Trial Magazine

The Triumph of Doubt
By David Michaels
Oxford University Press 
https://global.oup.com
344 pp.; $27.95

David Michaels—an epidemiologist and assistant secretary of labor for OSHA under President Obama—explores the “product defense industry,” which he describes as a “cabal of apparent experts . . . who use bad science to produce whatever results their sponsors want.” With each chapter covering a different topic, such as the opioid epidemic and toxic chemicals, the book examines a longstanding practice of many manufacturers: responding to safety concerns by financing studies that conclude that the “science isn’t strong enough” to warrant regulation. Michaels encourages readers to scrutinize “what manufactured doubt looks like and where it is leveraged against the public good.” Many of his primary sources are available at toxicdocs.org.

Desk 88
By Sen. Sherrod Brown
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
www.fsgbooks.com
368 pp.; $28

The book opens by describing a Senate tradition: first-term senators selecting floor desks and reading the carved-in names of those who sat there before. The current occupant of Desk 88, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), focuses on eight senators who shared his seat and, in his view, “contributed to . . . a more progressive America.” The book features public servants such as Theodore Francis Green (D-R.I., 1937–1961), William Proxmire (D-Wis., 1957–1989), and Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y., 1965–1968), among others. Brown describes their legacies and the history of various progressive movements, while also noting the significant work that remains—for example, it’s believed that “no woman has yet called Desk 88 hers.”

Uncounted
By Gilda R. Daniels
NYU Press
https://nyupress.org
272 pp.; $30

University of Baltimore School of Law professor Gilda Daniels delves into the history of voter suppression in the United States and “what must be done to dismantle this suppressive system.” A former deputy chief in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section, Daniels draws connections between the “overt and ferocious” methods used to disenfranchise voters in the past and more “contemporary” methods, such as voter ID and felon disenfranchisement laws. Daniels’s study of the implementation and impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 includes the story of her grandmother, an African American woman who has repeatedly experienced the “real impact of voting laws on people of color.”

Online Courts and the Future of Justice
By Richard Susskind
Oxford University Press
https://global.oup.com
368 pp.; $24.95

The technology adviser to the lord chief justice of England and Wales, Richard Susskind describes his vision of what the court systems of the future may look like. He discusses fledgling but potentially powerful tools like augmented reality, as well as seven “principles of justice”—such as “substantive justice” and “distributive justice”—that communities must define as the basis of future digital courts. The book also looks ahead to ethical dilemmas that later generations may confront, such as whether to integrate artificial intelligence into judicial systems, and how—if people cannot assess the “algorithms and data that might come to sit at the heart of our court system”—issues of “transparency and bias” can be addressed.  

Light Summer Reads

The Splendid and the Vile 
By Erik Larson

Tiny Habits 
By B.J. Fogg

The Mirror & the Light
By Hilary Mantel

The Authenticity Project 
By Clare Pooley