A formal federal prosecutor, law professor, and widely published commentator, Paul D. Butler emerged in the 1990s as a leading African-American legal critic. Butler issued scathing critiques of the U.S. criminal justice system, which he decried for more frequently convicting and more harshly punishing black defendants than white defendants. In response to these inequities, he proposed a radical solution: black juries should acquit black defendants accused of non-violent, victimless crimes. Defending his ideas, Butler told the Washington Post in 1997, "I do want to subvert the criminal justice system."

Born and raised on the impoverished south side of Chicago, Butler was the son of a school teacher active in the civil rights movement. Racial identity was significant in his upbringing: distrustful of white people, his mother intentionally kept him segregated. Thus, as a teen Butler underwent a kind of cultural shock when, as a student at the elite...