For nearly four decades, Joseph Margulies has stood beside people accused and convicted of some of the most violent crimes imaginable. A criminal defense attorney, civil rights litigator, writer, and Professor of the Practice of Government at Cornell University, Joseph has spent his career confronting some of society’s hardest questions. He was Counsel of Record in the landmark cases Rasul v. Bush 2004, which established the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention in federal court, and Munaf v. Geren 2008 which affirmed that American citizens detained by the U.S. government could also challenge their detention.

Today, we discuss Joseph’s powerful new book, Cast Out: A Call for a Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration.

This is not a book that asks us to forget the victims or erase the ...