Demand The Impossible (Norton 2024)

“America is a nation built on war.” bit.ly/4cpNTs0

Why I wrote this book

First time I’ve had a book shouted out at a commencement. @demandtimpossible.bsky.social @uconnlaw.bsky.social @bulaw.bsky.social @wwnorton.com

In print: “Becoming Steve Bright,” 113 Kentucky L.J. 213 (2025). This essay once represented the first chapter of @demandtimpossible.bsky.social. It focuses on Bright’s years at UK, his role in the protests following the Kent State massacre, and the litigation challenging emergency measures.

Demand the Impossible: A Conversation Between Author Robert Tsai and ACLU President Deborah Archer This is "Demand the Impossible: A Conversation Between Author Robert Tsai and ACLU President Deborah Archer" by Fordham Law School on Vimeo, the home for…

📕🗣️

On one occasion, 21 lawyers in a row declined to take a case pro bono. Morris was the one who convinced Stephen Bright to take his first death penalty cases—including that of Donnie Thomas. Bright had left the Public Defender Service for DC and was teaching in the DC Law Students in Court program.

Few people have heard of Patsy Morris. When the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, she kept track of Georgia citizens condemned to death row who desperately needed a lawyer. She called lawyers around the country begging them to take a case. #DemandTheImpossible

Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All

That trio of lawyers and Patsy Morris stuck with Thomas, who was mentally ill, until the end. They reworked the case from the ground up. I tell the story of the twists and turns in Thomas’s legal battle in @demandtimpossible.bsky.social.

“I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

🙏 “This is the type of book that should be on school curriculums and adult read lists” @demandtimpossible.bsky.social

Spoke to members of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project. #DemandTheImpossible

Some news

An Exercise in Political Imagination: the Day Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson Debated William F. Buckley Bright and Stevenson defended the abolition of capital punishment at a moment when political support for that movement reached its nadir.

“The race to incarcerate made a new generation of advocates crucial to the survival of liberal institutions and values in the age of mass incarceration—including the ideal of adversary justice, racial equality, and the legitimacy of a democratic state, whose overriding goals are security & justice”

Listen to a sample from Demand The Impossible, about McWilliams v. Dunn, which raises the issue of what an intellectually disabled man facing the death penalty is due. @demandtimpossible.bsky.social

Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All

“The United States is unlikely to be the most crime-ridden country in the world, but for the last fifty years, its policies have been driven by a perception that social disorder lurks around every corner.”

I change my mind about AI

Legal Agitator of Our Time | Los Angeles Review of Books Rodger Citron reviews Robert L. Tsai’s “Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer’s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All.”

“Tsai writes about constitutional law with a focus on the conditions and structures in society that produce inequality…. the path of legal reform through the courts is narrow and daunting.”

“The contents of the document were explosive. Below the heading, ‘Result,’ someone had scrawled figures for how many African Americans and women should be placed on master jury lists if one wanted to underrepresent their numbers on juries.” amzn.to/45LFzNg

Back at it to discuss birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions

“Unfortunately, this ruling raises more questions than it answers.”

Pleased to join Kristen Welker and former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg on #MeetThePress to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling ending universal injunctions in the birthright citizenship cases.

My brief thoughts on the Supreme Court ruling on nationwide injunctions (and birthright citizenship). More to come. www.bu.edu/articles/202...

Pursuing Equal Justice: Robert Tsai — Future Hindsight Robert L. Tsai is the author of Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer’s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All and Professor of Law and Harry Elwood Warren Memorial Scholar at Boston University School of Law. W...

“Tsai argues that a public defender movement ought to be revived; racial justice acts need public support; and a lot of work can be done to end the death penalty.” @futurehindsight.bsky.social

Stephen Bright in his office at the Southern Center for Human Rights, taken sometime in the 1980’s. He kept photos of his clients to remind him of what they were like before they encountered the criminal justice system. @demandtimpossible.bsky.social

On @meetthepress.com I spoke about the strong tradition in this country that “boots on the ground are a threat to liberty”

Can you still call Trump “a populist autocrat” on television these days?

Always love visiting my favorite bookstore

“A truly compelling account of how Stephen Bright, one of the nation’s greatest lawyers, devoted his life to demanding justice from the criminal justice system throughout the South…. His career, as told by Tsai, demonstrates how much good a lawyer committed to public justice can do.”