Justice in the Shadow of Power: Presumed Guilt, Political Prosecution, and Imperial Reckoning in America and Beyond

What happens when the law becomes an instrument of the very power it is meant to constrain? In this incisive collection of essays, attorney and scholar Carlos Moreno confronts that question across a range of historical contexts and political systems, from the American criminal courts to the peace process in Northern Ireland, from the Cold War intervention in Chile to the enduring legacies of colonial dependency in the Caribbean. Drawing on decades of legal practice, personal experience as a defendant, and rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, Moreno examines how liberal democracies deploy legal authority to suppress dissent, manage political opponents, and manufacture consent. The essays range from a structural critique of due process failures in the American justice system, to a nuanced assessment of the 2014 arrest of Gerry Adams, to case studies of U.S. covert operations in Chile, culminating in an unorthodox reading of The Merchant of Venice as a meditation on law, mercy, and hegemonic power. Justice in the Shadow of Power is neither a polemic nor an apologia. It is a scholar-practitioner's attempt to understand how institutions that profess a commitment to justice can, in practice, become instruments of discipline and control, and what vigilance is required to hold them to account.