Whip-smart and wickedly acerbic, Lithwick shines a reassuring light on the essential interconnectivity between women and the law and champions the vital role women lawyers must continue to play if American democracy is to persevere.
Between starry-eyed opening and grim conclusion, [Lithwick] profiles women lawyers whose stories provide a contextualizing capsule tour of the era and offer some bracing hope ... Though the text is necessarily bristling with names of court cases, Lithwick’s writing is friendly to lay readers and marked by her trademark pithy wit and an endearing faith in the promise of the legal system ... Required reading for this post-Dobbs world.
... incisive if uneven ... Though the profiles are full of sharp observations and astute analyses of legal matters, Lithwick’s focus on individual attorneys and activists inadvertently echoes the 'Great Man' theory of social change she thinks Americans are 'too apt to succumb to.' Much stronger, if more depressing, are the sections she devotes to her own story of sexual harassment by a federal judge and her sense of complicity in upholding 'the culture of silence in the legal profession.' Despite its flaws, this evocative study captures the power and fragility of the rule of law.
