Legal history Books
Columbia University Press A Dharma Reader
Book SynopsisA Dharma Reader traces the definition, epistemology, procedure, and process of Indian law from the third century B.C.E. to the middle ages. Its breadth captures the centuries-long struggle by Indian thinkers to theorize law in a multiethnic and pluralist society.Trade ReviewOnly Patrick Olivelle's unparalleled erudition could have assembled such an amazing range of dharma texts and commentaries, ranging from the most basic to the most esoteric. The translations are clear and vivid, and the more obscure points are illuminated by full and explicit introductions and notes. Particularly valuable is the attention paid to the legal aspect of dharma and to its history in Indian law. A perfect complement to Olivelle's definitive translations of the major dharma texts, this will be an essential volume in the library of every Sanskritist or student of Indian religion or law. -- Wendy Doniger, author of The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth A Dharma Reader is an outstanding and innovative work from the world's leading authority on the history of Indian dharma. -- Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta A Dharma Reader is peerless because it presents more than just basic texts in the tradition. It provides nuance and depth that reveal the sophistication and cogency of India's intellectual history in ways that no previous work has done. -- Donald R. Davis, University of Texas at Austin For students of Indian law, religion, ethics, politics, and social propriety, the matter of dharma is everywhere. Now, at last, one does not have to go everywhere to ascertain its many meanings or the intricate textures of its theorization over time. This volume is a massive contribution to a field in which Olivelle's reputation is no less massive. -- Jack Hawley, author of A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement With his characteristic lucidity and verve, Olivelle leads us through nearly two millennia of lively scholastic debates in multiple genres on central issues of Classical Indian law, from the most abstract and sweeping-the sources of law: what makes law law-to the most minute and practical-legal procedure and the conduct of courts. His detailed introduction and his illuminating headnotes to the source types and to individual texts deftly guide even the neophyte through complex intellectual tangles and have much to teach even the expert. -- Stephanie W. Jamison, Distinguished Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures and of Indo-European Studies, University of California, Los AngelesTable of ContentsPreface List of Abbreviations Introduction Part I: Nature and Epistemology of Law 1. Early Thinkers 2. Later Aphoristic Texts on Dharma 3. Perspectives from Political Science: Kautilya (First-Second Century C.E.) 4. Innovations of Manu (Mid-Second Century C.E.) 5. Developments After Manu 6. The School of Vedic Exegesis 7. Early Commentators 8. Medieval Commentators and Systematizers Part II: Courts of Law and Legal Procedure 9. The Beginnings 10. The Early Theorists 11. The Mature Phase 12. Early Commentators 13. Medieval Commentators and Systematizers Notes Glossary Bibliography Index
£999.99
MO - University of Illinois Press Baseball on Trial
Book SynopsisDefies conventional wisdom to explain why the unanimous Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which gave rise to Major League Baseball's exemption from antitrust law, was correct given the circumstances of the time.Trade ReviewLarry Ritter Book Award, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 2015. Finalist, Seymour Medal, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 2015. David J. Langum Sr. Prize for American Legal History/Biography, Langum Charitable Trust, 2014. "Grow explains that the afterlife of Federal Baseball is more remarkable than the conclusions in the case itself. With careful and measured scholarship, Grow urges later reader of Federal Baseball to recognize that the case was heard before widespread interstate radio coverage, and before the broad interpretation of 'commerce' in the New Deal decisions."--Western Legal History"Using newly released attorney correspondence, court records, and newspaper accounts of the time, Grow presents in stunning detail the background, characters, arguments, events, tactics, (and mistakes) leading to the Federal Baseball decision. showing that 'many of the common criticisms. . . are unjust, as the decision was consistent with the prevailing judicial precedents of the day'. . . . Recommended.'"--Choice"Federal Baseball, the shorthand name of the case, is still the law of land. Here is a baseball book in which the major on-field action is the serving of various contract-jumping players with court orders. But if a reader is interested in how the business of baseball developed, the case is crucial; and Baseball on Trial can explain how and why."--Nine "Grow's book is impressively comprehensive and exhaustive. . . . for the reader interested in a comprehensive account of a seminal moment in baseball's legal history, Grow's Baseball on Trial is an excellent choice."--Law and History Review"Grow undoubtedly succeeds in shining a light on the buildup to and background of the Federal Baseball decision."--Sport in American History"[A] thoughtful and provocative analysis of one of the most controversial topics in sports law: Baseball's antitrust exemption. Grow adroitly connects recent disclosures from the Baseball Hall of Fame to advance his argument that the Federal Baseball holding made much more sense ninety years ago than contemporary commentators tend to regard it. As baseball's antitrust exemption continues to face legal challenges--including whether the Oakland A's can move to San Jose--Grow's book will undoubtedly play an influential role."--Michael McCann, Sports Illustrated legal analyst"The lawsuits arising from the Federal League's challenge to Major League Baseball and their aftermath defined much of the way baseball has evolved over the past century. Bolstered by original research, Grow explains both the broader picture and the intriguing behind-the-scenes machinations, and he does so in a clear and entertaining fashion."-- Daniel R. Levitt, author of The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy"An outstanding book based on previously unused materials, Baseball on Trial makes a truly significant contribution to the fields of baseball and the law, sports law, antitrust law, and legal history. Anyone discussing the trilogy of Supreme Court cases that created baseball's antitrust exemption needs to read this book."--Edmund P. Edmonds, co-editor of Baseball and Antitrust: The Legislative History
£77.35
University of Illinois Press Baseball on Trial
Book SynopsisDefies conventional wisdom to explain why the unanimous Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which gave rise to Major League Baseball's exemption from antitrust law, was correct given the circumstances of the time.Trade ReviewLarry Ritter Book Award, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 2015. Finalist, Seymour Medal, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 2015. David J. Langum Sr. Prize for American Legal History/Biography, Langum Charitable Trust, 2014. "Grow explains that the afterlife of Federal Baseball is more remarkable than the conclusions in the case itself. With careful and measured scholarship, Grow urges later reader of Federal Baseball to recognize that the case was heard before widespread interstate radio coverage, and before the broad interpretation of 'commerce' in the New Deal decisions."--Western Legal History"Using newly released attorney correspondence, court records, and newspaper accounts of the time, Grow presents in stunning detail the background, characters, arguments, events, tactics, (and mistakes) leading to the Federal Baseball decision. showing that 'many of the common criticisms. . . are unjust, as the decision was consistent with the prevailing judicial precedents of the day'. . . . Recommended.'"--Choice"Federal Baseball, the shorthand name of the case, is still the law of land. Here is a baseball book in which the major on-field action is the serving of various contract-jumping players with court orders. But if a reader is interested in how the business of baseball developed, the case is crucial; and Baseball on Trial can explain how and why."--Nine "Grow's book is impressively comprehensive and exhaustive. . . . for the reader interested in a comprehensive account of a seminal moment in baseball's legal history, Grow's Baseball on Trial is an excellent choice."--Law and History Review"Grow undoubtedly succeeds in shining a light on the buildup to and background of the Federal Baseball decision."--Sport in American History"[A] thoughtful and provocative analysis of one of the most controversial topics in sports law: Baseball's antitrust exemption. Grow adroitly connects recent disclosures from the Baseball Hall of Fame to advance his argument that the Federal Baseball holding made much more sense ninety years ago than contemporary commentators tend to regard it. As baseball's antitrust exemption continues to face legal challenges--including whether the Oakland A's can move to San Jose--Grow's book will undoubtedly play an influential role."--Michael McCann, Sports Illustrated legal analyst"The lawsuits arising from the Federal League's challenge to Major League Baseball and their aftermath defined much of the way baseball has evolved over the past century. Bolstered by original research, Grow explains both the broader picture and the intriguing behind-the-scenes machinations, and he does so in a clear and entertaining fashion."-- Daniel R. Levitt, author of The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy"An outstanding book based on previously unused materials, Baseball on Trial makes a truly significant contribution to the fields of baseball and the law, sports law, antitrust law, and legal history. Anyone discussing the trilogy of Supreme Court cases that created baseball's antitrust exemption needs to read this book."--Edmund P. Edmonds, co-editor of Baseball and Antitrust: The Legislative History
£26.09
Indiana University Press Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20thCentury Yemen
Book SynopsisIn early 20th-century Yemen, a sizable Jewish population was subject to sumptuary laws and social restrictions. This book draws on autobiographical writings to study the careers of three Jewish intermediaries who used their knowledge of Islamic law to manipulate the shari'a for their own benefit and for the good of their community.Trade ReviewThis book offers an important contribution to the understanding of Jewish-Muslim relations under the shari'a, and to the study of Yemeni Jews. * Journal of Modern Jewish Studies *This book is broad and interesting and opens a new window for the study of the legal status of the Jews of Yemen in the twentieth century. * Journal of the American Oriental Society *Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen . . . is a monograph that draws on literature studies, Islamic legal studies, history and anthropology. Students and scholars from all these fields as well as Yemeni studies in general will find this a rich and well written book. * Arabian Humanities *Mark S. Wagner has made an important and original contribution to the growing body of adaemic studies on Yemenite Jewish history and culture. . . Although the book's theme is how Jews negotiated life in a traditional Muslim society in which the Sharia was theoretically the overarching governing framework, Wagner also offers fascinating insights into the complexities of daily social, economic, and political life in Yemen. * AJS Reviews *A fascinating study indispensable to students and libraries interested in the tentative relationship between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East. * AJL Reviews *During the early twentieth century, Yemeni Jews operated within a legal structure that defined them as dhimmi, that is, non-Muslims living as a protected population under the sovereignty of an Islamic state . . . Wagner's work deepens our understanding of Muslim-Jewish relations in Yemen and the place of non-Muslims in Islamic law in general.6/20/15 * New Books in Jewish Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration Introduction1. The Islamic Judicial System and the Jews2. Changing God's Law3. Muslim Jews and Jewish Muslims4. Concord and Conflict in Economic Life5. Intercommunal Violence and the Shari'aConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£52.70
Indiana University Press Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20thCentury Yemen
Book SynopsisIn early 20th-century Yemen, a sizable Jewish population was subject to sumptuary laws and social restrictions. This book draws on autobiographical writings to study the careers of three Jewish intermediaries who used their knowledge of Islamic law to manipulate the shari'a for their own benefit and for the good of their community.Trade ReviewThis book offers an important contribution to the understanding of Jewish-Muslim relations under the shari'a, and to the study of Yemeni Jews. * Journal of Modern Jewish Studies *This book is broad and interesting and opens a new window for the study of the legal status of the Jews of Yemen in the twentieth century. * Journal of the American Oriental Society *Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen . . . is a monograph that draws on literature studies, Islamic legal studies, history and anthropology. Students and scholars from all these fields as well as Yemeni studies in general will find this a rich and well written book. * Arabian Humanities *Mark S. Wagner has made an important and original contribution to the growing body of adaemic studies on Yemenite Jewish history and culture. . . Although the book's theme is how Jews negotiated life in a traditional Muslim society in which the Sharia was theoretically the overarching governing framework, Wagner also offers fascinating insights into the complexities of daily social, economic, and political life in Yemen. * AJS Reviews *A fascinating study indispensable to students and libraries interested in the tentative relationship between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East. * AJL Reviews *During the early twentieth century, Yemeni Jews operated within a legal structure that defined them as dhimmi, that is, non-Muslims living as a protected population under the sovereignty of an Islamic state . . . Wagner's work deepens our understanding of Muslim-Jewish relations in Yemen and the place of non-Muslims in Islamic law in general.6/20/15 * New Books in Jewish Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration Introduction1. The Islamic Judicial System and the Jews2. Changing God's Law3. Muslim Jews and Jewish Muslims4. Concord and Conflict in Economic Life5. Intercommunal Violence and the Shari'aConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£20.69
Indiana University Press Lives behind the Laws
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the administration of law and its role in the lives of ordinary people in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire. It draws upon a rich but little-known legal collection from the late 3rd century known as the "Codex Hermogenianus".Trade Review"A very interesting contribution to our picture of the imperial system of petition and response.... Connolly gives us... a synoptic view of what was arguably the most important role of the Roman emperor during the Early Empire." —Michael Peachin, New York University"The diverse material from the CH, its description, analysis, and proposed contextual explanation, will pique different curiosities in different readers, and Connolly’s carefully argued and overall persuasive book will satisfy them all to some extent." —The European Legacy"[A] highly thought-provoking as well as finely written and carefully argued work, which will doubtlessly prove useful to those studying the Roman legal system and Diocletian's reign." —Phoenix"The clear analytical design, up-to-date and well-researched bibliography, and demonstrated capacity for logistic analysis make this a valuable contribution to the social and administrative history of the later Roman Empire." —American Historical Review, 116.1, February 2011"This is truly a fine book, as readable and engaging as it is insightful.... [I]t should surely be on the shelves of every Roman social and legal historian" —Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsAbbreviations Preface Introduction1. Seeking Justice in the Roman World Petitioning in the Roman World2. The Rescript System The Codex Hermogenianus The Rescript System in Motion The Work of the scrinium libellorum 3. The Rescript System in Context Petitioners Places 4. Using the System "With the Law" "Before the Law" "Against the Law"5. The Emperor and his Petitioners Petitioners in Need: The New Understanding of Poverty The Roles of the Emperor Limits on the Emperor The Nexus of Power: Emperor, Officials, PetitionersConclusionAppendix 1Appendix 2MapNotesBibliographyIndex
£18.99
University of Notre Dame Press Cattle Lords and Clansmen
Book SynopsisIn Cattle Lords and Clansmen, Nerys Patterson provides an analysis of the social structure of medieval Ireland, focusing on the pre-Norman period. By combining difficult, often fragmentary primary sources with sociological and anthropological methods, Patterson produces a unique approach to the study of early Irelandone that challenges previous scholarship. The second edition includes a chapter on seasonal rhythm, material derived from Patterson's post-1991 publications, and an updated bibliography.Trade Review“... Nerys Patterson has given a fresh and lively account of Irish society from a sociological point of view, based on considerable familiarity with translated editions of the Old Irish law texts and literary sources in Old, Middle and Early Modern Irish. She has a number of thought-provoking observations to make about points of detail, such as the Irish attitude to sheep (pp 84-5), the varying social status accorded to druids (p. 41), and the anomalous distribution of the cró and díre compensation payments among a victim’s patrilinear and matrilinear kin (pp 53-4). More importantly, she has an overall view based on comparative studies of other societies of how economic and social pressures should have operated within early Irish society.”—Irish Historical Studies“This book ought to send a new generation of archaeologists into the countryside of the Emerald Isle. A few more studies of this caliber will set a very different scenario for Celtic studies in the 21st century.” —Antiquity“This book taps into the rich but tantalizingly obscure body of Old and Middle Irish law which dates from the seventh and eight centuries. . . . Nerys Patterson uses the six volumes of early Irish law to reconstruct the complex hierarchical and familial relationships, which constituted secular Irish society in the centuries before and sometime after the Vikings arrived in Ireland. [Patterson’s] sociological approach is a significant addition to our understanding of early historic Irish Celtic society.” —History Ireland Autumn“Cattle Lords and Clansmen presents a strikingly new and fruitful study of early Irish history through the application . . . of a resourceful and pertinent sociological method. It is a deeply learned and brilliantly original contribution.” —ACIS Prize Committee
£25.19
University of Notre Dame Press Nazis in Skokie
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Downs . . . presents a political, constitutional, philosophical, psychological, and sociological examination of the First Amendment issues involved in the Skokie incident. This case study of assaultive speech is profound, yet simply and clearly written. Highly recommended.” —Choice"Mr. Downs raises points civil libertarians must consider; his book is comprehensive, knowledgeable, fair and readable." —New York Times Book Review“Downs has given us a thoughtful, solid work that is informed by a sense of constitutional law, by a feeling for the people involved, and by an appreciation of history as living conscience.” —American Bar Foundation Research Journal
£20.69
University of Texas Press The Duty to Act
Book SynopsisShapo cuts through the emotion and the complexity to present a view of litigated tort law problems that is both legally sound and intuitively appealing.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part One Private Duties to Act: Legal Affirmation of the Obligations of Personal Power Introduction I. Primarily Economic Relationships That Give Rise to Duties Businesses, Professions, and Activities Methods of Creating Relationships II. Relationships More Closely Personal III. Protection against Third Parties A Spectrum of Customers and Employees The Case of Violence in the Tavern Private Duties and Public Control The Professional Bystander IV. Plaintiff’s Own Conduct a Hazard V. A Thesis on the “Unrelated” Bystander: The Law as a Manifestation That “It Tolls for Thee” Summary Part Two Public Duties to Act: Vindicating Personal Interests against Invasion and Neglect by Commonwealth Power Introduction VI. Highway Safety as a Paradigm of Liability for Planning and Maneuvering Traffic Control: Duties to the Public and the Dependence of Individuals Highway Design: Choice, Knowledge, and Fairness VII. Security Firefighting Inspection Rescue Police Functions VIII. Welfare Medical Care Municipal Services Educational Standards Linking Public and Private Obligation: Police Duty and Individual Welfare Summary Notes Index
£999.99
University of Washington Press Forgery and Impersonation in Imperial China
Book SynopsisAcross eighteenth-century China a wide range of common people forged government documents or pretended to be officials or other agents of the state. This examination of case records and law codes traces the legal meanings and social and political contexts of small-time swindles that were punished as grave political transgressions.Trade Review"This book is undoubtedly a welcome and significant addition to the scholarship on Qing legal and social history. It will be of great value for anyone interested in late imperial Chinese law, society, culture, and politics." * Journal of Asian Studies *
£33.98
University of Washington Press Down with Traitors
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Xia has done a good job of collecting primary sources and offering a persuasive analysis of a neglected topic. Her work should be deemed as a pioneering project, which enriches our comprehension of the complicated wartime situation and its impact upon postwar Chinese society. . . . This book, without a doubt, is a contribution to modern Chinese history. It could be adopted as a supplementary reading for Chinese and East Asian history courses." * China Review International: A Journal of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in Chinese Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. From Epithet to Crime 2. Arbiters of Justice in a Lawless State 3. The Political Economy of the Anti-hanjian Campaigns 4. Engendering Contempt for Female Hanjian and Cultural Hanjian 5. Punishing Hanjian beyond Chinese Borders Epilogue: From Crime to Epithet Appendix A: The Revised Regulations on Punishing Hanjian, 1938 187 Appendix B: The Resolutions on Preventing Hanjian Activities and Espionage, 1939 190 Appendix C: Regulations on Handling Hanjian Cases, 1945 Notes Glossary Bibliography Index
£33.98
University of Washington Press Treaty Justice The Northwest Tribes the Boldt
Book Synopsis
£38.30
MV - University of Washington Press The Limits of the Rule of Law in China
Book SynopsisReflects on questions that have troubled Chinese scholars of jurisprudence since classical times. This book covers a wide range of topics like interpreting the rationale for and legacy of Qing practices of collective punishment, and assessing the political forces that continue to limit the authority of formal legal institutions in China.Trade Review"A skillful, multidisciplinary collection by China specialists, this volume treats fazhi (the rule of law) as it relates conceptually and practically to historical and contemporary China." * Choice *Table of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments Introduction: The Problem of Paradigms 1. Conceptions and Receptions of Legality: Understanding the Complexity of Law Reform in Modern China 2. Law, Law, What Law? Why Western Scholars of China Have Not Had More to Say about Its Law 3. Using the Past to Make a Case for the Rule of Law 4. Rule of Man and the Rule of Law in China: Punishing Provincial Governors during the Qing 5. Collective Responsibility in Qing Criminal Law 6. True Confessions? Chinese Confessions Then and Now 7. Law and Discretion in Contemporary Chinese Courts 8. Equality and Justice in Official and Popular Views about Civil Obligations: China and Taiwan 9. Language and Law: Sources of Systemic Vagueness and Ambiguous Authority in Chinese Statutory Language 10. The Future of Federalism in China 11. The Rule of Law Imposed from Outside: China's Foreign-Oriented Legal Regime since 1978 Epilogue: The Deep Roots of Resistance to Law Codes and Lawyers in China Contributors Index
£110.48
University of Washington Press The Limits of the Rule of Law in China
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A skillful, multidisciplinary collection by China specialists, this volume treats fazhi (the rule of law) as it relates conceptually and practically to historical and contemporary China." * Choice *Table of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments Introduction: The Problem of Paradigms 1. Conceptions and Receptions of Legality: Understanding the Complexity of Law Reform in Modern China 2. Law, Law, What Law? Why Western Scholars of China Have Not Had More to Say about Its Law 3. Using the Past to Make a Case for the Rule of Law 4. Rule of Man and the Rule of Law in China: Punishing Provincial Governors during the Qing 5. Collective Responsibility in Qing Criminal Law 6. True Confessions? Chinese Confessions Then and Now 7. Law and Discretion in Contemporary Chinese Courts 8. Equality and Justice in Official and Popular Views about Civil Obligations: China and Taiwan 9. Language and Law: Sources of Systemic Vagueness and Ambiguous Authority in Chinese Statutory Language 10. The Future of Federalism in China 11. The Rule of Law Imposed from Outside: China's Foreign-Oriented Legal Regime since 1978 Epilogue: The Deep Roots of Resistance to Law Codes and Lawyers in China Contributors Index
£38.30
University of Washington Press Legal Reform in Taiwan under Japanese Colonial
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Background of Legal Reform Reception of Western Law in Colonial Legislation Modern Judiciary in the Colony Criminal Justice and Changing Society Westernization of Civil Justice Appraisal and Legacy Conclusion Appendix A: Development of Taiwanese Law Appendix B: The Law Relating to Laws and Ordinances Appendix C: The Civil, Commercial, and Criminal Law Appendix D: The Bandit Punishment Law Glossary Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
£999.99
University of Washington Press The Goldmark Case An American Libel Trial
Book Synopsis
£29.66
MV - University of Washington Press The Emotions of Justice
Trade Review"In this original and thought-provoking study of Choson Korea’s legal practices, Jisoo M. Kim offers a multilayered analysis of petitions submitted by women of both elite and non-elite status throughout the dynasty. . . . The Emotions of Justice will be a crucial text when teaching this period in Korean history and should attract a wide interest also from scholars of cognate disciplines." -- Anders Karlsson * Journal of Asian Studies *"[R]edefines the boundaries of law, emotions, and gender in premodern Korea by investigating historic legal documents. This thought-provoking work not only enlightens the reader with regard to the legal system during the Chosŏn era (1392–1910) but also elucidates how various legal subjects constituted their subjectivity in oral and textual space." * Acta Koreana *
£110.48
University of Washington Press Forgery and Impersonation in Imperial China
Book SynopsisAcross eighteenth-century China a wide range of common people forged government documents or pretended to be officials or other agents of the state. This examination of case records and law codes traces the legal meanings and social and political contexts of small-time swindles that were punished as grave political transgressions.Trade Review"This book is undoubtedly a welcome and significant addition to the scholarship on Qing legal and social history. It will be of great value for anyone interested in late imperial Chinese law, society, culture, and politics." * Journal of Asian Studies *
£110.48
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Worse than the Devil Anarchists Clarence Darrow
Book SynopsisTrade Review“A beautifully written account of Milwaukee a century ago, as well as a fair appraisal of the political passions of those times in the light of recent research. Strang approaches his subject with the skill of a sympathetic storyteller.”—Shepherd Express“Strang paints a convincing and critical picture of the events in question, illuminating this moment in American history and justice. . . . Bound to be of interest to scholars and hobbyists alike.”—Publishers Weekly“Dean A. Strang’s fascinating book excavates a conspiracy trial in Milwaukee back in 1917 that sheds crucial insights into the failings of our legal system and the hazards of succumbing to mass hysteria against immigrants and alleged terrorists. The book provides urgent lessons for us all. And along the way, the author provides vivid portraits of Clarence Darrow and Emma Goldman.”—Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive“In engaging prose and with a terrific eye for detail, Dean A. Strang gives us the full story of a fascinating—and almost forgotten—moment of conflict from Milwaukee’s past. His book explores debates over civil liberties and terrorism, immigration and radicalism as they were lived and fought over a century ago.”—Beverly Gage, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded“Vividly depicts [Clarence Darrow’s] strengths and foibles. The reader truly understands why Darrow’s involvement in the Milwaukee bombing defendants’ appeal arrived at a pivotal period.”—New Republic“No one asked for this story. It simply begged to be told. . . . Strang’s impulse to tell a representative, rather than a unique, story has a chilling power he could not have anticipated.”—Partisan“A riveting account of a miscarriage of justice relevant to our times, when fear of radicals of a different stripe may infect our system of justice.”—Booklist
£18.66
Yale University Press What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said The
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Jack Balkin has gathered a terrific group of constitutional scholars to debate a fundamental issue: same-sex marriage. This is a great introduction to the confounding question of how Americans should interpret their Constitution in today's world.”—Geoffrey R. Stone, author of Sex and the Constitution"By including a wide spectrum of voices and social movement perspectives, this book provides an extraordinary case study of how constitutional law and politics can produce starkly different social meanings of such fundamental concepts as marriage and equality."—Nan D. Hunter, Georgetown University“This engaging and thought-provoking book features a wide range of scholarly views about marriage, constitutional liberty and equality, and the roads not taken in Obergefell.”— Mary L. Bonauto, attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)
£35.62
Yale University Press A Question of Freedom The Families Who Challenged
Book SynopsisTrade Review"William Thomas casts a bright light into the period’s darkness. . . . He reveals a remarkable struggle for freedom, one buoyed at first by new aspirations in the broader culture and later doomed by rekindled fears. . . . Valuable and provocative. . . . Mr. Thomas brings a clear and sensitive eye to the tangled relationship of black and white Americans in the early 19th century."—Fergus Bordewich, Wall Street Journal"Gripping. . . . Profound and prodigiously researched."—Alison L. LaCroix, Washington PostSelected as a finalist for the 2021 PROSE Awards, sponsored by the Association of American PublishersFinalist for the George Washington Book Award, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center and Washington CollegeWinner of the SHEAR Best Book Prize, sponsored by The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Winner of the 2021 Nebraska Book Award, Nonfiction Legal History category, sponsored by Nebraska Center for the BookCHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles 2021“Here is a strikingly original, eloquent, and humane book on an inhumane institution. The story restores the names and histories of people who fought for freedom for generations.”—Edward Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America“In A Question of Freedom, historian William Thomas brings to light the truly remarkable and largely forgotten efforts of people held in bondage to sue for their freedom in the courts of the early United States. A genuine contribution to the social, legal, and political history of American slavery, this is a book of great depth and insight.”—Adam Rothman, historian and curator of the Georgetown Slavery Archive“With its vivid narration, revelatory research, careful contextualization, and bracing honesty, A Question of Freedom demonstrates that freedom suits were not isolated episodes but instead a major form of slave resistance, with far-reaching and ongoing effects in the long freedom struggle. This book is essential reading for understanding the history of slavery and the modern debate over reparations.”—Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War"William Thomas has produced an important and astonishing chronicle of the legal battles waged by enslaved people for their own freedom. Braiding white-knuckle courtroom drama together with a searing exploration of his own family history, he redefines slavery’s place in early American law—not an inherent feature, but a dubious institution whose contradictions were exploited by the enslaved to protect themselves and their families.”—Yoni Appelbaum, Senior Editor, The Atlantic"A Question of Freedom is an essential book that details the extraordinary efforts of enslaved people to challenge both the legitimacy and absoluteness of slavery in courts of law. It is a work of remarkable honesty and humanity that should inform any conversation on the legacy of slavery. Please read it."—Lauret Savoy, author of Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the America Landscape
£27.50
Yale University Press Vagrant Figures Law Literature and the Origins of
Book SynopsisHow vagrancy, as legal and imaginative category, shaped the role of policing in colonialism, racial formation, and resource distributionTrade Review“A superb book. Its historical depth and geographical breadth accomplishes far more than most literary scholars, writing on this topic, have done in recent years.”—Betty Joseph, Rice University“A cultural criticism built on the close reading of texts, a model of careful and conscientious reading, and a vital contribution to our understanding of literature’s ideological work.”—Eugenia Zuroski, McMaster University“Nicolazzo finds the roots of modern policing in the earliest days of the American colonies and traces compelling connections between the local minutiae of vagrancy law and the vast, brutal sweep of British imperial expansion.”—Charlotte Sussman, Duke University“Reading lyric poetry, fiction, and memoir together with statutory law and the bureaucratic ephemera of various legal functionaries, Sal Nicolazzo dramatically expands our understanding of policing and of the practices and narratives that accompanied it in the early modern period.”—Simon Stern, University of Toronto
£52.25
WW Norton & Co My Father and Atticus Finch
Book SynopsisA memoir about the author's father, whose courageous defence of a black man accused of rape calls to mind To Kill a Mockingbird.
£18.04
LUP - University of Michigan Press A Good Quarrel
Book SynopsisCourtroom proceedings offer the thrill of a sporting event and the drama of a stage production as lawyers match wits, grill witnesses, and introduce eleventh-hour elements that may upend the course of a trial. This title features the nation's best court reporters who discuss the most memorable cases over the years.
£20.85
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Jurisprudence of Emergency
Book SynopsisFocuses on British colonialism in India from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century to demonstrate how questions of law and emergency shaped colonial rule, which in turn affected the place of colonialism in modern law, depicting the colonies not as passive recipients but as agents in the delineation of Western ideas and practices.Trade Review. . . a work of commendable scholarship for serious researchers looking at law and the complex ways in which it is imbricated in the ideology and practices of rule." - Social & Legal Studies"An inventive work of legal theory rooted in a series of legal historical case studies from the later British empire. . . It brims with analytical daring and insight." - Law, Culture and the Humanities"A thought-provoking series of essays on the complex relation between emergency and the rule of law and on the mutual influence of law in Britain and law in empire." - Law and History Review"Especially useful for scholars concerned with locating law and empire as aspects of liberal modernity, where the rule of law and the rule of power maintain what we have to recognize, finally, as a strange and uncomfortable intimacy." - Victorian Studies
£23.70
The University of Michigan Press A Casebook on Roman Water Law
Book SynopsisThe Romans are famous for constructing aqueducts, canals, and dams. But their law is also a lasting, if less visible, monument to their attempts to control water. A Casebook on Roman Water Law presents an analytical collection of Roman sources for water rights.Trade Review“Because a supply of good drinking water is a precious natural resource and an essential human need, its protection and administration have always been critical in every culture. Assessing how the Romans tackled legal problems about water supply and usage is therefore directly relevant to us. Bannon’s Casebook on Roman Water Law assembles a comprehensive collection of ancient sources over the wide range of Roman water law, with English translations of the original documents in Latin, thus providing readers with direct access to the source materials. The book is a major contribution to any understanding of a problem which is directly relevant to modern environmental issues.”—Harry B. Evans, Fordham University
£27.50
The University of Michigan Press Twilight of the American State
Book SynopsisWhen Trump won in 2016, his ascendancy was widely viewed as a fluke, an aberration. But time showed it was not a fluke, but the rise of a movement. How did this happen? This book offers a sweeping exploration of the role played by law and legal institutions in preparing the grounds for this rebellious movement.Trade Review“Pierre Schlag’s essay describes the development—or degeneration—of the American state from one animated by the principles of liberal democracy through the administered state to neoliberalism and now what he calls the dissociative state. Each state form generates tensions that it is unable to resolve, leaving us today facing the possibility that the authoritarian impulses that have grown out of frustration with the state’s failures will come to control a new state form. Schlag tells us that understanding how we got to where we are is the precondition for doing something about it, though he forgoes prescribing simple remedies. This is a bracing and—alas—somewhat depressing account of American constitutionalism today.” —Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School“This book is intentionally radical, and it makes an exciting and cutting-edge contribution in the fields of legal and political theory and history. It is beautifully written. Its intellectual contributions are major. Its distinctive voice is simultaneously personal, charming, and haunting. In short: it reads like Pierre Schlag.” —Mitchel Lasser, Jack G. Clarke Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Studies, Cornell Law SchoolTable of Contents List of Charts Acknowledgments Foreword I. Distraction and Catastrophe II. The Liberal Democratic State III. The Administered State IV. The Neoliberal State V. The Dissociative State VI. The Authoritarian Temptation VII. The Contest of Diagnoses Coda Notes on Method
£19.90
LUP - University of Michigan Press Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire
Book Synopsis
£69.30
The University of Michigan Press A Casebook on Roman Water Law
Book SynopsisThe Romans are famous for constructing aqueducts, canals, and dams. But their law is also a lasting, if less visible, monument to their attempts to control water. A Casebook on Roman Water Law presents an analytical collection of Roman sources for water rights.Trade Review“Because a supply of good drinking water is a precious natural resource and an essential human need, its protection and administration have always been critical in every culture. Assessing how the Romans tackled legal problems about water supply and usage is therefore directly relevant to us. Bannon’s Casebook on Roman Water Law assembles a comprehensive collection of ancient sources over the wide range of Roman water law, with English translations of the original documents in Latin, thus providing readers with direct access to the source materials. The book is a major contribution to any understanding of a problem which is directly relevant to modern environmental issues.”—Harry B. Evans, Fordham University
£64.95
Harvard University Press Republic of Debtors
Book SynopsisDebt was a fact of life in early America. At the beginning of the 18th century, its sinfulness was preached by ministers and the right to imprison debtors was unquestioned. By 1800, imprisonment for debt was under attack and insolvency was no longer seen as a moral failure. Mann illuminates this crucial transformation in early American society.Trade ReviewA landmark study of eighteenth-century financial failure. -- Jill Lepore * New Yorker *Back [in colonial days] debtors were treated worse than thieves. In prison they had to foot the bill for their own food and heat, or else go without. In 1798, when yellow fever swept Philadelphia, all prisoners from city jails were evacuated to safety—all, that is, but the deadbeats. Bruce Mann, a law and history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says such harsh treatment reflected a culture in which failure to repay debt was regarded as a moral failing rather than a business one. How Americans’ attitude toward debt changed is the subject of Mann’s masterful (but largely overlooked) 2002 history, Republic of Debtors. -- Bernard Condon * Forbes *In this gripping account of being in debt in the land of the free, Bruce Mann illuminates the origins of Americans’ ambivalent relationship to business failure… Mann employs his considerable talents to bring to life a world where much that seems normal and logical to us now—like a unified currency, or the fact that you cannot pay off a debt if you are stuck in jail—was not. Mr. Mann’s genius is to explain in clear and human terms the legal and economic intricacies by which early American creditors and debtors lived and died. -- Evan Haefeli * Washington Times *Bruce Mann, a noted authority on early American law and society, offers an incomparable study of 18th-century indebtedness and insolvency, tackling a tough subject with clarity and sympathy… Anyone interested in the history of American law and business will find this an enlightening book. -- Christopher Clark * Times Higher Education Supplement *Bankruptcy scholars and conventional legal historians aim to capture [societal and political tensions] by directing their attention to high legal text and their framers’ original intentions. But for Mann, such documents serve only as points of reference on a journey whose aim is to understand contemporary cultural conceptions. Mann wisely identifies debtors’ prisons, rather than legal texts or political discourse, as the path into his world… Mann uses the correspondence, memoirs, and pamphlets written by inmates to portray not only their miserable daily lives but also their cries for help… The 1800 Bankruptcy Act, amid controversy, narrowly passed. Mann is the first to narrate its passage authoritatively. -- Ron Harris * American Historical Review *In his new illuminating book…[Bruce Mann] identifies a fundamental societal change in attitude toward debtors… He traces the evolution of American attitudes toward debt and insolvency throughout the 1700s, culminating in the first federal bankruptcy law in 1800. -- Stephen Smith * Books and Culture *Bankruptcy, that familiar constant in an age of boom and bust, has a moral as well as financial component. Deservedly or not, in the early days of the American republic, shame and mistrust attached to a debtor who sought shelter and relief under the law… A fascinating work of economic history that sheds light on daily life in the young Republic. * Kirkus Reviews *This new work from Mann…examines the relationship between creditors and debtors during late 18th-century America. He specifically focuses on the transformation of society’s view of indebtedness from a moral failing to an economic one… This thoroughly researched work is an excellent resource. -- Robert K. Flatley * Library Journal *Republic of Debtors is a superb, even dramatic, book about debt, the law on debt, and the experience of debt in the early American republic that reveals how problems over money, credit, and debt shattered lives and transfixed politics as thoroughly in the Revolutionary and early national eras as they still do in the twenty-first century. -- Jon Butler, Yale UniversityThis is a lucid, deeply researched, and powerfully insightful study of attitudes toward debt and bankruptcy in the ‘long eighteenth century.’ In sparkling prose, Mann introduces us to a key aspect of how Americans put their own spin on emergent capitalism while he also addresses the ambivalent legacies of the constitution-framing years. -- Cornelia H. Dayton, University of ConnecticutWriting with clarity, grace and wit, Bruce Mann tells a compelling tale that opens up fresh dimensions of the politics, imagination and nightmares of the founding generation. I emerged with a far better grasp of the complexities of paper money and credit than I ever hoped to have. As we struggle to handle our own credit cards, it is useful to reflect on the deeply ironic relationship among personal independence, personal identity, and personal indebtedness that has long characterized American life. -- Linda K. Kerber, University of IowaBruce Mann has given us a superb study of the evolution of early American cultural attitudes towards personal indebtedness and their impact on law and legal procedures. His vivid stories of imprisoned debtors are both eye-opening and instructive. Mann has made a fresh, original, and immensely significant contribution to the history of the Early Republic. -- Gloria L. Main, University of Colorado, BoulderReaders now owe Bruce Mann a hefty debt of their own for this imaginative and painstakingly researched account of changing ideas of credit, debt, and bankruptcy in eighteenth-century America. Debt is one of those pervasive aspects of society that we take for granted, yet its functions and complications require unusual diligence to master. But mastery of this rich subject is exactly what Mann has gained. This model study contributes at once to the legal, social, economic, moral, political, and intellectual history of early America, while telling an intriguing story of shifting attitudes and relations. -- Jack N. Rakove, Stanford UniversityTable of Contents* Acknowledgments * Introduction *1. Debtors and Creditors *2. The Law of Failure *3. Imprisoned Debtors in the Early Republic *4. The Imagery of Insolvency *5. A Shadow Republic *6. The Politics of Insolvency *7. The Faces of Bankruptcy * Conclusion * Notes * Index
£23.36
Harvard University Press The Invention of Law in the West
Book SynopsisLaw is a specific form of social regulation distinct from religion, ethics, and even politics, and endowed with a strong and autonomous rationality. Its invention, a crucial aspect of Western history, took place against the backdrop of the Roman Empire's gradual consolidation. Schiavone reconstructs this development with clear-eyed passion.Trade ReviewEveryone recognizes that during the early Roman Empire law emerged as a professionalized and vital part of statecraft, but few understand the wrenching intellectual controversy that accompanied the transformation. Aldo Schiavone's terrific book brings this historic debate into dazzling focus. -- Bruce Frier, University MichiganThe wide sweep and deeply humanistic approach of The Invention of Law in the West--with its emphasis on the primary sources and concise critical synthesis of much previous scholarship--make this ambitious volume perhaps the best attempt yet by any scholar to animate the venerable yet highly complex, technically demanding and intellectually isolated field of Roman law for a wider readership...It indisputably marks a new and welcome opening in its field. -- T. Corey Brennan * Time Literary Supplement *
£47.56
The Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies The Law Code of Viu
Book SynopsisThe Law Code of Viṣṇu is one of the latest of the ancient Indian legal texts composed around the seventh century CE in Kashmir. This volume contains a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on fifteen manuscripts, an annotated English translation, and an introduction evaluating its textual history.
£35.66
Harvard University Press Americas Forgotten Constitutions
Book SynopsisRobert Tsai’s history invites readers into the circle of defiant groups who refused to accept the Constitution’s definition of who “We the People” are and how their authority should be exercised. It is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists.Trade ReviewEngaging to read… [Tsai’s] picture is far richer than the grim founder worship usually found in American political orthodoxy… For Tsai’s constitution writers, the U.S. Constitution stands as an obligatory model, something they necessarily define themselves in relation to. All designed some sort of republic. All detailed mechanisms for ‘popular decision making, divided powers, and enumerated rights.’ And all, in the end, underline just how largely the Constitution figures in the American political imagination: less a charter of freedom than a document of power. -- Tom Arnold-Foster * Daily Beast *Offers a refreshing and innovative take on a centuries-old topic… These stories of ‘forgotten constitutions’ offer a tantalizing glimpse into the power of the written word in shaping American political discourse and ideas, both popular and philosophical, about American society. This is not merely a collection of assorted oddities or constitutional anecdotes from America’s political margins, however. Taken together, they comprise a chronological narrative of some of the key issues galvanizing political activism throughout the past 200 years of American history… By exploring the efforts of those who went beyond mere intellectual debate, and who actually tried to build alternative nations or states within the U.S., Tsai offers a unique vantage into the ideological struggles underpinning American history and politics… These constitutional efforts all represent efforts by everyday Americans to take charge of the society immediately surrounding them, express their grievances with the status quo and literally re-write the conditions of their lives. -- Hans Rollman * PopMatters *Offers an enlightening, refreshing take on constitutional history that is accessible to legal veterans and newcomers alike. * Harvard Law Review *Tsai recovers extensive and diverse traditions of alternative constitution writing from across the political spectrum. He thus highlights the deep plurality of American constitutional culture as well as the centrality of dissident chords in shaping our legal and political institutions. The book is a remarkable feat of excavation, one that offers a much-needed corrective to the conventional histories of American constitutionalism—histories that deemphasize the vitality and importance of popular suspicion toward the federal Constitution. -- Aziz Rana * Texas Law Review *Magisterial…surely one of the most captivating works on American political thought and American constitutional history to be written in the last several years. -- Susan McWilliams * Tulsa Law Review *Tsai examines eight instances of dissenting constitutions written by groups representing cultural attitudes out of the norm seeking unconventional sovereignty… The author succinctly explains each of these constitutions with the thoroughness of a legal mind and writing that avoids legalese. * Kirkus Reviews *Tsai has selected eight transformative legal texts to show how legality and social process interact in dissident communities and diverse settings. The documents represent an astonishing array of ideologies from utopian socialism and internationalism to Confederate and black power movements. Using an analytical framework based on categories of sovereignty and self-rule, each chapter considers the historical significance and dynamic growth of its community, culminating in marginalization or integration of its philosophies into the broader legal and political culture of this nation. The organization is historical, beginning with 19th-century social campaigns to nascent Aryan nation communities. The author successfully demonstrates the difficulties of establishing and maintaining alternative legal cultures even with strong, visionary leadership… A deft, readable investigation of this country’s complex legal traditions with lessons for contemporary fringe groups. * Library Journal *Tsai’s recovery of the constitutional plans of dissenting political communities challenges our sense of a stable constitutional history. America’s Forgotten Constitutions masterfully exposes the disturbingly shaky foundations of constitutional identity; yet it also shows the (mildly reassuring) consistency of constitutional thinking, even among white supremacists, land-grabbers, and moralistic ideologues. -- Sarah Barringer Gordon, author of The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern AmericaFor two centuries, dissenters from the American mainstream have drawn inspiration from the U.S. Constitution—and chafed at it. Tsai elegantly maps the margins of our constitutional landscape to reveal one of the Framers’ great forgotten legacies. A brilliantly conceived book. -- John Fabian Witt, author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History
£31.41
Harvard University Press Habeas Corpus From England to Empire
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£32.41
Harvard University, Asia Center Public Law Private Practice
Book SynopsisPractitioners of private law opened the way toward Japan’s legal modernity in ways the samurai and the state could not. Tracing law regimes from Edo to Meiji, Flaherty shows how the legal profession emerged as a force for change in modern Japan, founding private universities and political parties, and contributing to twentieth-century legal reform.Trade ReviewFlaherty’s work is ground-breaking…Flaherty’s book offers readers an overarching description of both legal practices and the activities of legal practitioners in Japan from the 1600s (the Edo era) to the 1890s (the middle of the Meiji era)…Flaherty’s dynamic book on the Japanese legal profession has opened the door to many new areas of scholarship, and will no doubt become standard reading for both legal and political historians. -- Makiko Hayashi * Japan Review *
£30.56
Harvard University Press Slavish Shore
Book SynopsisIn 1834 Harvard dropout Richard Henry Dana Jr. became a common seaman, and soon his Two Years Before the Mast became a classic. Literary acclaim did not erase the young lawyer’s memory of floggings he witnessed aboard ship or undermine his vow to combat injustice. Jeffrey Amestoy tells the story of Dana’s determination to keep that vow.Trade ReviewSlavish Shore is the first new biography of Richard Henry Dana in over fifty years, and rigorous attention to Dana is long overdue. Amestoy is an excellent writer who takes us gracefully through Dana’s fascinating life, providing much new insight into his defense of fugitive slaves and his work on the treason case against Jefferson Davis. It is an important story, very well told. -- Steven Lubet, author of Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on TrialBoth a richly detailed biography of Richard Henry Dana and a snapshot of American life at the end of the age of sail, Amestoy’s Slavish Shore is the perfect companion volume for anyone who has been captivated by Two Years Before the Mast. Amestoy’s book follows Dana as he carries home the lessons he learned at sea and shocks the hidebound world of upper-crust Boston by standing up for the rights of seamen and fugitive slaves. But Slavish Shore also gives us the story of a private man caught in the sometimes suffocating atmosphere of family life, charting a haphazard course between independence and duty, ambition and disappointment. -- Wes Davis, editor of An Anthology of Modern Irish PoetryThe strongest element of Amestoy’s treatment in Slavish Shore is his dramatization of the intricacies and personalities of the growing Abolitionist fervor of Boston in the years of Dana’s flourishing…A fine new biography. -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *Excellently reveals how Dana wrested from the text of the U.S. Constitution the acknowledgment that the African-American slave, a kind of property as far as the traditional reading went, also had rights. -- Carol Bundy * Wall Street Journal *[Slavish Shore] is a meticulous, engaging, and informative study of Dana’s life, which unequivocally defends its portrait of this significant American man of letters as an equally significant man of the law that will be of particular interest to both literary scholars and historians concerned with the intersections of maritime law, slavery, and aristocratic New England culture in the turbulent decades leading up to the Civil War. -- Dan Walden * American Literary History *Slavish Shore, Jeffrey Amestoy’s superb new biography of Dana—the first in more than 50 years—should make many more people familiar with him…Slavish Shore presents an insightful portrait of Dana as a man as well as a lawyer…An excellent book—never tedious and often gripping—and Dana deserves our renewed attention. -- Henry Cohen * Federal Lawyer *Amestoy’s biography is excellent: well written, comprehensive, empathetic, and well researched…Amestoy is at his best, better than any other biographer, when narrating Dana’s role in several of America’s crucial cases in which human rights were at risk and a moral compass was needed. -- Rick Kennedy * New England Quarterly *How appropriate that the year 2015, the bicentennial of Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s birth, ushered in the publication of what will be considered for quite some time the definitive biography of the famed sailor, author, lawyer, and activist. -- Brian Rouleau * Journal of the Early Republic *How appropriate that the year 2015, the bicentennial of Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s birth, ushered in the publication of what will be considered for quite some time the definitive biography of the famed sailor, author, lawyer, and activist. -- Brian Rouleau * Journal of the Early Republic *
£32.36
Harvard University Press New Democracy
Book SynopsisConventional wisdom dates the origins of activist federal government to the New Deal. William J. Novak shows that the roots run deeper. Tracing the gradual rise in demands for public-service government from the Civil War through the Progressive Era, he finds that attitudes about the role of the state changed long before FDR was in office.Trade ReviewSuperb…Bound to become a landmark in constructing the map of governance’s constitutional history…A major contribution to an overall narrative of U.S. constitutional development. -- Mark Tushnet * Balkinization *Emphasizes the dramatic departure of the modern American state from its roots…Novak expertly weaves together intellectual, legal, and political history to show that the critical turning point in American politics came during the Progressive era…A useful complement to the ongoing study of the critical decision points that led us to our present moment. -- Joseph Postell * Claremont Review of Books *Novak deftly examines how Dewey and other progressive reformers reimagined the state to meet the challenges of their own time…Deeply researched and beautifully organized. -- Kate Masur * Tocqueville 21 *An enlightening analysis of the intellectual and theoretical underpinnings of policies enacted in [the Progressive Era]…Antitrust aficionados and general history nerds will also find much to like here…Novak has synthesized a vast amount of material for readers interested in discovering how we arrived at the current state of antitrust law. -- Claude Marx * FTC Watch *A dazzling historical blueprint of progressive reform with utmost pressing relevance for our immediate future. -- Orly Lobel * Yale Journal on Regulation *Novak has done us all an extraordinary service in bringing together so many ideas, practices, laws, and policies into a single, beautifully-written, energetic, erudite volume that will surely reshape how we and subsequent generations see the creation of the modern American state. -- Ganesh Sitaraman * Yale Journal on Regulation *Splendid…Skillfully and persuasively, Novak ties the administrative state and the New Deal’s federal policies—and the legal framework that made them possible—to the decades that preceded the Great Depression…[Novak] aims not just to highlight aspects of the multidimensional and centuries-long existence and gradual expansion of the nation’s commitment to regulation in the public interest. Instead, he demonstrates the intellectual, legal, and political changes that permanently altered governance in the United States…For scholars and citizens battling against privilege on behalf of justice, New Democracy will prove an invaluable resource. -- James T. Kloppenberg * Michigan Journal of Law and Society *This is one of the most ambitious and interesting books I have read in a long time. -- Christopher Howard * Perspectives on Politics *Novak’s important and timely book debunks the myth that before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, municipal, state, and federal governments were weak, and doctrines enshrining free market capitalism, individual, contract, and property rights went unchallenged. -- Glenn C. Altschuler * Pittsburgh Post-Gazette *A rich, complicated book examining the origins of the modern American state…Novak’s argument is one that has, and will continue, to spark debate as it goes to the heart of one of oldest questions in American political life. -- Phillip Payne * S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intellectual History *Illuminat[es] the enormous expansion of both state and federal governmental authority well before the New Deal, especially in the laws and agencies regulating public utilities and enacting Progressive social-welfare regulation and benefits. -- Robert Gordon * Stanford Lawyer *This much anticipated book is a magisterial revision of the history of modern American governance. More powerfully than any work I have read, it shows concretely when and how the modern American state took shape and what made it fundamentally different from what came before. Perhaps even more important, Novak’s account centers democracy in a way other works have simply overlooked. Outstanding, truly field-changing, New Democracy is sure to spark vital conversations for decades to come. -- Karen M. Tani, author of States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935–1972Novak’s dazzling New Democracy offers a striking reconceptualization of a pivotal era in the history of American governance. As he demonstrates, brilliantly and convincingly, the New Deal was built upon the radical ideas and novel administrative practices that reshaped American politics and law in the decades preceding FDR’s election in 1932. -- James T. Kloppenberg, author of Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American ThoughtIn this sweeping and provocative book, Novak forces us to think anew about public power and democracy in America and how both were transformed in the period from 1866 to 1932. Encompassing everything from citizenship to social policy, the profound changes he chronicles notably preceded the New Deal. Novak challenges us as never before to reexamine what we thought we knew about ‘the creation of the modern American state.’ -- David A. Moss, author of Democracy: A Case StudyA grand synthesis that retells the story of the rise of the modern American state by examining the fundamental grammar of state-building. Novak shows that Americans took ideas about citizenship, police power, public utility, social welfare, antimonopoly, and, most importantly, democracy and invested them with new power and meaning between the close of the Civil War and the beginning of the Great Depression. They laid the foundations for how Americans would continue to grapple with public problems, and how they would struggle over the meaning of democratic governance. A fitting capstone to a brilliant career. -- Kenneth W. Mack, author of Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights LawyerThe Progressive period, the decisive turning point in the rise of modern American government, law, policy, and planning, has attracted some of the greatest historians of our time. Novak now joins their ranks with New Democracy, dazzling in its erudition and provocative argumentation. It will be impossible to think about Progressivism—and the American state today—without reading this book first. -- Thomas J. Sugrue, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar DetroitNovak’s New Democracy is a remarkable achievement. Beautifully written and superbly researched, it illuminates the transformation of the American system of government between the Civil War and the New Deal, debunking the myths of both a weak American state and the New Deal as an aberration. An essential read for anyone who cares about the past and future of American democracy. -- Kate Andrias, Columbia Law School
£33.11
Harvard University Press Reasoning from Race
Book SynopsisIn the 1960s and 1970s, analogies between sex discrimination and racial injustice became potent weapons in the battle for women's rights, as feminists borrowed rhetoric and legal arguments from the civil rights movement. Serena Mayeri's Reasoning from Race is the first history of this key strategy and its consequences for American law.Trade ReviewMayeri shows that racial politics’ impact on the women’s movement was not a coincidence of timing but rather the inevitable result of ideas and individuals colliding at key moments in history. Her carefully crafted reconciliation of racial justice with women’s rights offers a template for incorporating race into ongoing feminist debate rather than letting such conversations end in painful silence. -- Pamela D. Bridgewater * Ms. *The author powerfully describes the rise and fall of the gender–race analogy, as well as the transformation of how both supporters and opponents of women’s rights appropriated the analogy, culminating in the collapse of the feminist movement during the Reagan era. -- D. Schultz * Choice *Analogies between race and sex have a long history, dating back to the early years of the American suffrage struggle. In the 1840s, women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott protested their exclusion from anti-slavery leadership and abolitionist Frederick Douglass championed equal suffrage at the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls. A century later, the civil rights and feminist revolutions rekindled debates over whether and how race-sex analogies should be used. Reasoning from Race is a brilliant, scholarly book covering these debates, which are so important to understand as we tackle the unfinished business of sex equality in America. -- Patricia Schroeder, U.S. House Representative for the State of Colorado, 1973–1997This brilliant book opens an entirely new window on the vexed relationship between civil rights and the women’s movement. Its dazzling exploration of race–sex analogies forces us to reconsider the promise and peril of all analogical reasoning. Among other things, it should make anyone who has ever thought that ‘gay is the new black’ reconsider. -- Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa BarbaraPaying close attention to ‘how law is made and what is lost along the way,’ Reasoning from Race provides a paradigm-altering account of legal feminism. Serena Mayeri recovers a robust tradition that understood how gender, race, and class worked together, and she tells its surprising story with bold sweep, meticulous research, and stylistic grace in this powerful and important book. -- Nancy MacLean, Duke UniversityReasoning from Race sets as its ambition to trace the history of how sex-equality federal statutes and constitutional jurisprudence came to rely on and in turn often be limited by analogies to race. It is a history of ideas, of the relationship between the movement for civil rights and women’s rights from 1960 through the 1970s, and the individuals who bridged those two movements. In each of these respects, Mayeri succeeds brilliantly. -- Barbara Young Welke, University of Minnesota
£24.26
Harvard University Press The Force of Law
Book SynopsisMany legal theorists maintain that laws are effective because we internalize them, obeying even when not compelled to do so. In a comprehensive reassessment of the role of force in law, Frederick Schauer disagrees, demonstrating that coercion, more than internalized thinking and behaving, distinguishes law from society’s other rules.Trade ReviewModern jurisprudence has been devoted to a search for law’s necessary and sufficient conditions and has downgraded the importance of coercion, which is neither. However, Fred Schauer makes a convincing case for coercion’s importance in understanding law and legal phenomena. His treatment of the topic is erudite, comprehensive, rigorous, and even witty, and it is delivered in a superb writing style. -- Lawrence A. Alexander, University of San Diego School of LawThe Force of Law has the virtues of all of Schauer’s work: clear and accessible writing, the grounding of persuasive arguments on good examples and a wide range of scholarship, and fair consideration of opposing views. It is an important contribution to jurisprudential debates about the nature of law and about the proper approach to theorizing in this area. -- Brian H. Bix, University of Minnesota Law SchoolDrawing upon language, moral, sociological, and economic theory, Schauer explores what makes legal norms unique and why and under what conditions individuals truly obey the law. He asserts that although coercion may not be the only reason people obey the law, often getting individuals to act in ways they would not normally act requires some type of force. This force need not necessarily be negative coercion as normally conceived but can involve an array of sanctions to condition behavior in specific ways. -- D. Schultz * Choice *
£32.36
Harvard University Press Corruption in America
Book SynopsisWhen Louis XVI gave Ben Franklin a diamond-encrusted snuffbox, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to corrupt him by clouding his judgment. By contrast, in 2010 the Supreme Court gave corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Zephyr Teachout shows that Citizens United was both bad law and bad history.Trade ReviewAt last someone has written a book that puts a name to what is perhaps the most significant factor shaping American politics today: corruption. In a masterly work of scholarship, Zephyr Teachout…traces the history of American approaches to what was long considered a mortal threat to the republic. She demonstrates that recent jurisprudence, which has whittled down the definition of corruption to encompass only a contractual exchange between briber and public official, represents nothing less than ‘a revolution in political theory.’… Teachout calls for a return to the Framers’ preference for across-the-board rules to help prevent corrupt acts before they are perpetrated, rather than relying on punishment after the fact. -- Sarah Chayes * Wall Street Journal *In Corruption in America, an eloquent, revealing, and sometimes surprising historical inquiry, Teachout convincingly argues that corruption, broadly understood as placing private interests over the public good in public office, is at the root of what ails American democracy. -- David Cole * New York Review of Books *Teachout’s book is filled with colorful anecdotes about Americans getting away with all sorts of chicanery… Corruption in America shows that it is possible to establish and maintain governmental institutions that shield us from our worst instincts. This was the goal of Madison and his peers, and it could still be achieved with a better public-election finance system, which could be constitutional under Citizens United if the system did not restrict private donations. Democrats who will be looking for a fresh agenda in 2016 should read Teachout’s book carefully. -- Max Ehrenfreund * Washington Post *[A] groundbreaking book. -- John Nichols * The Nation *You have probably heard pundits say we are living in an age of ‘legalized bribery’; Corruption in America is the book that makes their case in careful detail… State governments subject to wealthy corporations? Check. Speculators in legislation, infesting the capital? They call it K Street… And all of it has happened, Teachout admonishes, because the founders’ understanding of corruption has been methodically taken apart by a Supreme Court that cynically pretends to worship the founders’ every word. -- Thomas Frank * New York Times Book Review *[Teachout] has written an intelligent, stimulating, and wide-ranging retort to the Roberts Court’s constrained view of corruption. In Corruption in America, she argues that for democracy to thrive, we need a far more capacious characterization of this key concept… Her book in part [is] a greatest hits of court cases and laws dealing with bribery and lobbying, full of corrupt land deals and railroad intrigue… While there is obviously plenty to debate and disagree over in how we might define and delineate corruption, the broad unsettledness of the concept is perhaps Teachout’s point. She has some ideas on how we might think about corruption, and she highlights others’ ideas as well. But mostly, she just wants us to debate and discuss corruption more, to view it as a controversial issue, and not to let the Roberts Court sweep it away into a marginal corner so that it can then declare it irrelevant, thus clearing the way for unlimited campaign contributions… Teachout’s book may be just the rousing call to arms we need for the fight ahead. -- Lee Drutman * Democracy *[Teachout] wrote [this] book, she says, primarily in answer to conservative members of the Supreme Court, who, in a series of decisions climaxing in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, have successively narrowed the legal definition of corruption to the point that it now effectively includes only outright bribery. In Citizens United, for example, the majority struck down corporate spending limits in politics on the grounds that there is nothing inherently corrupting about corporations trying to buy influence with politicians so long as there is no explicit quid pro quo. Teachout spends much of her book showing just how naive, dangerous, and, frankly, anti-American the Founding Fathers would have considered such reasoning… It is certainly refreshing to watch Teachout remind jurists who pretend to wrap themselves in the mantle of strict construction just how at odds their views of human nature and the role of government are with those of the framers. -- Daniel Bush * Washington Monthly *A serious scholarly take-down of the American campaign finance system. -- Zach Carter * Huffington Post *After a thorough and almost agonizingly detailed grand tour of dozens of often conflicting federal and state court decisions differing on the precise legal meaning of ‘corruption,’ Teachout ends up with a book that should become required reading in constitutional law classes. -- Michael Hirsch * Indypendent *A book that merits the large readership it may get… Teachout’s narrative spans the history of the United States from its beginnings through Chief Justice John Roberts’s decision in McCutcheon v. FEC. -- Scott McLemee * Inside Higher Ed *Zephyr Teachout argues that recent court decisions—and a lax attitude toward corruption—are putting private interests over the public good. Teachout complains of the revolving-door practice of congressional representatives retiring and becoming lobbyists. She says the policy breeds ethical conflicts and tainted decision-making. -- Carl Campanile * New York Post *This is an important book. -- Mark G. Spencer * Times Literary Supplement *Teachout explores case law and controversies before the 1970s and finds that many generations of jurists and politicians had a much broader conception of political corruption and a richer sense of civic duty and viewed any sort of gift-giving from private citizens to public officials as ethically dubious and undermining of democratic legitimacy. Though there was quite a bit of public corruption in the old days, there was also a respect for public virtue for which modern jurisprudence has little patience. The Supreme Court’s dramatic turn away from an older tradition leaves Congress unable to regulate lobbying and campaign spending wisely, should it chose to do so. With public confidence in government low and Washington politics driven by the agendas of corporations and the wealthy, Teachout’s argument is timely, compelling, and important. -- R. M. Flanagan * Choice *Teachout’s beautifully written and powerful book exposes a simple but profound error at the core of the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon v. FEC decision. The originalists on the Court forgot their history. This is that history—and eventually it will provide the basis for reversing the Court’s critical error. -- Lawrence Lessig, author of Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop ItThis is a wonderful and important book. Zephyr Teachout shows what’s wrong with how the Supreme Court thinks about democracy and political corruption, how we got to this terrible place, and that it wasn’t always this way—and doesn’t have to be. There’s a lot of learning and original synthesis here, and also an unmistakable voice, which blends a lively intelligence with passion for democracy as a way of life. -- Jedediah Purdy, author of A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom
£17.95
Harvard University Press The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
Book SynopsisRule of law has vanished in America's criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. The author looks to history for the roots of these problems - and solutions.Trade ReviewThe capstone to the career of one of the most influential legal scholars of the past generation. -- Lincoln Caplan * New York Times *[A] masterwork… [Stuntz] is the most forceful advocate for the view that the scandal of our prisons derives from the Enlightenment-era, procedural nature of American justice. He runs through the immediate causes of the incarceration epidemic: the growth of post-Rockefeller drug laws, which punished minor drug offenses with major prison time; ‘zero tolerance’ policing, which added to the group; mandatory-sentencing laws, which prevented judges from exercising judgment. But his search for the ultimate cause leads deeper, all the way to the Bill of Rights. In a society where Constitution worship is still a requisite on right and left alike, Stuntz startlingly suggests that the Bill of Rights is a terrible document with which to start a justice system—much inferior to the exactly contemporary French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson, he points out, may have helped shape while his protégé Madison was writing ours. The trouble with the Bill of Rights, he argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles… In place of abstraction, Stuntz argues for the saving grace of humane discretion. Basically, he thinks, we should go into court with an understanding of what a crime is and what justice is like, and then let common sense and compassion and specific circumstance take over. -- Adam Gopnik * New Yorker *The scandal of criminal justice in the United States is by now a familiar one, its facts are well known, its causes extensively canvassed. So what can another book tell us that we don’t already know? A surprising amount, as it turns out… Most critiques of American criminal justice are by liberals and progressives, but Bill Stuntz—who died, aged fifty-two, shortly before this book was published—was a registered Republican, an evangelical Christian, and a revisionist thinker with a fondness for ‘law and economic’ perspectives. His viewpoint is refreshingly unpredictable and runs against the grain of conventional wisdom. It is a devastatingly critical account nevertheless. American criminal justice is, he writes, devoid of the rule of law, ‘wildly unjust’ and the ‘harshest in the history of democratic government.’… The Collapse of American Criminal Justice is a powerful indictment of the U.S. system, and a history of its unraveling. But its author insists that a legitimate, effective criminal justice might be attained if American constitutional democracy can be properly brought to bear. -- David Garland * Times Literary Supplement *The most important book about law in the United States published in the past thirty years. It is impossible to overstate the ambition of Stuntz’s undertaking… The Collapse of American Criminal Justice asks what went wrong and how it can be put to rights. Stuntz covers much ground and floats many reforms… Stuntz links the modern justice system to that of the nineteenth-century South. Today many criminally accused—especially minorities—continue to be judged by outsiders rather than one another, he argues, and this deprives the justice system of legitimacy… Rarely has one volume synthesized and revealed so much about American law. The scourge of racism in our justice system persists. Those who fight it must read this book. -- Michael O’Donnell * The Nation *The book is eminently readable and merits careful attention because it accurately describes the twin problems that pervade American criminal justice today—its overall severity and its disparate treatment of African-Americans. The book contains a wealth of overlooked or forgotten historical data, perceptive commentary on the changes in our administration of criminal justice over the years, and suggestions for improvement… Virtually everything that Professor Stuntz has written is thought-provoking and constructive… Well worth reading. -- Justice John Paul Stevens * New York Review of Books *This volume is exceptionally rich, insightful, provocative, and well-written. It is bound to have great influence on academic thinking, and perhaps in time on the criminal justice system itself… Stuntz’s book will repay much closer scrutiny than I can give it in a review… [An] important book. -- Richard A. Posner * New Republic *How has the American criminal-justice system become one of the most punitive in the world without providing a corresponding level of public safety? In The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, William J. Stuntz…offers a provocative big-picture answer… The overarching themes of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice deserve wide discussion, and the book as a whole can be rightly seen as the capstone to a distinguished legal career. Americans may debate whether our criminal-justice system has truly collapsed, but few would argue that it can’t be improved. -- Paul G. Cassell * Wall Street Journal *Stuntz’s book makes an eloquent, deeply reflective and historically well-rooted plea for a return to humane, fair and effective criminal justice. Every legislator, politician, judge, attorney, law student and lay citizen interested in understanding and improving our system should study this book. It will very deservedly be a centerpiece for any future discussion of criminal justice reform. -- Frank R. Herrmann * America *The capstone achievement of the most remarkable criminal justice scholar of the past generation. Although the book is a long parting lament, Stuntz thought that it still may be possible to undo much of the damage of the past century… If we were to restore local democracy in criminal justice, he argues; if we put more cops on the streets and fewer young black men in prison; if courts worried less about privacy and more about how police officers treat criminal suspects, the quality of justice might be a little less strained. -- David Skeel * Books & Culture *The Collapse of American Criminal Justice [is] a blistering critique of the ‘arbitrary, discriminatory, and punitive beast’ that our nation’s criminal justice system has become… Stuntz, who passed away earlier this year, was the Henry J. Friendly professor of law at Harvard University and one of the nation’s leading scholars of criminal law and procedure. His work was well-known for uncovering counterintuitive paradoxes at the heart of the American justice system, and Collapse is filled with them… Its diagnosis of our criminal justice system demands attention. Even more so its suggested remedies… Stuntz himself recognized that his suggestions would prove a hard sell in today’s political climate. He prudently opted for hope rather than optimism. But politicians, and the voters that elect them, would be wise to consider Stuntz’s account seriously, because what to do about our deeply flawed criminal justice system—well, that is a puzzle worth trying to solve. -- Jay Wexler * Boston Globe *[Stuntz’s] final book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, crowns an intellectual career that very few have equaled… William Stuntz [was] a scholar who perceived acutely the grievous mismatch that exists in America’s justice system between individual rights and criminal-justice machinery, between legal ideals and political institutions. The Collapse of American Criminal Justice rises to the complexity of the questions it raises, showing nuance, balance, and sophistication, and fulfilling the author’s extraordinary legacy even as it—alas—completes it. We owe William Stuntz a great debt. I am certain that the best way to pay this debt is by honoring his hope for a truly just criminal-justice system. -- Paulo Barrozo * Commonweal *A hugely important and timely work… I am immensely impressed by the candor and clarity of his critique of the American justice system, and find almost nothing to disagree with. -- Scott Horton * Harper’s blog *The cruelly early death of Professor William Stuntz cost us our deepest thinker about criminal law… His contribution, fully realized in this grand valedictory book, was to teach us to think creatively and critically about how we design the technology of government and to accept responsibility for its means and its products. In The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, Stuntz demonstrates that American criminal justice is a disaster. It is a horrendous mess of mismatched means and ends, of legal protections thwarted and misguided, of political demagoguery imposing brutal penalties on the undeserving, and of willful inefficiencies in the institutions created to protect both public safety and the public fisc… Like most of Stuntz’s work, Collapse is a profoundly thoughtful achievement of systems analysis. The breadth and scope of its policy proposals tempt us to read it as a blueprint of major design components needed for programmatic reform… Rather, we should read Collapse as an exhortation to, and model of, a way of thinking about criminal justice. This way of thinking requires astute analytic rigor in identifying the decisive choices in the building of legal institutions and a proper respect for the human frailty—individual, collective, and institutional—that produces the frequently awful unintended consequences of these choices. -- Robert Weisberg * Harvard Law Review *It’s a fascinating, passionate, compassionate, often brilliant book… It’s a work that deserves to have a significant influence on American criminal-justice thinkers from across the political spectrum… Stuntz documents serious problems, describes how they deepened, and points the way towards improvement. His book deserves a wide readership. -- Eli Lehrer * National Review *Smart and surprisingly provocative, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice is an instant classic. Stuntz sets aside the conventional wisdom and offers fresh and paradigm shifting analysis of crime, punishment, and politics. Every prosecutor, defense attorney, judge, and law maker in the country should take Stuntz’s powerful insights to heart. The Collapse of American Criminal Justice is indeed the achievement of a lifetime. -- Paul Butler, author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of JusticeBill Stuntz brought humanity, passion, and a broad intellectual vision to the study of criminal justice. His book tells the compelling story of the injustices created by the rise of discretionary power, the resurgence of discrimination and the impoverishment of local democracy. His analysis has implications beyond the shores of the USA; and helps us to see where a more hopeful future might lie. -- Nicola Lacey, All Souls College, OxfordThe Collapse of American Criminal Justice is a searching—and profoundly disturbing—examination of American criminal law in action. William Stuntz’s posthumous study establishes that our main achievement has been the incarceration of millions, and in the process we have given short shrift to the minimal objectives of a democratic legal order—fairness and equality. This is a masterful work. -- Louis H. Pollak, Senior Judge, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of PennsylvaniaBill Stuntz was our leading scholar of criminal procedure. Stuntz argues that much of what we think about American criminal justice is wrong. The system is neither too lenient nor too punitive, but too prone to both extremes, and the extremism is caused by too little democracy. Sweeping, learned, and bracingly original, Stuntz’s crowning achievement is a wonderful book. -- David Alan Sklansky, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, BerkeleyThis is a brilliant book by a supremely decent man. A great scholarly mind from the world of small towns, Stuntz has unique and profound insights into the perverse effects of centralized control of the criminal process of modern America. His vision of a better, more humane, more local justice offers more hope than the work of any scholar I know. -- James Q. Whitman, Yale Law School
£19.76
Harvard University Press The Evangelical Origins of the Living
Book SynopsisJohn Compton shows how evangelicals, not New Deal reformers, paved the way for the most important constitutional developments of the twentieth century. Their early-1800s crusade to destroy property that made immorality possible challenged founding-era legal protections of slavery, lotteries, and liquor sales and opened the door to progressivism.Trade ReviewJohn W. Compton’s The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution is an outstanding addition to the literature on American constitutional development. The book argues that the progressive critique of the Constitution in the early twentieth century that led to the New Deal was presaged and to some extent made possible by earlier social movements of evangelical Christians in the nineteenth century who sought to ban alcohol and lotteries. The idea that the Constitution’s practical meaning must adjust to changing social conditions is often associated with the progressive critique of the 1920s and 1930s. But Compton shows that evangelicals made similar moves decades before in order to reshape constitutional understandings and justify government power to ban alcohol and lottery sales… He shines new light on the history of American constitutional development. He does a tremendous service in recalling cases and debates that were once very important to constitutional theory but are no longer… The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution is a truly valuable book that greatly enhances our understanding of the development of constitutional law in the nineteenth century. After reading this book, and grasping its lessons, you will not be able to teach the basic Constitutional Law course the same way again. That is not true of many books, and it is a mark of its excellence and its importance. -- Jack Balkin * Balkinization *[An] intriguing history of morals legislation and American constitutional history… Compton rightly points out that many of the classic histories of American law treat the 19th-century courts as consistently moralistic, without appreciating the dramatic shift that took place in judicial doctrine and the awkward tension this created with earlier cases. He has exposed a remarkable sequence of developments in American constitutional history… Compton rightly draws attention to the role that the morals cases played in the emergence of the living Constitution. -- David Skeel * Books & Culture *Compton’s history is compelling… This is a fascinating book that sheds much light on how our views on the proper scope of government have changed—for the worse. -- George Leef * Forbes *John Compton’s superb book provides a fascinating account of the influence that evangelical attempts to stamp out drinking and lotteries had on American constitutional development. That, in itself, is worth the price of admission. -- Mark Graber, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of LawThe book’s clear, forcibly argued, and original thesis challenges some of the most influential scholarship in its field. -- Ken I. Kersch, Boston CollegeAs scholars and pundits debate whether the New Deal order is coming to an end, questions about its inception are particularly timely, and the author’s engagement with the question of how morals can influence constitutional politics is quite salient at this time. -- Julie Novkov, University at Albany, State University of New York
£40.76
Harvard University Press The Crown and the Courts
Book SynopsisThe idea of the separation of powers, a bedrock of modern constitutionalism, has a deeper history. David Flatto uncovers striking antecedents in the writings of Jewish scholars and rabbis of antiquity. Under foreign rule, they constructed a vision of earthly separation of powers that made law and the courts, not the crown, supreme.Trade ReviewThanks to the publication of this panoramic work, future scholars have a wealth of writing to consult in separating out the strands of thought in early Jewish imagination regarding legal–political philosophy. -- David Nimmer * Journal of the Church and State *A work of consummate scholarship. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to know about the origins and nature of the separation of powers—a fundamental doctrine of modern constitutionalism, especially in the United States…Flatto demonstrates that the modern doctrine of separation of powers originated in certain biblical texts. -- Arthur J. Jacobson * Journal of Law and Religion *This is a profound and sharp study, which succeeds in revealing the complexity of the textual world of ancient Judaism and the multiplicity of views that existed there, while at the same time presenting a clear thesis about a common trend these various texts shared…An outstanding achievement. -- Ishay Rosen-Zvi * Journal of the American Oriental Society *[A] work of exceptional scholarship…We look to historical texts in view of our present concerns whether this is the status of nonhuman animals, the norming of human capacities, or constitutional theory. The challenge is to construct an interpretation of those texts that is animated by our interests while open to those expressed by them in their diversity, complexity, and even inconsistency. In this, The Crown and the Courts is a remarkable success. -- Yonatan Y. Brafman * Journal of Religion *[Flatto’s] work will inspire some new directions in historical studies of the eras in question. His excellent readings, of Josephus and the tannaim in particular, are welcome additions to the scholarship on both. -- Natalie Dohrmann * Dead Sea Discoveries *Was Josephus doing constitutional theory when he claimed that ancient Israel was a unique, theocratic polity, ruled by God and his laws, not men? This rich and provocative book deploys skillful close readings to argue that Josephus, the rabbis, and other important post-biblical Jewish thinkers made distinctive contributions to constitutional thought, developing an original account of separated powers. Flatto’s book should be read as a prequel to Eric Nelson’s scholarship showing how early modern Western political thought received rabbinic ideas. -- Noah Feldman, author of Arab Winter: A TragedyShould justice be administered independently of political authority? Through detailed consideration of a wide range of ancient Jewish texts, David Flatto adds a necessary and relevant new dimension to current thinking about the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law. -- Timothy D. Lytton, author of Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial FoodThe Crown and the Courts offers us a learned and cogent analysis of the ways in which biblical and post-biblical Jewish sources sought to establish the independence of law from various forms of political authority. Flatto’s book is an important addition to the growing literature on rabbinic legal and political ideas. -- Eric Nelson, author of The Theology of Liberalism
£32.36
Harvard University Press The Intellectual Sword
Book SynopsisIn the early twentieth century, Harvard Law was on the brink of financial and scholarly ruin. Discriminatory, intellectually arid, and nearly broke, the school struggled through World War II. Bruce Kimball and Daniel Coquillette chronicle the downfall and dramatic restoration of HLS as arguably the world’s most influential law school.Trade ReviewA major work of scholarship—forceful, original, compelling, and highly readable. The stories of the administration of Harvard Law School, of the rise and fall of its deans and their many tribulations, make for high drama. And the school itself is of course one of the key institutions of higher education and the legal profession, not only for its own achievements and standing, but because of its enormous influence on other schools. -- Robert W. Gordon, Stanford Law School
£38.21
Harvard University Press Courting Death
Book SynopsisRefusing to eradicate the death penalty, the U.S. has attempted to reform and rationalize capital punishment through federal constitutional law. While execution chambers remain active in several states, Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker argue that the fate of the American death penalty is likely to be sealed by this failed judicial experiment.Trade ReviewThis is the most important book about the death penalty for a generation and, likely, ever. Anyone who cares about the state of justice in America should read this book. -- Lincoln Caplan, journalist and Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale Law SchoolCourting Death is a brilliant and insightful book with a powerful thesis, namely that the death penalty in the United States has been unwittingly regulated to death. It is the most forceful and significant intervention I have read on the question of capital punishment to date, a remarkable contribution to our legal, historical, and political debates. -- Bernard E. Harcourt, author of Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital AgeCourting Death charts precisely the past and present of what has sadly become a uniquely American dilemma and, most importantly, sets out the doctrinal road map that will likely guide Supreme Court Justices in the future. Written by the most respected capital punishment scholars of the day, it is essential reading. -- Michael Meltsner, author of Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment[The Steikers] provide a clear and comprehensive look at the 40-year modern history of capital punishment in the United States since its reinstatement in 1976…Courting Death provides an excellent survey of the history of capital punishment and the prospects of abolition…The Steikers explain technical legal issues with such clarity that their book is highly accessible to lawyer and layperson alike. -- Stephen Rohde * Los Angeles Review of Books *Carol and Jordan Steiker…are the leading contemporary scholars of the death penalty. In Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment they have brilliantly defined—in language accessible to the general reader—the massive dysfunction of the current system and the course that a future Supreme Court could take to do away with it. -- Michael Meltsner * Huffington Post *The Steikers deliver an extraordinarily well-documented, forceful and ferocious assault on state and federal administration of capital punishment since then. Courting Death is, almost certainly, the best book on this subject. -- Glenn C. Altschuler * Huffington Post *Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker (sister and brother) have written a revealing book about the history of the death penalty in the U.S. and, in particular, the continued difficulties the Supreme Court has had in attempting to regulate capital punishment so that it conforms to constitutional standards…[An] excellent book. -- Jed S. Rakoff * New York Review of Books *
£22.46
Harvard University Press On the Battlefield of Merit
Book SynopsisHarvard Law School pioneered educational ideas, including professional legal education within a university, Socratic questioning and case analysis, and the admission and training of students based on academic merit. On the Battlefield of Merit offers a candid account of a unique legal institution during its first century of influence.Trade ReviewOn the Battlefield of Merit surpasses all previous histories of Harvard Law School in the breadth and depth of its research base, giving one confidence in the authenticity of many of its findings. -- G. Edward White * Weekly Standard *On the Battlefield of Merit: Harvard Law School, The First Century succeeds in crafting a history of the school that is meticulous in its research, lucid in its prose, and, above all, nuanced in its findings…If the authors’ forthcoming work on the second century of Harvard Law is as sweeping as On the Battlefield of Merit, together these volumes will stand as the definitive history of the institution for some time to come. -- Andrew Porwancher * Law and History Review *A deep, detailed, compellingly written, unstintingly transparent view of the school as it was from the fall of 1817 (six students) to the spring of 1910 (765 students). -- Corydon Ireland * Harvard Law Bulletin *Given the track record of Coquillette and Kimball, it is no surprise that this book, in its depth of research, breadth of coverage, and unbiased analysis, supersedes the standard histories of Harvard Law School. -- R. Kent Newmyer, author of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
£30.56
Harvard University Press On the Laws and Customs of England Volume 4
Book Synopsis
£95.96
Harvard University Press Citizens Divided
Book SynopsisFirst Amendment defenders greeted the Court's Citizens United ruling with enthusiasm, while electoral reformers recoiled in disbelief. Post offers a constitutional theory that seeks to reconcile these sharply divided camps, and he explains how the case might have been decided in a way that would preserve free speech and electoral integrity.Trade ReviewDemocracy is not just a structure of elections and political institutions, but a mysterious and historically fluid set of ideas about the relationship between citizens and those who govern. With his characteristically subtle understanding of our cultural history, Robert Post shows how changing ideas of self-government illuminate one of the great political and legal controversies of our time. -- Richard H. Pildes, New York UniversityRobert Post offers a powerful critique of the Citizens United decision, and an original and compelling new perspective on how the Supreme Court should analyze campaign finance laws in light of the First Amendment’s commitment to electoral integrity. -- Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago
£24.26
