Current Series Catalogue

... And Justice For All

Is there a distinction between law and justice? What effect does vigilantism have on the law and on the vigilantes themselves? What drives people to violent crime – and how closely can we understand the minds of violent criminals? What should we do when what we know is right conflicts with what the law says is right?

From criminal acts to civil disobedience, vigilante justice to courts of law, this series examines justice from a variety of perspectives using fiction, nonfiction and drama.

John Grisham, A Time to Kill
This novel focuses on the defense of a Southern black man who takes justice into his own hands to avenge himself on the white men who brutally raped his ten-year-old daughter.

Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident
This western classic examines the social issues that give rise to vigilantism and provides insights into vigilantism’s effects on both its victims and on the vigilantes themselves.

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
This documentary account of the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959 allows the reader to know both victims and murderers intimately.

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind
Based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, this play illustrates the use of the courts as a forum for examining and evaluating our changing ideas and philosophies.

Sophocles, Antigone
The issues raised in this play written more than two millennia ago are still being examined today, including whether we should conform to civil law when it conflicts with our understandings and beliefs about responsibility to a “higher law.”

Request this series online.