Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration

In Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2026), civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of us and should be judged in a spirit of forgiveness. He explains that American society is too often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable by fixating narrowly on the question What did they do? and imagining that those who have done great wrongs have no past worth learning and no future worth preserving.
Through intimate interviews, his rich chapters bring to life 6 men and women, sharing their (sometimes brutal) crimes, the grim but all-too-human paths that led them there, and their evolution and insights. Eye-opening and unflinching, Cast Out makes us truly see those society locks away—the so-called “worst of the worst.” It challenges the reader to see us in them and them in us, and in that way, to recognize the humanity we all share.

Guest: Joseph Margulies is a writer, litigator, Professor of the Practice of Law and Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), and in Munaf v. Geren (2008). His books include Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power; and Cast Out.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

• The Coroner's Silence
• Ghost In The Criminal Justice Machine
• Hands Up Don't Shoot
• Freemans Challenge
• The Journal Of Higher Education In Prison
• Education Behind The Wall
• Secrets Of The Killing State
• Stitching Freedom
• The Emerson Prison Initiative
• The Names Of All The Flowers
• Pink Crime
• Carceral Apartheid
• The Criminal Record Complex

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