Law on Trial An Unlikely Insider Reckons with Our Legal System

By: Shaun Ossei-Owusu

Published by W. W. Norton, Incorporated, 2026-04-14

The law is supposed to represent fairness, equality, and transparency. Yet in a world where injustice is normalized, many struggle to understand why our legal system fails despite its lofty principles. In Law on Trial, award-winning legal scholar Shaun Ossei-Owusu offers a rare perspective as an insider and a clear-eyed critic of its deep, baked-in structural problems. He begins with a tour through American legal education, where some of the seeds of inequality are planted in the emphasis on abstract thinking. He then moves to different corners of the profession where those seeds flourish: elite law firms, government offices, and well-intended public-interest organizations. At every step, Ossei-Owusu confronts some of America's polarizing topics--crime, poverty, and corporate power--and highlights the legal profession's troubling complicity. His defiant dissents challenge liberal and conservative orthodoxy while illuminating how the legal system might move closer to its highest aspirations.