The Just and the Unjust

Rating:
Summary: Must the jury obey the judge?
Review: A man was kidnapped for ransom. Instead of being released, he was murdered. The killer is dead. The question is whether the accomplices should be executed for first degree murder or just put away for 20 years for second degree murder.

The judge and the DA explain to the jury that in these circumstances all of the kidnappers must be found guilty of first degree murder. The defense attorney argues that the jury is free to disregard the DA, the judge, and the law, and that each juror must follow his own conscience.

The author seems to be telling us that the defense attorney is out of line, a wise guy. But a higher authority, an ex-judge, comments that jurors should follow their consciences even when this clashes with the law, as part of the series of checks and balances in our society. Judges don't want part of their job to be to decide verdicts because they would then be vulnerable to angry protests, so they must bow to King Jury.

Naturally there's a love story thrown in. But writing about love isn't a forte of this author. The whole question is whether Bonnie will finally accept Ab's proposal. I don't know what's holding her up.

Rating:
Summary: Must the jury obey the judge?
Review: A man was kidnapped for ransom. Instead of being released, he was murdered. The killer is dead. The question is whether the accomplices should be executed for first degree murder or just put away for 20 years for second degree murder.

The judge and the DA explain to the jury that in these circumstances all of the kidnappers must be found guilty of first degree murder. The defense attorney argues that the jury is free to disregard the DA, the judge, and the law, and that each juror must follow his own conscience.

The author seems to be telling us that the defense attorney is out of line, a wise guy. But a higher authority, an ex-judge, comments that jurors should follow their consciences even when this clashes with the law, as part of the series of checks and balances in our society. Judges don't want part of their job to be to decide verdicts because they would then be vulnerable to angry protests, so they must bow to King Jury.

Naturally there's a love story thrown in. But writing about love isn't a forte of this author. The whole question is whether Bonnie will finally accept Ab's proposal. I don't know what's holding her up.

Rating:
Summary: Superb account of what the practice of law really is like.
Review: I read this book first in 1957 as a course assignment. I found it on my mother's bookshelves and, knowing that she read principally for enjoyment, I wondered why the professor had assigned it. I found it on first reading a fascinating account of a trial and of small town life, and a welcome change from the dry texts we had been studying. Later, when I came to practice law in a small town myself, I realized that Cozzens has captured better than any author I ever have read the "taste" of real law practice. I have read it several times and recommend it to any literate person.

Rating:
Summary: The best portrait of law practice in American fiction
Review: No American novel portrays better what it is like to practice law. Even though many, if not most, of the details of practice have changed in the 60-odd years since this was written, the book still gives a wonderfully accurate sense of what it is like to be in trial, think through legal issues, and deal with other lawyers. (It is hard to believe--but nonetheless true--that the author was not a lawyer.) In addition, the depiction of a fairly ordinary murder trial is neatly interwoven with the story of how a somewhat arrogant young lawyer takes an important step or two toward maturity. I withheld the fifth star mainly because the book also contains (briefly) offensive, Hollywood-ish portrayals of African-Americans. Fortunately, Cozzens's later novels show that he grew out of this.

Rating:
Summary: The best portrait of law practice in American fiction
Review: No American novel portrays better what it is like to practice law. Even though many, if not most, of the details of practice have changed in the 60-odd years since this was written, the book still gives a wonderfully accurate sense of what it is like to be in trial, think through legal issues, and deal with other lawyers. (It is hard to believe--but nonetheless true--that the author was not a lawyer.) In addition, the depiction of a fairly ordinary murder trial is neatly interwoven with the story of how a somewhat arrogant young lawyer takes an important step or two toward maturity. I withheld the fifth star mainly because the book also contains (briefly) offensive, Hollywood-ish portrayals of African-Americans. Fortunately, Cozzens's later novels show that he grew out of this.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant description of a trial and its participants
Review: This is the book that a trial lawyer (me) can give to his friends who want to know "what's it like?" In addition to capturing the terror and boredom of a trial, Cozzens evokes small town New England as well as anyone I've ever read. His flawed and believable characters wrestle realistically with moral and ethical dilemmas.

Cozzens also shines in "Guard of Honor" and "By Love Posessed." I don't know why he has fallen out of favor. His style may be too dense for modern, short attention spans. Their loss.

Rating:
Summary: A very, very good novel
Review: This novels relates changes in the life of Abner Coates, the Assistant District Attorney in the small town of Childerstown, during one week in May 1939, as the Commonwealth (never named) tries two men for first-degree murder. While the trial occupies much of the novel, it does not overshadow it. Cozzens so adroitly relates the lives of a number of characters that more than just one week seems to elapse. The intricacies of the criminal trial, as well as the utter ordinariness of the trial, are wonderfully, and at times movingly, done. The novel succeeds as a narrative not only of a murder trial, but also as an (interestingly unromantic) love story, and as a picture of what life in a small town in the eastern U.S. was like during the first half of the twentieth century. Cozzens is very, very adept at depicting people at their jobs and knows how to show dramatically the way work expresses character. After Paul Horgan, James Gould Cozzens is perhaps the most underrated and overlooked American novelist of the 20th century. He is definitely worth reading, and this novel is a good place to start.