Offers a practical look at the way racial bias plays out at every level of the legal system, from witness identification and jury selection to prosecutorial behavior, defense decisions, and the way expert witnesses are regarded.

This anthology, put together by Parks (a student at Cornell Law School), Jones (criminology, U. of South Florida), Cardi (law, U. of Kentucky), and Delgado (law, U. of Pittsburgh), proposes to inaugurate the legal academic methodology of "critical race realism," which is a synthesis of critical race theory, empirical social science, and public policy intended to provide a more systematic race-based evaluation and critique of legal doctrine, institutions, and actors. It is influenced by the growing inderdisciplinarity in American legal education; earlier work by legal practitioners and scholars recognizing the importance of the acceptance of social science within American jurisprudence, the study of law in action, and the use of law to advance public policy; and the functional approach to law advanced by legal realists and the law science policy movement. Among the topics addressed by the anthology's 19 papers are the implicit racial attitudes of death penalty lawyers, lessons from cognitive social psychology concerning advocacy against the stereotype, the cross-race effect in eyewitness identification, racial justice in tort law, African American families and parental rights termination litigation, prejudice and police profiling, the influence of criminal defendants' Afrocentric features on their sentences, and criminal enforcement and perceptions of fairness in minority communities. Annotation 2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)