Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Stephen Bright and James Quark. They are the joint authors of

the book, The Fear of Too Much Justice, Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal

Court's available from the new press. Professor Bright, Professor Kwok, thank you so much for

joining us in current affairs today. Thank you for having us, Nathan. Thanks. It's a pleasure.

Let's start with the title.

What is the fear of too much justice? Well, in 1987, the Supreme Court considered a case

involving the racial disparities in the infliction of the death penalty in Georgia.

And the evidence in that case showed that if the victim in the case was white, there was a

much greater likelihood death would be imposed if the victim in the case was white, there was a much greater likelihood death would be

imposed. If the defendant was black, there was a greater likelihood. And if you put those two

together, if you had a case like the one that was before the court involving a black defendant

accused of a crime and convicted of a crime against the white victim, the likelihood was much greater

that you would get the death penalty. And the majority opinion was a very close case,

five to four. Justice Powell wrote for the majority, if we deal with racial disparities in the

infliction of the death penalty, wouldn't we have to deal with regard to racial disparities

and all the other kinds of crimes in the criminal courts? And Justice Brennan, in his dissent,

said this was a fear of too much justice. And I think that explains a lot of things besides

just the tolerance of racial discrimination, not only in the death penalty,

but in jury selection and other kinds of cases, our argument is that that's what the court

should be doing. We should be dealing with those issues and deciding them rather than being

afraid to tackle. Yeah, you have some extraordinary quotes in the book that are of this, that one about, you know, if we found this unfair, then all kinds of other things would be unfair.

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