One central argument Bryan Stevenson makes in Just Mercy is that the American legal system is inherently racist, biased, and unjust. Almost all areas of the narrative touch on this theme to some extent. Stevenson argues in the introduction that “presumptions of guilt based on poverty and racial bias have created a system that is defined by error” (16). Examples throughout the memoir show that injustice comes not only from error but from willful disregard for the lives of those the system is meant to protect, especially Black and brown lives, and the lives of the poor. Injustice and cruelty based on racial bias are not one-off incidents that unduly influence the system. Rather, they are deeply embedded in the overall structure of the legal system and must be confronted and rooted out.

Stevenson builds on this argument in Chapter 16 when he identifies the four institutions in US history that have shaped and continue to influence American society’s understanding of race and justice. These four institutions—slavery, the “reign of terror” following the Civil War (245), Jim Crow, and mass incarceration—are not accidental consequences of the justice system but integral mechanisms intended to terrorize, control, disenfranchise, and profit off of the lives of Black Americans.