Insights & Events

A recent article in the Journal of American History highlights one of the major civil rights prosecutions of the last century, undertaken by Bruce J. Berger, who was later to join Hollingsworth LLP and try many cases on behalf of the firm.

At the time, Bruce was a senior line attorney at the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section, and was the Section’s Coordinator of Involuntary Servitude cases. The case, US v. Booker, helped develop the prosecution of post-Civil War slavery statutes. Bruce’s trial team, which included Lani Guinier, a civil rights scholar in her own right, obtained convictions of the defendants on charges of kidnapping two migrant workers with the intent of holding them in a condition of slavery.