Chicago Justice as a Nonstop Floor Show  It's easy to understand
the American public's longtime fascination with the goings-on of
courtrooms. Where else can you see confrontations between good
and evil, learn the truth about murky matters, achieve perfectly
legal revenge, and best of all, watch the secret lives of the
likes of Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart spill into the
public domain?  That's the fascination driving courtroom
accounts, from the Salem witch trials to Erle Stanley Gardner to
Court TV. The courtroom drama has been presented so many times
in so many ways it would seem unlikely anyone could fashion a
new and revealing take. But that's exactly what Steve Bogira, a
reporter for the Chicago Reader, has done in this compelling
dissection of modern urban justice. Bogira, a veteran courthouse
and police reporter, camped out for a full year in a single
courtroom in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse on 26th
Street, one of the nation's largest legal-processing centers,
where some 30,000 cases