“A remarkably imaginative and scholarly work. It reminds us that in Shakespeare’s time, like our own, the law and ideas of justice were in flux.” - California Lawyer
“[An] insightful inquiry into the contemporary relevance of the Bard’s vision of justice. . . . A refreshing reminder that questions of justice may lead to dramatic poetry, not legal jargon.” - Booklist (starred review)
“In the enlightening and readable A Thousand Times More Fair, author Kenji Yoshino opens a window on Shakespearean dramaturgy and scholarship and lets in a breath of fresh air.” - New York Journal of Books
“[W]ell-informed by scholarship, nuanced and appealingly written. . . . [P]erhaps the most enlightening study of the subject to appear in a century.” - Charlotte Observer
“Readers will find Yoshino provocative, often controversial, and Shakespeare, as always, entertaining.” - Publishers Weekly
“The ingenious and well-argued premise of Kenji Yoshino’s new book is that justice in a form that we can understand and relate to modern concepts of legal justice is a pervasive theme of Shakespearean drama, rather than being confined to his two overtly ‘legal’ plays, The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. Though he discusses them insightfully, he ranges as far afield of those ‘legal’ plays as Titus Andronicus and the Henry plays and The Tempest, juxtaposing them to modern legal and political controversies by doing so demonstrating that Shakespeare, in law as in so much else, remains our contemporary.” - Judge Richard A. Posner
“Until Kenji Yoshino’s book, I had found little of value in ‘Law and Literature’ studies. He redeems the mode. Shakespeare, most capacious of souls, is shown by Yoshino to illuminate the vast and complex structures that must inform the role of law in our struggle for a just society.” - Harold Bloom, author of SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN
“Fascinating. . . . Loaded with perceptive and provocative comments on Shakespeare’s plots, characters, and contemporary analogs.” - Justice John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court of the United States
“A sensitive and lively mind work[s] its way through the legal themes in some of the most beautiful passages in English literature.” - New Republic
“Neither a prosecutor nor a defense lawyer herein, Yoshino is a refreshingly engaging advocate for Shakespeare.” - Newark Star Ledger
“The ingenious and well-argued premise of Kenji Yoshino’s new book is that justice in a form that we can understand and relate to modern concepts of legal justice is a pervasive theme of Shakespearean drama. . . . Shakespeare, in law as in so much else, remains our contemporary.” - Judge Richard A. Posner
“Literary critics comment on Shakespeare’s understanding of law; lawyers love the playwright’s eloquence on legal themes. Now, for the first time, we have a writer who is equally at home in both worlds, and the result is a new interpretation of startling power. Kenji Yoshino is the leading and widest ranging legal theorist of his generation, and he recovers Shakespeare’s lifelong concern with questions of justice--a concern as rich and as relevant in our own day as it was in Elizabethan England. No one interested in either law or literature can afford to miss this book.” - Robert A. Ferguson, George Edward Woodberry Professor of Law, Literature, and Criticism, Columbia University
“Who knew that there was such a brilliant and fresh reading of Shakespeare waiting to be discovered? Only Kenji Yoshino, with a poet’s ear for language and a lawyer’s passion for justice, could have done it.” - Carol Gilligan, University Professor, NYU
“With inspired and close readings, this beautiful book does justice to Shakespeare’s great plays. Kenji Yoshino persuasively reveals how much law and justice figure in the Bard’s art and vision. Journey with this brilliant civil rights scholar and you will learn far more about the limits and reaches of human justice than in countless volumes of conventional legal analysis.” - Martha Minow, Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“Shakespeare famously rewards intensity of engagement, and Kenji Yoshino brings to his lively reading of the plays the full force of his passionate brooding on issues of justice in contemporary society. Whether he is writing about Titus Andronicus and the post-9/11 war on terror, Portia’s parsing of words in The Merchant of Venice and Bill Clinton’s notorious “[i]t depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” the dilemmas of judgment in Measure for Measure and the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Desdemona’s handkerchief and the ill-fitting glove in the O.J. Simpson trial, Yoshino forges mutually illuminating connections between the theater and the law. A Thousand Times More Fair is a book that will appeal to anyone interested in the uses of great art to reflect on some of our culture’s most vexing problems.” - Stephen Greenblatt, author of WILL IN THE WORLD
“Kenji Yoshino brings to his lively reading of the plays the full force of his passionate brooding on issues of justice in contemporary society. A THOUSAND TIMES MORE FAIR will appeal to anyone interested in the uses of great art to reflect on some of our culture’s most vexing problems.” - Stephen Greenblatt, author of WILL IN THE WORLD