Black Mischief

Race, Crime, and the Law, by Randall Kennedy (Pantheon, 512 pp., $30)

RACE, Crime, and the Law discusses the influence of race, both historically—it includes a history of slavery and lynching-and at present, in the formulation and enforcement of criminal law. Randall Kennedy, a professor at the Harvard Law School, shows that race has permeated every area of criminal law, as it has, indeed, every area of constitutional law.