Georgetown Law Faculty’s Best Reads of 2024
December 23, 2024
Throughout the academic year, Georgetown Law faculty inspire students and colleagues with their insights, scholarship and expertise. But what inspires them?
As we close out 2024, we asked our faculty to share their top reads of the year — the books, articles and works of scholarship that shaped their thinking, challenged their perspectives or simply brought them joy. From thought-provoking analyses of why statutory language can be difficult to understand for ordinary Americans to gripping dystopian fiction, their picks highlight the breadth of interests within our academic community.
Read on to discover our faculty’s top reads of 2024 — and perhaps find the next great addition to your bookshelf!
Demand the ImpossibleBook
Author: Robert Tsai
Nominated by: David Cole, The Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy
“A truly compelling account of how Stephen Bright, one of the nation’s greatest lawyers, devoted his life to demanding justice from the criminal justice system throughout the South. Bright represented the least popular among us and demanded that they be treated fairly and with dignity. His career, as told by Tsai, demonstrates how much good a lawyer committed to public justice can do.”
Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
Book
Author: Brenda Wineapple
Nominated by: Amy Uelmen, C’90, L’93, L’16, Director for Mission & Ministry
“This book is a riveting and incredibly well-written account of the 1925 trial of John Scopes, the schoolteacher charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his public high school biology class. The history includes deep historical background into the religious, social, racial and economic tensions of the time, as well as empathetic and profound profiles of both Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. I found it to be an extraordinary resource for reflection on the historical roots of current religious and political tensions and divisions.”
Photo Credit: Penguin Random House
Novel
Author: Percival Everett
Nominated by: Kristin Henning, L’87, Blume Professor of Law, Director, Juvenile Justice Clinic
“James is a wonderful, creative, and empowering re-imagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, but told from the perspective of Huckleberry’s travel companion, Jim, who escaped from enslavement.”
Photo Credit: Penguin Random House
Law Review Article
Author: Elizabeth R. Baldwin
Nominated by: Stephen Horowitz, Lecturer of Legal English
“By identifying and explaining the linguistic concepts that make up cohesion in writing, Baldwin provides the tools (if you know how to use them) for giving teachers and students (especially international students) objective criteria for understanding and applying the magic glue of cohesion in their own writing, rather than having to rely on subjective or metaphorical instructions that require a shared cultural context between teacher and student.”
On TyrannyBook
Author: Timothy Snyder
Nominated by: Professor Dan Ernst, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal History
“Deep historical expertise, masterfully distilled and purposed for our times.”
Photo Credit: Penguin Random House
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution
Book
Author: Dan Hicks
Nominated by: Madhavi Sunder, Frank Sherry Professor of Intellectual Property Law
“Read this book by the curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford to understand the violent colonial looting underlying the collections of the world’s most celebrated museums, and how law continues to legalize theft as the cultural property of the West.”
Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti
Book
Author: Jake Johnston
Nominated by: Elisa Massimino, Visiting Professor and Executive Director, Human Rights Institute
“As the world watches Haiti descend further into violence and puzzles about the way forward, Johnston’s deeply researched and brutally honest book reveals how long-standing U.S. and European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti — the world’s first independent Black republic — under the guise of helping it. Our Human Rights Advocacy in Action practicum students are finding Aid State an essential read as they develop legal and political strategies to secure restitution from France for the odious debt it imposed in 1825 on the newly independent Haitian state — and from the French and American banks that exploited the debt for enormous profit.”
Photo Credit: MacMillan Publishers
Novel
Author: Octavia Butler
Nominated by: Amanda Levendowski, Founding Director, Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic
“If you’re concerned about the dystopian future — environmental, political, informational — that America is barreling toward, rest assured that Octavia Butler both predicted it and offered lessons for resisting it in the 1990s. Told in illuminating prose, Parable of the Sower remains a beacon of hope in dark times. (And there’s a sequel, in case one book isn’t enough!)”
So Much for Plain Language: An Analysis of the Accessibility of U.S. Federal Laws Over Time
Peer Reviewed Law Article
Author: Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica and Edward Gibson
Nominated by: Professor Kevin Tobia
“This is one of my favorite papers of 2024, which succeeds in pursuing a fundamental question of practical and theoretical significance with new empirical methods. Martínez et al. examine the success of the plain language movement by studying a dataset of the text of every law passed by Congress between 1951 and 2009. They compare statutory language to language in other genres, clarifying what makes the former difficult for ordinary Americans to understand.”
Book
Author: Linda Kinstler
Nominated by: David Luban, Distinguished University Professor
“A remarkable mix of family history, Holocaust history, detective story and a story about the historical distortions of contemporary nationalism.”
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage
Book
Author: Jonathan Turley
Nominated by: Randy E. Barnett, Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law
“Freedom of speech is usually defended as a means to the ends of political participation or the pursuit of truth. In this book, Jonathan Turley defends the freedom of speech as a fundamental natural right because the free expression of thought is at the very essence of being human. To be sure, this natural right undergirds the First Amendment, but it also extends beyond the scope of that constitutional right, which is limited to protecting against state action.”
Photo Credit: Simon & Schuster
Just Us: An American Conversation
Book
Author: Claudia Rankine
Nominated by: Gregory Shaffer, Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of International Law
“Rankine powerfully addresses race and issues of whiteness, and the importance of conversation about it.”
Photo Credit: Graywolf Press
Novel
Author: I.S. Berry
Nominated by: Michael Dreeben, Distinguished Visitor from Government (on leave)
“This is a work of fiction — a spy thriller written in lush literary language and evoking a time and place (a diplomatic mission in Bahrain) in a time of crisis for the society and characters. It’s a story of intrigue, complex human motivations, corruption and mystery.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Simon & Schuster
Book
Author: Jacob Mchangama
Nominated by: Anupam Chander, Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Technology
“Jacob Mchangama’s magisterial account of the history of free speech, going from Socrates to Snapchat, shows us how free speech has often been the target of authoritarians everywhere and a key to societal progress.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Basic Books