Ten Great American Trials provides chapter-length accounts of some of the most highly publicized – and fascinating – court cases of the twentieth century. Each narrative contains an analysis of prosecutors' and defense attorneys' use of trial advocacy techniques (involving discovery, pre-trial motions, jury selection, direct testimony, cross-examination, the introduction of forensic exhibits, and summations) to craft compelling stories about what happened. The book also assesses the impact of cultural, social, and political values on the proceedings and the outcomes. The cases, several of which have been dubbed “the crime of the century,” were selected because they are dramatic, suspenseful, emotional, intellectually powerful, and have become part of American culture.
Uncertainty about motives, guilt or innocence, it is worth noting, still haunt several of these trials. And every one of the cases has inspired a full length movie, a television series, and/or a documentary.
All ten trials shed light on one or more “hot button” issues: xenophobia, the death penalty, race, anti-communism, free speech rights, homosexuality, and child abuse. The trials covered are:
Sacco and Vanzetti Leopold and Loeb The Scottsboro Boys United States v. Alger Hiss The Village of Skokie v. The National Socialist Party of America Dan White (the killer of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco) Claus von Bülow The McMartin Preschool Sexual Abuse Case O. J. Simpson
Faust F. Rossi, the Samuel S. Leibowitz Professor of Law and Trial Techniques, Emeritus, taught Evidence and Civil Procedure for 47 years at the Cornell Law School. Regarded as a popular and dynamic teacher by his students and colleagues, Professor Rossi is a national authority on Evidence, Procedure and Trial Advocacy and has written extensively on these subjects.
After graduating from Cornell Law School in 1960, Rossi began his career as a trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice Honors Program and later became a litigation partner in a New York law firm. In 1966, he joined the Cornell Law faculty where he not only taught but also served for several years as the Associate Academic Dean. He has authored a text on Expert Witnesses and was a national winner of the Roscoe Pound Jacobson award for Excellence in Teaching Trial Advocacy.
Rossi has given hundreds of Continuing Legal Education lectures to lawyers and judges in the United States and Europe. He has reached over a hundred thousand law students with his popular bar review lectures and his nationally distributed "Law School Legends" audio and video tapes on Evidence.
Professor Rossi was a recurring visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest where he taught "Introduction to American Civil Procedure"
and was a regular faculty member in the joint Cornell/Paris 1 Summer Institute of International and Comparative Law in Paris for over 15 years. During his career he has been a visiting professor at Oxford University in England; the University of Siena, Italy as well as the Law Schools at New York University; Emory University; University of San Diego and Georgetown. He also taught for many years at the annual National Institute for Trial Advocacy.
Glenn C. Altschuler is Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies, and a Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University. He is the author or coauthor of eleven books and more than one thousand essays and reviews. Professor Altschuler's op-eds and book reviews appear regularly on The Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and The Conversation US. The National Book Critics Circle has cited his work as "exemplary."
