In The Myth of Moral Justice, law professor and novelist Thane Rosenbaum suggests that this paradox stems from the fact that citizens and the courts are at odds when it comes to their definitions of justice. Individuals seek out lawyers and enter courtrooms because they have an emotional grievance as well as a legal complaint. They expect the law to do the right thing. Yet our legal system, bent on separating the legal from the emotional, willfully ignores basic moral criteria. As a result, the justice system undermines truth, perpetuates secrets and lies, prevents victims from telling their stories, promotes adversarial enmity over community repair, and fails to equate legal duty with moral responsibility. Legal outcomes that make sense to lawyers and judges feel simply wrong to most people and enrage others. With a lawyer's expertise and a novelist's sensibility, Rosenbaum tackles complicated philosophical questions about our longing for moral justice. He also takes a critical look at what our legal system does to the spirits of those who must come before the law, along with those who practice within it. Rosenbaum reinforces his themes with artistic representations of lawyers and legal systems from the classic works of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Franz Kafka, along with various important feature films that illuminate why our legal system fails to do what's right.