Professor Kate Levine reviewed "Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in Twentieth-Century America" in Law & Society Review. 

Anyone who has worked in or studied public defense has wondered, how did we get here? How did we get to the place where public defender organizations differ so greatly state-by-state and county by county? To this mish-mash of public and private funding? To this uneasy straddle between state agent and vindicator of individual rights? These are some of the questions that Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in Twentieth-Century America, by Sara Mayeux, sheds light upon in a vivid portrait of public defense between the Progressive era and the 1970s.