Nunn begins his very long argument with a vivid recreation of a TV scene that has become a part of our popular culture, that of a young black man being arrested and brought to trial "as two burly police officers grip him tightly by the arms, he tries to hide his face with his hands. His efforts are futile. He succeeds only in exposing his handcuffs to the bright television lights. In the background, a reporter's urgent voice describes the despicable act which led to the young man's capture" (Nunn, 1995, 744). He follows that dramatic opening by a statement of mea culpa, wondering whether he, as a Public Defender could possibly, given the current states of the court, be of any benefit to this young man. "Could I be of any help to him? Or would I be essentially useless, since he had already been tried and convicted on television and in the hearts and minds of any potential jurors?" (Nunn, 1995, 744).

In frank revelations, Nunn confesses that, in reality, he might be able to lessen the juggernaut of the State, he might be able to ensure that no shortcuts were taken, but acquittals were the exception rather than the rule, and, in trial after trial, Nunn felt useless and impotent, an:

irrelevant, player in a game with a predetermined outcome. The

He calls upon many sources for the myth of equal justice, ranging from the United States Constitution to the gradual accretion of criminal rights that began with Gideon and are still being argued today. Since all myth and allegory need larger than life heroes (usually representing the basic beliefs of the society that created the myth) Nunn points out the Mythic Hero, protecting the State, the Mythic Criminal, who has challenged the existence of the State, the Mythic Courts, and the greatest textual myth, that all men are innocent until proven guilty. He argues that the myth has two dangerous subtexts: "(1) the existence of formal rights adequately protects the individual from the state and (2) because these formal rights make it difficult for the state to secure convictions in an adversarial context, those convictions that do occur are "hard won" and thus more legitimate. The function of the myth, then, is to bestow peace of mind by encouraging the belief that justice is being done in the criminal justice system" (Nunn, 1995, 746).

In his arguments, Flanagan wisely avoids the hornet's nest of what a liberal education should be, adopting instead the arguments of other scholars who have comfortably dealt with the differences between General Education and a Liberal Education, confirming that he is using the term Liberal Education in the sense of that used by Boyer & Levine whom he quotes:

He emphasizes that the field of Criminal Justice as a college emphasis is relatively new, and that "Thirty years after bursting on the American higher education scene, the field of crimina