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| Judge Sentences : Tales from the Bench
ISBN: 9781555537364
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Northeastern University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Law;
Here at last are the best of Dermot Meagher's tales of life as a judge in Boston Municipal Court, where he presided over real-life cases rivaling the best of David E. Kelley's The Practice, Boston Legal, and Ally McBeal. These true-to-life stories, some of which first appeared in Boston and DoubleTake magazines, showcase a writer of rare talent and humor: a Harvard-educated "man of the people," who has seen it all yet never lost his ability to be surprised by the parade of humanity that came before his bench--from the offbeat to the curiously affecting to the downright tragic (not to mention tragicomic). A wise, wry, and disarmingly humane observer of human foibles, Judge Meagher waives judicial discretion and deliberates in a way more familiar to literature than to any court of law (but with names changed to protect the innocent as well as the not-so-innocent). Judge Meagher's great achievement in Judge Sentences is to give us a voice of justice rendered as kindness and humor rather than judgment and discipline. In these hugely appealing and provocative tales of dysfunction and conflict, readers have the privilege of experiencing a side of Boston (and America) that is otherwise largely hidden from public view. Real life often is stranger than fiction, and Judge Meagher shows us just how strange--and how urgent and real--it can be.
DERMOT MEAGHER was a judge of the Trial Court of Massachusetts for seventeen years. He sat in the legendary Boston Municipal Court, the oldest trial court in Massachusetts. Before that, he investigated and prosecuted lawyers, was a court and bail reformer, an assistant district attorney, and a fellow in criminal justice at Harvard Law School; he also taught criminal and constitutional law and procedure to police officers. He is the coauthor (with Robert Coles, M.D. and Joseph Brenner, M.D.) of Drugs and Youth: Medical, Psychiatric, and Legal Facts. He retired as a judge in 2006. |
