“‘Ordinary injustice results,’ Bach writes, ‘when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them.’ She cites the well-known case of the sleeping lawyer: Joe Frank Cannon, who repeatedly fell asleep while representing a defendant charged with murder in a Texas trial. The conviction was finally set aside by a federal court of appeals, but only by a vote of 9–5. For Bach, the nagging question was how it was ‘possible that a defense lawyer could fall asleep during a murder trial, and yet no judge, defendant, juror, or member of the bar sitting in the courtroom, no witness, not even the prosecutor, objected.’”

The New York Review of Books loves Amy Bach’s new book, Ordinary Injustice. So do we.

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