PORT TOWNSEND — Legal scholar Robert L. Tsai will discuss his book, “Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation,” at 6 p.m. Friday.
Tsai, a professor of law at American University, will speak and sign copies of his book at the Peninsula College Port Townsend Learning Center in Building 202 at Fort Worden. Admission is free.
Tsai will be joined for a public conversation about his book by Ariel Speser, assistant attorney general, who works out of the Port Angeles Regional Services Division serving Jefferson and Clallam counties, and serves in Jefferson and Clallam courts on a weekly basis.
Though he was born in Taiwan, Tsai considers the United States his home, he has said.
He spent his formative years working in his parents’ cafe in Port Townsend and dreaming about the world beyond the small town.
In his book, Tsai looks at historically successful tools for achieving equality, such as the concept of fair play or free speech, and offers readers several workable solutions.
He argues that we need to develop a complete arsenal of arguments to reduce inequality in everyday life.
Among the topics covered in the book: President Trump’s ban on Muslim travelers, felon disenfranchisement, oppressive measures against migrants, racist interrogation tactics and police brutality, bans on transgender troops and bathroom regulations that affect transgender people, racial segregation, the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, quality of life regulations to drive out the homeless, detention of suspected terrorists, and the use of capital punishment against racial minorities, children and intellectually disabled people.
Prior to serving as an AAG, Speser worked for eight years as a civil legal aid lawyer for the Northwest Justice Project, a nonprofit statewide legal aid firm representing low-income and vulnerable individuals and families.
As a civil legal aid lawyer, she handled a high volume litigation practice, focusing on consumer protection, access to health care and representing victims of crime.
Tsai also is the author of America’s Forgotten Constitutions and his essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Politico, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Boston Review and Slate.
He lives with his family in Washington, D.C.
For more information and to RSVP contact Anna Forrestal at aforrestal@pencol.edu.
