The prosecution of African slaves for murder and piracy aboard an illegal Spanish slave ship off the coast of Cuba, and their dramatic acquittal at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841, was all but forgotten until Steven Spielberg’s film “Amistad” refreshed our memory. The movie was based primarily on a 1987 book by Howard Jones. (Click on the images above for details or to purchase.)

For a deeper exploration of the legal issues—including the complete trial record and maps of the voyages—see the University of Missouri Law School’s website.

Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy
By Howard Jones
Oxford University Press, 1987, 304 pages
$31.09 paperback, $13.47 Kindle

In 1839, captive Africans being transported illegally as slaves commandeered the Spanish slave ship La Amistad (“Friendship”) off the Cuban coast, and killed all but two of the crew. The 53 mutineers were tricked by the surviving crew members into sailing to the Long Island coast instead of back to Africa. The U.S. Navy siezed and imprisoned the Africans, and charged them with murder and piracy. In March 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court freed the surviving 35 Africans (including their leader Cinque), and 10 months later they returned to Sierra Leone. “The trial raised fundamental legal questions about the relevance of slavery and race to the American conception of liberty,” according to Library Journal, and “temporarily united disparate factions of the fledgling abolitionist movement.” It also prompted President Van Buren to improperly interfere with the judicial process. Jones’s book is generously illustrated and documented.

The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone
Iyunolu Folayan Osagie
University of Georgia Press, 2003, 216 pages
$22.95 paperback

This “extended essay” examines the cultural significance of the 1839 Amistad revolt in contemporary America and Africa. The author is from Sierra Leone, where the Africans on the Amistad were enslaved. She sees the “re-memory” of the story, chiefly as a result of Spielberg’s 1997 film “Amistad,” as significant for the national and cultural identity in both Africa and the African diaspora in America.

Amistad
Starring Djimon Hounsou (as Cinque), Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, and Anthony Hopkins. Director Steven Spielberg
Dreamworks, 1997, 2 hrs 35 mins, Rated R
$7.99 on DVD

“Amistad” garnered four Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams). BlogCritics called it “one of the more dramatic and important films of the decade. ‘Amistad’ serves as a reminder that freedom is not to be taken for granted.”

A review in Entertainment Weekly, on the other hand, said the film “takes on a mass atrocity…but its approach is almost bizarrely academic. Midway through, there’s a 20-minute sequence that showcases, in graphic detail, the claustrophobic horrors of the ‘Middle Passage’ (bloody whippings, starvation, mass drownings). Otherwise, the film seems all but uninterested in the psychological experience of slavery. Its investment is in the issue of slavery, one that Spielberg uses to craft a courtroom drama of dull, soapbox ponderousness. By the time John Q. Adams shows up at the Supreme Court, the film has lapsed into liberal self-caricature.”

Click on the book image for details or to purchase.

Here are two books in defense of, and two critical of, the Bush Administration’s expansion of executive power from 9/11/01 through 2008.

Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency
By Richard A. Posner
Oxford University Press, 2006, 208 pages
$23.96 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

Posner, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, argues that in the face of terrorism, national security concerns become paramount, and the scope of constitutional rights and liberties must be narrowed. He says brutal forms of interrogation should be allowed in certain circumstances, and that all communications within the USA should be subject to interception and examination. Posner advocates expanding the power of the executive branch even in undeclared wars (like all of the wars we’ve fought since WWII).

Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror
By Benjamin Wittes
Penguin, 2009, 320 pages
$13.50 paperback, $9.99 Kindle

Legal affairs columnist and Brookings Institution fellow Wittes supports the expansion of executive power in the Bush-Cheney administration, and applauds many of its security measures, but argues that the “legal architecture” now in place is inadequate for a protracted war on terror. What we need now is broad legislation for addressing the civil liberties and human rights issues that arise in response to aggressive counterterrorism efforts. The legal foundation for domestic surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and torture of detainees is “cobbled together out of outdated and ill-fitting materials, and its flaws are glaring” (Booklist review). Wittes critizes the U.S. Supreme Court for interfering in foreign policy since 9/11/01 (e.g., attempting to extend its jurisdiction over detainees).

Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution
By James P. Pfiffner
Brookings Institution, 2008, 299 pages
$22.00 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

The Bush-Cheney administration denied the writ of habeas corpus to individuals deemed to be enemy combatants. It suspended the Geneva Convention and allowed or encouraged the use of harsh interrogation methods amounting to torture. It ordered the surveillance of Americans without obtaining warrants as required by law. And it issued signing statements declaring that the president does not have the duty to faithfully execute hundreds of provisions in the laws he has signed. “Pfiffner builds a powerful case pointing toward one unmistakable conclusion: since 9/11, the claims and actions of the Bush administration [undermined] constitutional principles and rule of law,” wrote Hugh Heclo, professor of public affairs at George Mason University.

Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution: The Battle over Presidential Power in the War on Terror
By Howard Ball
University Press of Kansas, 2007, 275 pages
$26.56 hardcover

Ball examines the enemy combatants cases of 2004 and 2006, including Rasul v. Bush, Hamdi v. Bush, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. He summarizes competing legal arguments pitting the detainees’ fundamental human rights (including habeas corpus) against Bush’s proclamation that he alone has the authority to decide their fate, as well as efforts by the Court and Congress to reclaim their own authority in such matters. Ball also analyzes the two Congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, the Patriot Act, and the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program; and describes how the administration found ways to evade both the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court’s decisions through new legislation, presidential signing statements, and redefinition of the status of the detainees. “President Bush’s treatment of enemy combatants in the ‘war on terror’ is the most important constitutional story of our time, and Howard Ball tells it with a deft sense for detail, an impressive field of vision, and a sharply critical eye,” wrote David Cole, author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism.

L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City
By John Buntin
Harmony, 2009, 432 pages
$17.16 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle
Click on the book image for details or to purchase.

Buntin’s book is a dual biography that weaves together the careers of (a) ruthless and flamboyant mobster Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen, and (b) uncorruptible but racist L.A. police chief William Parker. The Los Angeles criminal scene that Buntin describes, mostly from the Great Depression through the Watts race riots of 1965, is brutal and appalling.

Parker joined the L.A. police in 1927, became chief in 1950, and died in 1966. Before he took over as chief, the police “didn’t fight organized crime, they managed it.” Police were poorly educated, hardly trained, often drunk on the job, and hostile to minorities. City hall was equally corrupt. Parker hired 1,400 new cops and instilled discipline (not respect for civil liberties) in the force.

The diminutive Cohen, kingpin of the Los Angeles underworld, was “Hollywood’s favorite gangster” (Esotouric). Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. hung around with him. He was brought down not by Parker but by the feds twice for tax evasion, for which he served two hitches in the pen. When he died (in his sleep) in 1975, he still owed the USA almost $500,000.

L.A. Noir is entertaining, but Buntin “writes in cliched journalese,” says Jonathan Yardley in his Washington Post review, “and tries to cram too much” into the book. Kirkus called it “a roller coaster ride [and] gripping social history.”

The 1945-46 Nuremberg trial of Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity was the first international criminal tribunal, and the foundation of international justice and human rights policies. Following are reviews of three books and three DVDs. (Click on the book or DVD images for details, or to purchase.)

Justice at Nuremberg
By Robert E. Conot
Basic Books, 1993, 590 pages
$14.78 paperback

Originally published in 1983, this was the first, and is still the most comprehensive, dramatic account of the trial of 21 Nazi military and civilian leaders for atrocities they committed before and during World War II. Norman Birkett, one of the British judges, called it “the greatest trial in history.” Conot reconstructs both the proceedings at Nuremburg and the offenses with which the accused were charged. As sickening and dispiriting as the atrocities were, they are balanced by the dignity and fairness with which the trial was conducted. (Amazon.com mistakenly says this paperback edition has 230 pages.)

Nuremberg Diary
By G. M. Gilbert
Da Capo Press, 1995, 488 pages
$18.00 paperback

This book is both spellbinding and chilling. Dr. Gilbert was the prison psychologist at Nuremberg, watched and questioned the Nazi war criminals. With scientific dispassion he encouraged Göering, Speer, Hess, Ribbentrop, Frank, Jodl, Keitel, Streicher, and the others to reveal their innermost thoughts. In the process Gilbert exposed what motivated them to create the distorted Aryan utopia and the nightmarish worlds of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. In Nuremberg Diary, he describes their day-to-day reactions to the trial proceedings; their off-the-record opinions of Hitler and the Third Reich; their views on slave labor, death camps, and the Jews; their testimony, feuds, and desperate maneuverings to deny their guilt.

The Nuremberg Legacy: How the Nazi War Crimes Trials Changed the Course of History
By Norbert Ehrenfreund
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 288 pages
$21.24 hardcover, $15.37 Kindle

Ehrenfreund presents “a case for adhering to the Nuremberg legacy of fair treatment for even the most odious offenders” (Kirkus).

Judgment at Nuremberg
Starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximillian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift. Directed by Stanley Kramer
MGM Studio, 1961
$10.49 for DVD

This fictionalized version of the trial examines the questions of individual complicity in crimes committed by the state. Spencer Tracy plays Dan Haywood, the American judge selected to head the tribunal. Maximillian Schell won an Oscar for his role as counsel for the defense. The courtroom scenes depict graphic accounts of murder and crimes against humanity, including actual historical footage, exceptionally gruesome for a mainstream film in 1961, of huge piles of naked corpses bulldozed into pits.

Nuremberg
Starring Alec Baldwin, Brian Cox, Christopher Plummer, Jill Hennessy. Directed by Yves Simoneau
Turner Home Entertainment, 2001 (180 minutes)
$13.99 for DVD

This TV movie drives home the point that the prosecutors took a big risk in trying the Nazi high command for war crimes, which was then a novel and controversial concept. There was a passion for vengeance in the countries that had suffered under the Nazis; no international criminal laws existed; and the there was no assurance that the prosecutors would win convictions. If acquitted, the defendants would go free. “The political maneuvering between Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union that made [the trial] possible is explained fairly well in the early portions of the film,” said reviewer Robert J. McNamara.

Alec Baldwin stars as Robert Jackson, a U.S. Supreme Court justice who served as the chief prosecutor for the Allies at Nuremberg. “Baldwin at times delivers lines that seem to have been lifted from a high school history textbook,” said McNamara. But Brian Cox’s portrayal of the manipulative defendant Hermann Goering (Hitler’s deputy) is brilliant.

Nuremberg: Tyranny on Trial
The History Channel (A&E Home Video), 1995
$19.99 for DVD

This documentary film features some of the men who were present at the trials, including the chief counsel for the prosecution, telling how they planned the case against the defendants, knowing that the eyes of the world and the judgment of history watched their every move.