Reviewed by Stephen Rohde
I miss Michael Ratner. We all should.
I met Michael when we were both students at Columbia Law School in the late 60’s. He was smart and funny. I joined the student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild that he had helped establish. It was described in the yearbook as dedicated to the proposition that “America’s law schools and legal system should, for the first time, begin to respond to the needs of the masses of American people, and not the wishes of the Rep-Dem Party, the Mafia, and General Motors, its subsidiaries, and apologists.” Members of the student chapter sought to use the law “to eliminate militarism, imperialist wars, the growth of a police state, and to eradicate racism.” Michael designed his whole life with those goals in mind, and he was living up to his goals, achieving enormous success, until cancer stole him from us all too soon in May of 2016.