This book was published with the assistance of the Thornton H. Brooks Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.
© 2020 Sara Mayeux
All rights reserved
Set in Merope Basic by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mayeux, Sara, author.
Title: Free justice : a history of the public defender in twentieth-century America / Sara Mayeux.
Other titles: History of the public defender in twentieth-century America | Justice, power, and politics.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2020. | Series: Justice, power, and politics | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019052149 | ISBN 9781469656021 (cloth) | ISBN 9781469661650 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469656038 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Public defenders—United States—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC KF9646 .M39 2020 | DDC 345.73/012630904—dc23
LC record available at https://
Cover illustration: Dorothea Lange, Pulich in Court, 1957 (A67.137.57136.4). Photonegative, 2.25 × 2.25 in. © The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California. Gift of Paul S. Taylor.
Portions of this book were previously published in a different form as “What Gideon Did,” Columbia Law Review 116, no. 1 (January 2016): 15–104.