Introduction: "This Is Your Trial Date!" -- Twenty-sixth and Cal -- Les Enfants des ... Twenty-sixth and Cal -- A Pause in the Story -- New Clothes -- "What's Your Favorite Radio Station?" -- An Eerie Scream -- I Confess -- My Night at Bob's -- Calvin: Introduction to ... -- Opening -- Direct and Cross -- Cops -- Meet the Author -- The State "Rests" -- Nice Guy -- A Cry (Part Two) -- And We Were Winning! -- My Third Day of Trial -- Why I Now Liked Ms. M. -- Charterhouse of Parma -- Rolando's Turn -- Moot Court -- What Scott Told the Jury -- The Smartest Thing -- Let's Eat! -- A Dull Patch, in the Library -- A Table at Charlie Trotter's -- Scott's Beeper Goes Off -- We've Lost! -- The Jury Has a Question -- The Jury Has Another Question -- Above the Law -- When I Became "Adult" -- Big Day -- A Juror Speaks -- A Final Meal -- "That's Why You Go to Law School" -- What I Tried After Rolando -- Ask Soros -- "Yes, I Admit, I'd Use the Courts for Social Change!" -- That's the Median? -- Levitation -- Inequality Is All the Rage -- The Problem Is, It's All the Wheel -- The Mysterious Meaning of Bush v. Gore.

"Twenty-sixth and Cal is the Cook County criminal court house in Chicago that labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan finds odd and surprising, despite his twenty years of practicing civil law." "Geoghegan is accustomed to civil practice, in which "complex litigation" fades out slowly into settlement. Thus, when he is asked by a friend to assist in a criminal case he is unprepared for the much quicker folk justice of state criminal court. The case at hand is the defense of a twenty-two-year-old who, at age fifteen, was sentenced to forty years in prison for acting as the unarmed lookout in a botched holdup. Now there is a retrial, and Geoghegan must face the whims of jury selection, prosecutorial advantage, and the fact that one youth's life will be determined forever in just three days of court proceedings. In an America that now routinely imprisons kids as adults, he comes to see this small case as a basic test of human rights." "The case also leads Geoghegan to reevaluate his own career as a civil lawyer, and the ways he might use the law of effect social change. In America's Court argues that even now, despite the low comedy of so many lawyers' lives, we may be seeing the beginning of a new era of American law based on global human rights. In America's Court is both a compelling narrative and a candid look at what kind of justice our society provides for its citizens."--BOOK JACKET.