The Trial in American Life

“Robert Ferguson’s magnum opus is a truly remarkable achievement. It is a must read for all serious students of U.S. literary, cultural, and legal history. It is also an exceptionally compelling book: wise in its perceptions, written with a sense of moral urgency and also with a narrative flair. Few works of serious scholarship manage to be erudite, intricate, and gripping at the same time. Ferguson’s is all these and more.”—Lawrence Buell, Harvard University

"The Trial in American Life is a brilliant and original exploration of the meaning and significance of courtroom trials in the United States.  Robert Ferguson brings a wealth of legal, historical, and literary material together in a perceptive, broad-ranging study that includes compelling accounts of five of the most famous American trials."—Lloyd Weinreb, Harvard University

"Have criminal trials lost their meaning for a visually over-stimulated American public?  Do trials for high profile defendants conform to the norms of justice? These have always been difficult questions in the United States, but they have become especially urgent in our current TV-dominated society. Readers will be surprised and possibly confounded by the answers given by lawyer, litterateur and social critic Robert Ferguson in this gracefully written and intellectually compelling volume."—Stanley N. Katz, Princeton University

"Ever since Plato banished the poet from the city, people have thought that literature and governance should be kept separate. Robert Ferguson’s extraordinary book explodes that belief by showing that our country’s most primal trials cannot be understood without their literary contexts. Ferguson is a national treasure because he not only possesses a poet’s soul and a lawyer’s sense, but a fine intuition for when to give each its voice. No other scholar could so deftly demonstrate that Aaron Burr’s career was portrayed to mimic the fall of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, or unlock the mystery of John Brown’s martyrdom by showing how closely Brown’s self-accounting conformed to the then-wildly popular genre of the Romance. Roll over Plato: your poet has retained a lawyer, and regained his rightful place in our Republic."—Kenji Yoshino, Professor of Law, Yale Law School

"Ferguson writes about famous American trials as public spectacles, narratives, and rhetorical performances. His special mission is to explain the cultural associations that these trial-dramas and their principal actors—defendants, lawyers, witnesses, judges, press and TV reporters—would have conveyed to the publics of their time. This task requires formidable historical and cultural learning, an expert insider's eye for legal detail, and delicate interpretation and analysis of trials as literary texts. Ferguson has all these skills and as an extra, an admirably precise and graceful prose style. Some of his accounts are tragic, some farcical; some arouse indignation at gross injustice, others pity and admiration for defendants. The book is superb—illuminating, moving and ultimately deeply disturbing."—Robert W. Gordon, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale University

"We are all aware that trials can be key moments in American cultural life. Robert Ferguson shows why. Building on his exceptional knowledge of American history and literature as well as his legal expertise, he makes us understand specific contexts and discourses that make a trial matter. This is a book about some of our most central cultural dramas, from Aaron Burr to the Rosenbergs—and about the future of courtroom drama."—Peter Brooks, Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University

"Robert Ferguson provides a masterful analysis and explanation of the role trials play in American life. He also has the courage to offer carefully considered answers to the questions his lucid and historically grounded account raises about the country's sense of justice and its means of achieving it. Written with clarity and concision, The Trial in American Life is informed by the linguistic and generic training of a literary critic, the professional expertise of a lawyer, and the encyclopedic knowledge of a historian."—Brook Thomas, Chancellor's Professor of English, University of California, Irvine