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Discussion: Law/legal system (new titles for 2009)
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GregoryKlages |
Law/legal system (new titles for 2009)
Jan 28 2009, 9:05 AM EST
Items in this thread concern the US legal system, the structures, institutions, and issues handled within this system throughout its history, and those who work within it. Reviewers interested in this field might also survey the threads that correspond to the historical era of interest to them, as well as the thematic threads that correspond to their area of political interest (business/economics, environment, etc.). NeoAmericanist journal seeks reviewers for the items listed in this thread, all of which have been posted in 2009. For more information on becoming a reviewer, please follow the “How to Submit A Review” link to the left.
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GregoryKlages |
1. The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court
Jan 28 2009, 9:08 AM EST
The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme CourtAuthors: Thomas G. Hansford & James F. Spriggs, II Paper | 2008 | 176 pp. | 6 x 9 | 14 line illus. 5 tables. Princeton University Press The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court offers an insightful and provocative analysis of the Supreme Court's most important task--shaping the law. Thomas Hansford and James Spriggs analyze a key aspect of legal change: the Court's interpretation or treatment of the precedents it has set in the past. Court decisions do not just resolve immediate disputes; they also set broader precedent. The meaning and scope of a precedent, however, can change significantly as the Court revisits it in future cases. The authors contend that these interpretations are driven by an interaction between policy goals and variations in the legal authoritativeness of precedent. From this premise, they build an explanation of the legal interpretation of precedent that yields novel predictions about the nature and timing of legal change. Hansford and Spriggs test their hypotheses by examining how the Court has interpreted the precedents it set between 1946 and 1999. This analysis provides compelling support for their argument, and demonstrates that the justices' ideological goals and the role of precedent are inextricably linked. The two prevailing, yet contradictory, views of precedent--that it acts either solely as a constraint, or as a "cloak" that never actually influences the Court--are incorrect. This book shows that while precedent can operate as a constraint on the justices' decisions, it also represents an opportunity to foster preferred societal outcomes. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8204.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
2. Why the Founding Document Doesn't Mean What It Meant Before
Feb 26 2009, 9:07 AM EST
A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn't Mean What It Meant BeforeAuthor: Cass R. Sunstein Cloth | 2009 | 240 pp. | 6 x 9 Princeton University Press The future of the U.S. Supreme Court hangs in the balance like never before. Will conservatives or liberals succeed in remaking the court in their own image? In A Constitution of Many Minds, acclaimed law scholar Cass Sunstein proposes a bold new way of interpreting the Constitution, one that respects the Constitution's text and history but also refuses to view the document as frozen in time. Exploring hot-button issues ranging from presidential power to same-sex relations to gun rights, Sunstein shows how the meaning of the Constitution is reestablished in every generation as new social commitments and ideas compel us to reassess our fundamental beliefs. He focuses on three approaches to the Constitution--traditionalism, which grounds the document's meaning in long-standing social practices, not necessarily in the views of the founding generation; populism, which insists that judges should respect contemporary public opinion; and cosmopolitanism, which looks at how foreign courts address constitutional questions, and which suggests that the meaning of the Constitution turns on what other nations do. Sunstein demonstrates that in all three contexts a "many minds" argument is at work--put simply, better decisions result when many points of view are considered. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8866.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
3. Religion and the Constitution, Volume 2: Establishment and Fairness
Feb 26 2009, 9:27 AM EST
Religion and the Constitution, Volume 2: Establishment and FairnessAuthor: Kent Greenawalt Paper | August 2009 | Cloth, ebook | 2008 | 568 pp. | 6 x 9 Princeton University Press Balancing respect for religious conviction and the values of liberal democracy is a daunting challenge for judges and lawmakers, particularly when religious groups seek exemption from laws that govern others. Should students in public schools be allowed to organize devotional Bible readings and prayers on school property? Does reciting "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance establish a preferred religion? What does the Constitution have to say about displays of religious symbols and messages on public property? Religion and the Constitution presents a new framework for addressing these and other controversial questions that involve competing demands of fairness, liberty, and constitutional validity. In this second of two major volumes on the intersection of constitutional and religious issues in the United States, Kent Greenawalt focuses on the Constitution's Establishment Clause, which forbids government from favoring one religion over another, or religion over secularism. The author begins with a history of the clause, its underlying principles, and the Supreme Court's main decisions on establishment, and proceeds to consider specific controversies. Taking a contextual approach, Greenawalt argues that the state's treatment of religion cannot be reduced to a single formula. Calling throughout for acknowledgment of the way religion gives meaning to people's lives, Religion and the Constitution aims to accommodate the maximum expression of religious conviction that is consistent with a commitment to fairness and the public welfare. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8679.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
4. Regulation by Litigation
Mar 17 2009, 9:19 AM EDT
Regulation by LitigationAuthors: Andrew P. Morriss, Bruce Yandle, and Andrew Dorchak Nov 2008 296 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Yale University Press Federal and state regulatory agencies are increasingly making use of litigation as a means of regulation. In this book, three experts in regulatory law and theory offer a systematic analysis of the use of litigation to impose substantive regulatory measures, including a public choice-based analysis of why agencies choose to litigate in some circumstances. The book examines three major cases in which litigation was used to achieve regulatory ends: the EPA’s suit against heavy duty diesel engine manufacturers; asbestos and silica dust litigation by private attorneys; and private and state lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers. The authors argue that litigation is an inappropriate means for establishing substantive regulatory provisions, and they conclude by suggesting a variety of reforms to help curb today’s growing reliance on such practice. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300120028 Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
5. The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries
Mar 17 2009, 9:21 AM EDT
The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local JuriesAuthor: Thomas O. McGarity Nov 2008 368 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 1 typeset figure Yale University Press Most people are unaware of a quiet war that has been raging for the last decade in the courts, federal regulatory agencies, and Congress—a war over federal agency preemption of state common law claims. But the outcome of these battles will affect us all, says regulatory law expert Thomas O. McGarity, and consumers stand to be the biggest losers. In this comprehensive and balanced book, McGarity takes up for the first time this increasingly important subject. He shows how preemption affects the way citizens are protected from harm and companies are held accountable for damage they unlawfully cause. The book offers scholars and policymakers a full analysis of the legal and policy issues under debate, and it brings into sharp focus the impact of preemption on the lives of people involved in actual lawsuits. McGarity highlights the arguments for and against preemption and suggests guidelines for resolving difficult issues in a variety of contexts. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300122961 Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
6. The Judge in a Democracy
Mar 17 2009, 9:35 AM EDT
The Judge in a DemocracyAuthor: Aharon Barak Paper | 2008 | 360 pp. | 6 x 9 e-Book | 2008 | Princeton University Press Whether examining election outcomes, the legal status of terrorism suspects, or if (or how) people can be sentenced to death, a judge in a modern democracy assumes a role that raises some of the most contentious political issues of our day. But do judges even have a role beyond deciding the disputes before them under law? What are the criteria for judging the justices who write opinions for the United States Supreme Court or constitutional courts in other democracies? These are the questions that one of the world's foremost judges and legal theorists, Aharon Barak, poses in this book. In fluent prose, Barak sets forth a powerful vision of the role of the judge. He argues that this role comprises two central elements beyond dispute resolution: bridging the gap between the law and society, and protecting the constitution and democracy. The former involves balancing the need to adapt the law to social change against the need for stability; the latter, judges' ultimate accountability, not to public opinion or to politicians, but to the "internal morality" of democracy. Barak's vigorous support of "purposive interpretation" (interpreting legal texts--for example, statutes and constitutions--in light of their purpose) contrasts sharply with the influential "originalism" advocated by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As he explores these questions, Barak also traces how supreme courts in major democracies have evolved since World War II, and he guides us through many of his own decisions to show how he has tried to put these principles into action, even under the burden of judging on terrorism. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8145.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
7. Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution
Mar 30 2009, 9:08 AM EDT
Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the ConstitutionAuthor: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan Cloth | 2009 | 304 pp. | 6 x 9 Princeton University Press More than the citizens of most countries, Americans are either religious or in jail--or both. But what does it mean when imprisonment and evangelization actually go hand in hand, or at least appear to? What do "faith-based" prison programs mean for the constitutional separation of church and state, particularly when prisoners who participate get special privileges? In Prison Religion, law and religion scholar Winnifred Fallers Sullivan takes up these and other important questions through a close examination of a recent trial challenging the constitutionality of a faith-based residential rehabilitation program in an Iowa state prison, a trial in which she served as an expert witness for the prisoner-plaintiffs. Using the trial to illuminate the interrelationship of American law and religion today, Prison Religion argues that the plaintiffs' case unintentionally shows that separation of church and state is no longer possible because religious authority has radically shifted from institutions to individuals, making it difficult to define religion, let alone disentangle it from the state. In the course of advancing this unconventional view, Prison Religion casts new light on church-state law, the debate over government-funded faith-based programs, and the predicament of prisoners who have precious little choice about what kind of rehabilitation they receive, if they are offered any at all. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8914.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
8. The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership...
Apr 13 2009, 10:23 AM EDT
Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. HistoryAuthor: Keith E. Whittington Paper | 2009 | 320 pp. | 6 x 9; e-Book | 2008 | Princeton University Press - Winner, 2008 J. David Greenstone Award, Politics and History Section, American Political Science Association - Winner, 2008 C. Herman Pritchett Award, Law and Courts Section, American Political Science Association Should the Supreme Court have the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution? The justices on the Supreme Court certainly seem to think so--and their critics say that this position threatens democracy. But Keith Whittington argues that the Court's justices have not simply seized power and circumvented politics. The justices have had power thrust upon them--by politicians, for the benefit of politicians. Whittington examines why presidents have often found judicial supremacy to be in their best interest, why they have rarely assumed responsibility for interpreting the Constitution, and why constitutional leadership has often been passed to the courts. The unprecedented assertiveness of the Rehnquist Court in striking down acts of Congress is only the most recent example of a development that began with the founding generation itself. Presidential bids for constitutional leadership have been rare, but reflect the temporary political advantage in doing so. Far more often, presidents have cooperated in increasing the Court's power and encouraging its activism. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8427.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
9. Creating a First Amendment Culture
Apr 29 2009, 9:20 AM EDT
Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment CultureAuthor: Robert L. Tsai Oct 27, 2008 216 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 3 line Yale University Press This provocative book presents a theory of the First Amendment’s development. During the twentieth century, Americans gained trust in its commitments, turned the First Amendment into an instrument for social progress, and exercised their rhetorical freedom to create a common language of rights. Robert L. Tsai explains that the guarantees of the First Amendment have become part of a governing culture and nationwide priority. Examining the rhetorical tactics of activists, presidents, and lawyers, he illustrates how committed citizens seek to promote or destabilize a convergence in constitutional ideas. Eloquence and Reason reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300117233 Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
10. Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: International Problem-Solving Courts..
May 4 2009, 9:17 AM EDT
Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court MovementAuthor: James L. Nolan, Jr. Cloth | 2009 | 264 pp. | 6 x 9 | 2 line illus. Princeton University Press A wide variety of problem-solving courts have been developed in the United States over the past two decades and are now being adopted in countries around the world. These innovative courts--including drug courts, community courts, domestic violence courts, and mental health courts--do not simply adjudicate offenders. Rather, they attempt to solve the problems underlying such criminal behaviors as petty theft, prostitution, and drug offenses. Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing is a study of the international problem-solving court movement and the first comparative analysis of the development of these courts in the United States and the other countries where the movement is most advanced: England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and Australia. Looking at the various ways in which problem-solving courts have been taken up in these countries, James Nolan finds that while importers often see themselves as adapting the American courts to suit local conditions, they may actually be taking in more aspects of American law and culture than they realize or desire. In the countries that adopt them, problem-solving courts may in fact fundamentally challenge traditional ideas about justice. Based on ethnographic research in all six countries, the book examines these cases of legal borrowing for what they reveal about legal and cultural differences, the inextricable tie between law and culture, the processes of globalization, the unique but contested global role of the United States, and the changing face of law and justice around the world. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8913.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
11. Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending
May 11 2009, 10:03 AM EDT
An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual OffendingAuthor: Franklin E. Zimring With a Foreword by Francis A. Allen 216 pages, 21 figures, 4 tables 6 x 9 © 2004, paperback 2009. Univeristy of Chicago Press An American Travesty is the first scholarly book in half a century to analyze the justice system’s response to sexual misconduct by children and adolescents in the United States. Writing with a refreshing dose of common sense, Franklin E. Zimring discusses our society's failure to consider the developmental status of adolescent sex offenders. Too often, he argues, the American legal system ignores age and developmental status when adjudicating young sexual offenders, in many cases responding as they would to an adult. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=23622 Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
12. Patents: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk
Nov 2 2009, 12:42 PM EST
Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at RiskAuthors: James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer 352 pp. | 6 x 9 | 21 line illus. 17 tables. Princeton University Press Honorable Mention for the 2008 PROSE Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in Law and Legal Studies, Association of American Publishers In recent years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today's patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. But like the infamous patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much of the cited evidence about the patent system is pure anecdote--making realistic policy formation difficult. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? Moving beyond rhetoric, Patent Failure provides the first authoritative and comprehensive look at the economic performance of patents in forty years. James Bessen and Michael Meurer ask whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective. Patent Failure presents a wide range of empirical evidence from history, law, and economics. The book's findings are stark and conclusive. While patents do provide incentives to invest in research, development, and commercialization, for most businesses today, patents fail to provide predictable property rights. Instead, they produce costly disputes and excessive litigation that outweigh positive incentives. Only in some sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, do patents act as advertised, with their benefits outweighing the related costs. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8634.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
13. The Unbounded Home: Property Values Beyond Property Lines
Nov 27 2009, 2:48 PM EST
The Unbounded Home: Property Values Beyond Property LinesAuthor: Lee Anne Fennell Aug 03, 2009 312 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4; 11 b/w illus. Yale University Press The Unbounded Home grapples with a core modern reality -- that the value and meaning of a home extend beyond its property lines to schools, shops, parks, services, neighbors, neighborhood aesthetics, and market conditions. The resulting tension between the homeowner’s desire for personal autonomy at home and the impulse to control everything that could affect the home’s value fuels continual conflict among neighbors and communities. The home’s unbounded nature implicates nearly every facet of residential life, from the financial vulnerability of homeowners to the persistence of segregation by race and class. This book shows how innovations that increase the flexibility of property law can address critical issues of neighborhood control and community composition that have been simmering unresolved for decades -- and how homeownership itself can be reinvented to better deliver on its promises. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300122442 Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
14. How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming Privacy
Nov 27 2009, 2:50 PM EST
At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming PrivacyAuthor: Jeannie Suk Sep 28, 2009 216 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Yale University Press In the past forty years, the idea of home, which is central to how the law conceives of crime, punishment, and privacy, has changed radically. Legal scholar Jeannie Suk shows how the legitimate goal of legal feminists to protect women from domestic abuse has led to a new and unexpected set of legal practices. Suk examines case studies of major legal developments in contemporary American law pertaining to domestic violence, self-defense, privacy, sexual autonomy, and property in order to illuminate the changing relation between home and the law. She argues that the growing legal vision that has led to the breakdown of traditional boundaries between public and private space is resulting in a substantial reduction of autonomy and privacy for both women and men. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300113983 Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
15. Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot to Surveillance Society
Dec 4 2009, 3:59 PM EST
Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot to Surveillance SocietyJonathan Finn 200 pages | 29 b&w illustrations | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 2009 University of Minnesota Press What do contemporary police procedures tell us about criminality? At the beginning of the twentieth century, criminals, both alleged and convicted, were routinely photographed and fingerprinted—and these visual representations of their criminal nature were archived for possible future use. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a plethora of new tools—biometrics, DNA analysis, digital imagery, and computer databases—similarly provide new ways for representing the criminal. Capturing the Criminal Image traces how the act of representing—and watching—is central to modern law enforcement. Jonathan Finn analyzes the development of police photography in the nineteenth century to foreground a critique of three identification practices that are fundamental to current police work: fingerprinting, DNA analysis, and surveillance programs and databases. He shows these practices at work by examining specific police and border-security programs, including several that were established by the U.S. government after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Contemporary law enforcement practices, he argues, position the body as something that is potentially criminal. As Finn reveals, the collection and archiving of identification data—which consist today of much more than photographs or fingerprints—reflect a reconceptualization of the body itself. And once archived, identification data can be interpreted and reinterpreted according to highly mutable and sometimes dubious conceptions of crime and criminality. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/F/finn_capturing.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
16. Beyond the Formalist-Realist Divide: The Role of Politics in Judging
Dec 11 2009, 1:20 PM EST
Beyond the Formalist-Realist Divide: The Role of Politics in JudgingAuthor: Brian Z. Tamanaha Paper | 264 pp. | 6 x 9 e-Book | 2009 Princeton University Press According to conventional wisdom in American legal culture, the 1870s to 1920s was the age of legal formalism, when judges believed that the law was autonomous and logically ordered, and that they mechanically deduced right answers in cases. In the 1920s and 1930s, the story continues, the legal realists discredited this view by demonstrating that the law is marked by gaps and contradictions, arguing that judges construct legal justifications to support desired outcomes. This often-repeated historical account is virtually taken for granted today, and continues to shape understandings about judging. In this groundbreaking book, esteemed legal theorist Brian Tamanaha thoroughly debunks the formalist-realist divide. Drawing from extensive research into the writings of judges and scholars, Tamanaha shows how, over the past century and a half, jurists have regularly expressed a balanced view of judging that acknowledges the limitations of law and of judges, yet recognizes that judges can and do render rule-bound decisions. He reveals how the story about the formalist age was an invention of politically motivated critics of the courts, and how it has led to significant misunderstandings about legal realism. Beyond the Formalist-Realist Divide traces how this false tale has distorted studies of judging by political scientists and debates among legal theorists. Recovering a balanced realism about judging, this book fundamentally rewrites legal history and offers a fresh perspective for theorists, judges, and practitioners of law. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9089.html Do you find this valuable? |
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GregoryKlages |
17. Courts and Kids: Pursuing Educational Equity through the State Courts
Dec 15 2009, 1:00 PM EST
Courts and Kids: Pursuing Educational Equity through the State CourtsAuthor: Michael A. Rebell 208 pages, 6 x 9 © 2009 University of Chicago Press Over the past thirty-five years, federal courts have dramatically retreated from actively promoting school desegregation. In the meantime, state courts have taken up the mantle of promoting the vision of educational equity originally articulated in Brown v. Board of Education. Courts and Kids is the first detailed analysis of why the state courts have taken on this active role and how successful their efforts have been. Since 1973, litigants have challenged the constitutionality of education finance systems in forty-five states on the grounds that they deprive many poor and minority students of adequate access to a sound education. While the plaintiffs have won in the majority of these cases, the decisions are often branded “judicial activism”—a stigma that has reduced their impact. To counter the charge, Michael A. Rebell persuasively defends the courts’ authority and responsibility to pursue the goal of educational equity. He envisions their ideal role as supervisory, and in Courts and Kids he offers innovative recommendations on how the courts can collaborate with the executive and legislative branches to create a truly democratic educational system. For more info, NeoAmericanist reviewers should visit: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=8212990 Do you find this valuable? |
