Narrator: In the spring of 2016, a powerful shift seemed to ripple through the U.S. Supreme Court. During arguments for a landmark abortion case, three female justices, with the help of Justice Stephen Breyer, formed what one observer called a “four-car train of whoop ass,” dismantling Texas’s arguments for restricting abortion access. It felt like the dawn of a new era, the end of “constitutionally sanctioned mansplaining.” But this optimism was shattered just months later by the 2016 presidential election. The victory that had felt like the end of history suddenly seemed like a prelude to its reversal, as a new administration took power with rhetoric that threatened to weaponize the law against women and minorities.

In her gripping book, Lady Justice, author and legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick chronicles what happened next. It is the story of how, in the face of despair and democratic erosion, an unexpected and powerful resistance movement emerged, led by women lawyers who stood as the last line of defense for justice, equality, and the rule of law.

Narrator: The period following the 2016 election was defined by a chilling new political reality, encapsulated by the rally cry, “Lock her up!” Initially aimed at Hillary Clinton, this chant quickly morphed into a broader promise to use the legal system to silence, threaten, and punish women who challenged the new political order. This weaponization of law was not just rhetoric; it manifested in policies targeting reproductive rights, migrant women, and critics of the administration. Yet, as Lithwick documents, this threat galvanized a powerful counter-movement. The book argues that while the law has historically been a “pink book written by men” to define and limit women’s roles, it has also been the primary tool women have used to fight for their rights. This new era of resistance was a continuation of a long, often overlooked history of women in law, exemplified by figures like Pauli Murray. A queer, Black lawyer and activist, Murray’s brilliant legal theories laid the groundwork for both Brown v. Board of Education and landmark gender equality cases, yet her contributions were largely erased from history. The women of Lady Justice are, in essence, Murray’s descendants, forming an “invisible web” of resistance and proving that the law, in the right hands, could be a shield as well as a sword.

Narrator: The initial resistance to the new administration’s policies came swiftly from two different fronts, demonstrating the multifaceted nature of the fight. The first came from within the government itself. Just days into the new presidency, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a career prosecutor with a deep reverence for the Department of Justice, was faced with defending an executive order widely seen as a discriminatory “Muslim ban.” Believing the order was not grounded in truth and violated the Constitution, she made the momentous decision to refuse to defend it. Her principled stand, rooted in her duty to the law over the president, resulted in her immediate firing, but it sent a powerful signal that institutionalists would not simply fall in line.

Simultaneously, a revolution was erupting from the outside. As the travel ban caused chaos at airports, detaining valid visa holders and green card holders, activist Becca Heller and her organization, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), mobilized a spontaneous “army of lawyers.” Heller, who had anticipated the move, used a simple Google form to recruit thousands of attorneys who descended on airports nationwide, offering pro bono help. This “Airport Revolution,” combining legal action with mass public protest, led to immediate court injunctions that blunted the ban’s cruelest effects and forced the administration to retreat. Together, the stories of Yates and Heller illustrate the two-pronged nature of the resistance: the quiet, principled stand of the insider and the loud, collective action of the outsider.

Narrator: The administration’s agenda soon moved beyond immigration to one of the most contested areas of American law: reproductive rights. In a harrowing case study, Lithwick details the fight for a 17-year-old unaccompanied immigrant minor known as “Jane Doe.” After fleeing parental abuse and being placed in government custody, Jane discovered she was pregnant and requested an abortion. However, the Office of Refugee Resettlement was now run by Scott Lloyd, an anti-abortion activist with no experience in refugee issues. Lloyd implemented a policy to personally block any minor in his care from accessing abortion, forcing Jane to attend a crisis pregnancy center and endure anti-abortion counseling.

ACLU litigator Brigitte Amiri took up Jane’s case, launching a frantic legal battle that went all the way to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case exposed the administration’s willingness to use government power to impose a specific religious ideology on the most vulnerable. A pivotal moment came when a three-judge panel, including then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, tried to delay the procedure. Kavanaugh’s dissent, which used the politically charged phrase “abortion-on-demand,” was seen by many as an audition for the Supreme Court. Though Amiri and the ACLU ultimately prevailed, securing Jane’s abortion just in time, the case was a chilling preview of the judiciary’s rightward shift and the coming assault on reproductive freedom.

Narrator: The fight for justice was not only directed at external policies; it also turned inward, forcing the legal profession to confront its own deep-seated culture of misogyny and harassment. The #MeToo movement found a powerful and disturbing echo in the federal judiciary with the case of Judge Alex Kozinski, a legendary and powerful appellate judge. For decades, his sexually inappropriate behavior was an “open secret,” but the power he wielded as a “feeder judge” for Supreme Court clerkships ensured a culture of silence. In 2017, former clerks Heidi Bond and Emily Murphy finally broke that silence, detailing how Kozinski had shown them pornography in his chambers and made lewd comments. Their courage prompted over a dozen other women to come forward.

This scandal, followed by Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, laid bare the system’s failures. In both the Kozinski and Kavanaugh cases, the institutions responsible for investigation—the judiciary’s self-policing council and the Senate Judiciary Committee—failed to conduct meaningful, neutral fact-finding. Kozinski was able to resign, terminating the investigation, while Kavanaugh was confirmed despite credible allegations. These events revealed that the legal system, which purports to deliver justice, often protects its own powerful men, offering women sympathy instead of due process and leaving them to bear the immense personal cost of speaking out.

Narrator: As the book progresses, the focus shifts from reactive lawsuits to the proactive, long-term strategies required to protect democracy. This is the “long game,” and it is exemplified by the work of Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Nina Perales in Texas. Abrams, a tax lawyer and romance novelist, transformed the fight for voting rights. After losing her 2018 gubernatorial bid in an election marred by voter suppression, she refused to concede that the system was fair. Instead, she channeled her energy into building a massive political infrastructure through organizations like Fair Fight. Her strategy was not based on personal charisma but on the meticulous, data-driven work of registering and engaging hundreds of thousands of new voters, particularly in communities of color.

Similarly, Nina Perales, a leading strategist for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), has spent her career fighting the more technical, but equally crucial, battles over the census and redistricting. She understands that even if everyone can vote, their power can be diluted through gerrymandering or an inaccurate census count. Her successful litigation against the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census exposed it as a partisan effort to diminish minority representation. Together, Abrams and Perales demonstrate a crucial evolution in activism: a shift from individual court cases to the systemic, grassroots work of building and protecting the very foundations of a representative democracy.

Narrator: Ultimately, Lady Justice argues that while the law is a fragile and often deeply flawed institution, it remains an indispensable tool for change. The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which occurred as Lithwick was finishing the book, serves as a devastating reminder of how quickly legal protections can be dismantled. Yet, the stories of the women who fill these pages offer a powerful counter-narrative of resilience and hope. They show that power does not have to be a possession hoarded by a few elite men. Instead, it can be an action, a verb—the collective work of organizing, litigating, and mobilizing to protect the vulnerable and hold institutions accountable.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge. It asks us to reject the cynicism that voter suppression and institutional failures are designed to create. The fight for justice is not a spectator sport, and democracy is not self-executing. It requires what civil rights leader Vanita Gupta calls the “discipline of hope.” The question, then, is not whether the system is broken, but what each of us is willing to do to help fix it.