Rights on Trial: Odyssey of a People's Lawyer

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all public interest lawyers
Review: In his uniquely humorous, heartfelt, and soulful voice, Kinoy teaches the reader about the behind-the-scenes battles fought by the legal workers of the US civil rights movement. Shocking stuff revealed as Kinoy packs a lot of information about judges, FBI agents, and freedom fighters in this can't-put-it-down book. If you are considering trying to use the law to achieve justice, you should read it. You should also join the National Lawyers Guild.

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all public interest lawyers
Review: In his uniquely humorous, heartfelt, and soulful voice, Kinoy teaches the reader about the behind-the-scenes battles fought by the legal workers of the US civil rights movement. Shocking stuff revealed as Kinoy packs a lot of information about judges, FBI agents, and freedom fighters in this can't-put-it-down book. If you are considering trying to use the law to achieve justice, you should read it. You should also join the National Lawyers Guild.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book on Civil Liberties and the Law
Review: Kinoy is an unsung American hero. Always willing to defend the underdog, he has sometimes overcome tremendous legal obstacles and emerged on top. This book chronicles his more well-known cases: the Rosenbergs, the Chicago Seven, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Adam Clayton Powell, and many more. Why Kinoy isn't more well-known is a mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Critical History
Review: Professor Kinoy's persoanl account of legal struggles against reactionary forces in this country for over six decades is a chilling and inspiring antidote to forgetfulness. This book should be required reading in american history courses, especially now when opportunistic politicos and businesses once again exploit paranoia to keep civil rights and constitutional order under siege. Though Mr. Kinoy's style may sometimes seem repetitve, his book is an honest search for the answer to a question all too rarely asked: what can a citizen do, in the darkest of times, to help this country live up to its ideals?

Rating:
Summary: Critical History
Review: Professor Kinoy's persoanl account of legal struggles against reactionary forces in this country for over six decades is a chilling and inspiring antidote to forgetfulness. This book should be required reading in american history courses, especially now when opportunistic politicos and businesses once again exploit paranoia to keep civil rights and constitutional order under siege. Though Mr. Kinoy's style may sometimes seem repetitve, his book is an honest search for the answer to a question all too rarely asked: what can a citizen do, in the darkest of times, to help this country live up to its ideals?

Rating:
Summary: HEROIC AMERICAN WARRIOR DEFENDS U.S. CONSTITUTION
Review: The late Arthur Kinoy's awsome memoir nearly inspired me to write that his "RIGHTS ON TRIAL": is the most important and --- yes --- exciting action adventure on pivotal American social, political and legal events that I had ever read. After pausing to consider that such a seemingly exaggerated appraisal would, after all, include placing Kinoy's story above Thomas Jefferson's personal letters and documents and those of like-minded American patriots, I was, nevertheless, left to conclude that Kinoy's awsome memoir is the most important and exciting action adventure on pivotal American social, political and legal events that I had ever read.

After the intellectually gifted Kinoy graduated from Harvard University he joined the U.S. Army in World War II, fighting during three years against the armies of fascism in Italy (the Allied invasion of Anzio) and North Africa. Returning to civilian life, he decided to become a "people's lawyer" after graduating from Columbia University's elite Law School. He formed a partnership with the legendary William Kunstler and his brother Michael that waged legal battles to defend the rights of union workers and others against the onslaught of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts in the 1950s. In a desperate 11th hour appeal, attorneys for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (convicted of spying for the Soviet Union) had recruited the young Kinoy for helping with a stay of execution by electrocution. "RIGHTS ON TRIAL" presents such a white knuckles, riveting story of Kinoy's failed desperate attempt in his detailed account of the legalistic maneuvers to get the railroaded Rosenbergs justice that this chapter's pathos stands alone. Yet in his book, Kinoy's battles for people's rights against the forces of the McCarthy era are only the beginning of his life's story.

"RIGHTS ON TRIAL" describes in exciting detail Kinoy's pivotal roles as a legal warrior for the civil rights movement, for government-persecuted activists in the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the U.S. Constitution itself against the Richard M. Nixon administration's nearly successful subverion of our national laws and the Supreme Court itself. Nixon had been attempting to sieze unlimited powers for himself while president. This little known attempted absolute power grab by Nixon came to a climax several days before the notorious Watergate break-in.

For the first time, Kinoy presents answers to the question of why so many of Nixon's accomplices were skulking around the Democrat's Watergate headquarters that fateful night. Weeks earlier, Republican spooks had already planted a plethora of electronic listening devices in the headquarters, assuming that Nixon could get away with it by siezing absolute power by effectively suspending the Constitutional restraints on the presidency. This had all been plotted by the Nixon White House under the catch-all cover of "national security." But when it appeared to Nixon that Kinoy's case, just then before the U.S. Supreme Court, could put a stop to his end run around the constitution, his "White House Plumbers" tried to hastily remove all the wiretaps and bugs they had earlier planted at Democratic headquarters. But the cops caught the burglars. Rather than trying to make the national security fig leaf stick, now Nixon and his henchmen had broken laws when they broke in for attempting to reverse their earlier malfeasance at the Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate hotel.

Kivoy had won his Supreme Court case that reiterated the constitutional-limiting powers of the U.S. presidency --- making it subordinate to the law. Then after the Watergate beak-in, America was put through the Nixon impeachment hearings. The White House Plumber criminals, who had broken into the Democrats' Watergate headquarters were convicted and sent to prison. Their boss, Nixon removed himself from the presidency by his resignation, just before his removal by legislative action was about to take place. The least significant of these events was Nixon's "disgrace." The important thing was that America's constitutional democracy had once again been snatched from being plunged into the abyss of tyranny.

Why is "RIGHTS ON TRIAL" so timely and intensely important today? Today, America faces a crisis to its democracy brought down on her by George W. Bush's administration. In the name of national security, once again the Republicans are undermining the people's democratic rights by this political cancer slowly devouring the Constitution. And once again, an heroic American warrior like Arthur Kinoy will have to be in the right place at the right time to defend and preserve our Constitution because once again our rights are on trial, and our very democracy is at stake.