Jacqueline St. Joan Live at Tattered Cover Aspen Grove
About this Event
Jacqueline St. Joan is joining us on Thursday, July 2nd at 5:30 PM at our Aspen Grove location for a great event about her memoir Your Verdict: A Judge's Reckoning With Law and Loss!
Registration includes the following options:
- A signed Paperback copy of the book … OR
- A $5 Gift Card to Tattered Cover Book Store
This event includes an opportunity to meet the author, participate in an audience Q&A after the book talk, and get your book signed and personalized. Photos with the author are welcome!
We will have a limited supply of additional books for guests to purchase in store. Only a book ticket guarantees you a copy of the book.
If you are unable to attend the event after purchasing a ticket, you are required to pick up your copy of the book (with proof of purchase from your event registration) within 7 days after the event date. If the book is not picked up by that date, you relinquish your copy to Tattered Cover Book Store.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1967, only four days after the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia, Jacqueline St. Joan married across the color line in Virginia-and lost her family as a result. What followed was a life shaped by the upheavals of the era: divorce, single motherhood, and deep involvement in the second wave of feminism, including relationships with both women and men.
In the 1980s, St. Joan became a judge in Denver, presiding over cases that exposed the fragility and resilience of ordinary lives. Her rulings brought her both respect and criticism. She writes of cases that linger long after the gavel falls, of moments when the law offers no clean answer, and of the personal toll which controversial decisions take. She writes of times when attorneys or the press turned their attention to the judge herself--reviving her memories of her musician father and her complex, racist mother, of her own anti-war protests during Vietnam, of clients who'd dropped domestic abuse complaints out of fear.... As she re-collects relevant pieces of her memories, she takes readers into the corridors and assigned rooms of the Denver City & County Building so that they can consider how a judge tries to balance legal requirements and human empathy. Moving between courtroom and home, Your Verdict explores how gender, sexuality, race, conscience, history and responsibility shape the choices we make and the costs we bear.
Several cases get particularly resonant attention: the "defacing" of a statue of Columbus by a group of American Indian Movement protestors; police and public response to the trial of a prostitute with AIDS; treatment of a lawyer whose ex-husband (a policeman) had shot her in court; a defense attorney's demand that she recuse herself because she would inevitably be biased against a famous football player accused of domestic abuse. The trials of Operation Rescue members, arrested for "disturbing the peace" and "harassment" at an abortion clinic, constitute a particularly nuanced chapter as she examines individual motives and actions in light of various laws' requirements and of her own experiences with political protests, a deeply Catholic childhood, and much more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Attorney. Judge. Author. Advocate. Jacqueline St. Joan's career has been defined by one through-line: holding authority responsibly while fighting for people whose voices too often go unheard.
She spent decades at the intersection of law, literature, and social justice, practicing and teaching law, presiding over Denver’s first specialized protective orders court, leading clemency reform for incarcerated women who survived abuse, and founding policy and service organizations for domestic violence survivors. She co-founded Project Safeguard and served as a victim advocate on the University of Colorado’s Independent Investigation Commission reviewing its athletic department’s conduct.
Where is it happening?
USD 7.25 to USD 30.43
