One Man's Justice: A Life in the Law

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A Quaker thwarted by the government in her attempts to prevent her tax dollars from being used for military purposes. A man wrongly convicted as an habitual criminal. A girl rendered brain damaged and quadriplegic by a botched hospital procedure.

Tom Berger may be best known for championing aboriginal rights, including early advocacy work that led to the precendent-setting Nisga'a Accord, bu the has also had a great impact upon a panoply of causes, often representing those not well served by the legal and legislative status quo. His clients were often the poor, the vulnerable, the dispossessed.

In a career that spans four decades in the law, Berger has taken on the challenge of many controversial cases in order to test or transform the application of justice within the law. Eleven major cases -- not all of them courtroom victories -- are featured in this compelling book. Excerpts of dramatic courtroom give-and-take, accounts of behind-the-scenes, at times spontaneous legal strategizing, all bring Berger's adventures in the law to vivid life. Rich characters people his recollections, from an aging judge brashly displaying his anti-union sentiments, to clients poignantly trying to reclaim some sense of dignity in lives that have been trampled by the machinations of the legal system. The "justice" that resulted from these cases benefited more than Berger's clients, and reached out to each and every one of us.