The work of an internationally known civil rights and criminal defense lawyer is the subject of a new Stanford University Press biography by Professor Lonnie T. Brown Jr., who holds the A. Gus Cleveland Distinguished Chair of Legal Ethics and Professionalism and is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor here at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Defending the Public’s Enemy: The Life and Times of Ramsey Clark examines the life of a man – due to celebrate his 92d birthday later this month – who followed his 2 years of service as Attorney General, the United States’ top law enforcement officer, with decades as the legal representative of a range of individuals and groups at odds with US policies. His foreign clients included the Palestine Liberation Organization, Qaddafi’s Libya, an accused Rwandan génocidaire, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević – and as detailed in Chapter 11, Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq for nearly a quarter-century before he was deposed, captured, convicted by a tribunal, and executed.

Professor Brown’s book details these cases and others, and explores – in chapters enriched by interviews with Clark and his colleagues – what has motivated Clark to pursue this career path.