Storming the Court: How a Band of Law Students Fought the President–and Won

The David vs. Goliath story of the unflagging Yale Law School students who in 1992 fought the U.S. Government all the way to the Supreme Court.

In 1992, three hundred innocent Haitian men, women, and children who had qualified for political asylum in the United States were detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—and told they might never be freed. Charismatic democracy activist Yvonne Pascal and her fellow refugees had no contact with the outside world, no lawyers, and no hope…until a group of inspired Yale Law School students vowed to free them.

Pitting the students and their untested professor Harold Koh against Kenneth Starr, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, this real-life legal thriller takes the reader from the halls of Yale and the federal courts of New York to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the windswept hills of Guantánamo Bay and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. Written with grace and passion, Storming the Court captures the emotional highs and despairing lows of a legal education like no other—a high-stakes courtroom campaign against the White House in the name of the greatest of American values: freedom.