As we gear up for an online AALS, I’m reminded that last year’s meeting may have been the last “normal” conference gathering for many of us. Was it really one year ago that we all sat together in DC and watched, breathless, Vicki Jackson and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in conversation on the main stage?
As we continue to mourn Justice Ginsberg’s death, celebrate her legacy, and imagine our world without her, UC Press is beyond thrilled to announce that Justice Ginsberg’s last book, Justice, Justice, Thou Shalt Pursue will go on sale on March 16, 2021, the day after her birthday. Read more on Oprah Magazine or watch co-author Amanda Tyler’s interview on CNN.
Some of you may remember Justice Ginsberg talking with Professor Jackson about the late Berkeley law professor Herma Hill Kay’s chronicle of the first women law professors. We are also delighted to announce that Paving the Way will publish in April 2021! Edited by Patricia Cain, with a foreword by Justice Ginsberg and an afterword by Melissa Murray, the unsung history of these trailblazing legal academics will debut with an Author Meets Reader panel on January 7th at 2:45pm EST.
A few other recent and upcoming publishing highlights include:
- Jessica Henry’s Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened, a shocking exposé of an unknown but all-too-common miscarriage of justice
- Brandon Garrett’s Autopsy of a Crime Lab: Exposing the Flaws in Forensics, an essential tool for understanding junk science and its practitioners
- Alison Peck’s The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts: War, Fear, and the Roots of Dysfunction, which charts how the Department of Justice came to politicize our immigration courts, and how we can restore their independence
- Hadar Aviram’s Yesterday’s Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole, a fresh longitudinal perspective on extreme punishment, drawing on forty years of parole hearing transcripts from a most extreme case
- Bryce Clayton Newell’s Police Visibility: Privacy, Surveillance, and the False Promise of Body-Worn Cameras, the first major qualitative study of police officers and BWCs
- James Binnall’s Twenty Million Angry Men: The Case for Including Convicted Felons in Our Jury System, offers a forceful argument that a history of involvement with the criminal justice system is an asset and not a liability when it comes to jury service
For more on these and other titles, visit our AALS 2021 virtual exhibit page.
As these books show, the law list at UC Press invites readers to think critically about the ways in which the law shapes and constrains opportunity in the world. I am particularly interested in acquiring academic and trade books that challenge paradigms and demand progressive social change, and in partnering with scholar-activists and underrepresented voices. You can read more about my work and UC Press’s social justice mission in this recent interview I did with Publishers Weekly.
I invite you to get in touch with me with your book ideas! Please feel free to book a 15-minute “drop-by-the-virtual-booth” appointment with me here. Or drop me an email anytime, whether you’re in the early stages of sharpening your pitch, or you have a complete proposal package to share. You can find our proposal guidelines here, and you can check out my quick guide to understanding scholarly publishing here.
While I will miss the “live” conference energy that fuels and celebrates so much of our work together, I am excited for a terrific virtual program and for a new year of smart publishing!