Read an excerpt from The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law by the renowned Nation columnist—aka the Mad Law Professor—Patricia J. Williams. Tackling questions of identity, bioethics, race, surveillance, and more, the book begins with a jaw-dropping rumination on a centuries-old painting featuring a white man with a Black man’s leg surgically attached (with the expired Black leg-donor in the foreground).

 

At the heart of “Wrongful Birth” is a lawsuit in which a white couple who use a sperm bank sue when their child “comes out Black”; “Bodies in Law” explores the service of genetic ancestry testing companies to answer the question of who owns DNA.

 

In the spirit of Dorothy Roberts, Rebecca Skloot, and Anne Fadiman, The Miracle of the Black Leg offers a brilliant meditation on the tricky place where law, science, ethics, and cultural slippage collide.