

An impassioned and eloquent case for resuscitation, The Death of the American Trial makes clear that to ensure the future health of the nation, the trial’s unique role must continue to play out not only in the stories we tell ourselves, but also in our halls of justice.

Robert P. Burns is professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. He is the author of A Theory of the Trial.

 

Robert P. Burns is available for interviews. For more information, please contact Megan Marz at (773) 702-7490 or mmarz@uchicago.edu

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