New Books In Law

Alex Vitale is a Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. He has written for a number of popular publications including the New York Times, New York Daily News, USA Today, and the Nation. His newest book The End of Policing is out now from Verso press. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday spent ten years interviewing criminal defense attorneys throughout China in order to compile the evidence on the professional lives of criminal defense attorneys in the one-party authoritarian state that is modern China. They present what they found in Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work (Cambridge University Press, 2016) In this interview with co-author Sida Liu, we discuss the extreme difficulties faced in daily work by attorneys. From the Communists victory in 1949 until 1979, there was essentially no criminal procedural law in China. In 1979 the Deng Xiaoping regime sought stability and order and created the first criminal procedural law. Since then the law has been revised several times, giving more formal rights to defendants and their counsel, while simultaneously allowing for state harassment of defense attorneys should they too zealously do their jobs. Liu and Halliday reveal the methods of state officials to hinder the pursuit of justice for cr

In 2013, when the Russian State Duma passed a law banning the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors, some rushed to boycott Russian vodka. In Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (Bloomsbury, 2017), Dan Healey provides historical context for the law and cautions against the easy application of recent changes elsewhere. The Russian embrace of LGBT rights will be the result of cultural evolution from within society and not some off-the-peg downloading of a European formula, Healey writes. Decriminalized after the revolution, sodomy was re-banned under Stalin in 1933-4 and remained illegal until 1993. In a series of case studies, Healey examines same-sex relationships in the gulag, provincial criminal investigations from the 1950s, the diary of popular singer Vadim Kozin (who was sent to Magadan in the 1940s under the anti-sodomy law), gay cruising in Brezhnev-era Moscow, and pornography in the 1990s. What emerges is a complex portrait of gay and lesbian consciousness that belies Putin-

Taisu Zhang ties together cultural history, legal history, and institutional economics in The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Pre-Industrial China and England (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and offers a novel argument as to why Chinese and English pre-industrial economic development went down different paths. Late Imperial and Republican China (1860-1949) was dominated of Neo-Confucian social hierarchies, under which advanced age and generational seniority were the primary determinants of sociopolitical status. This allowed many poor but senior individuals to possess status and political authority highly disproportionate to their wealth. In comparison, in the more individualistic early modern England (1500-1700) landed wealth was a fairly strict prerequisite for high status and authority. This essentially excluded low-income individuals from secular positions of prestige and leadership. Zhang argues that this social difference had major consequences for property institutions an

As debates on globalization rage in the twenty-first century, many countries and the people within them have been challenged socially, economically, and legally. At the same time, our world is now more bordered geopolitically than ever before. What effect do these phenomena have on one of the most significant social units: the family? In her new book, Legalized Families in the Era of Bordered Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Daphna Hacker argues that the family is entering an important period of transition and instability in our bordered, global society. Families have been a legalized social category, but now competing legal doctrines and interpretations complicate the existence of this social category given the movement of people in a globalized society. How does secular law and family law impact families in multicultural countries with inhabitants from around the globe? Are pre-nups a good idea or a bad one? How does globalization influence reproduction in the family unit? How are current i

Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power (Princeton University Press, 2016) is an important analysis of both congressional and presidential power, and how these two branches interact, especially within polarized political periods. Reflecting the way this book examines both of these branches of government and the exercise of their respective powers, Investigating the President garnered two impressive book awards, from the Presidents and Executive Politics Section (Richard E. Neustadt Book Award) and from the Legislative Studies Section (Richard F. Fenno Book Award) of the American Political Science Association. Douglas Kriner and Eric Schickler explore the precedent for congressional investigations into the conduct of and within the Executive branch, while they also amassed over 100 years of data surrounding congressional investigations to discern the impact of these kinds of investigations, even when they do not result, necessarily, in articles of impeachment or indictments of p

In Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946 (Yale University Press, 2016), Katrina Jagodinsky recovers the stories too often presumed lost in the silences of colonial archives: those of Indigenous women operating within systems of American law. In doing so, she argues that Indigenous women in the American southwest and Pacific northwest used Indigenous epistemologies, legal codes, and community connections, to navigate American settler colonial legal regimes and in some cases emerging victorious. Jagodinsky, an Associate Professor in the history department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, uses unique methodologies combining traditional legal history, poetry, and non-written knowledge networks to recount the histories of six women from the border regions of what is today Arizona/Sonora and Washington/British Columbia. Legal Codes and Talking Trees shows how even under ardently white supremacist power structures and within se

Richard D. Brown’s new book Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2017) offers a deft examination of the idea enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal” and how it worked out practically in the young republic based on a vision of a new democratic order in which superior merit would mark the difference among citizens. From the beginning the nation struggled with the ideal and the reality of social inequality based on religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, age and social class. Americans debated the vision of equality as reserved before God alone, equality before the law and equality of opportunity. Brown demonstrates how these debates played out in criminal trials and punishment, divorce cases, and among immigrants and African Americans. Seeking to distinguish themselves from the inherited class structure of England, Americans retained a feature that would make equality difficult to

Leon Wiener Dow’s most recent work The Going: A Meditation on Jewish Law (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) offers readers intimate, informative, and at times provocative reflections on halakha, or Jewish law. The author makes nuanced philosophical and theological observations on the ideas and actions that define a halakhic life, and grounds his ideas with rich personal anecdotes that are woven throughout. Wiener Dow’s lively, captivating style of writing draws the reader into his powerful discussion of the roles that community, language, tradition, and evolution play in the halakhic journey. Leon Wiener Dow received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bar-Ilan University and rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Professor David Hartman. He is currently a research fellow and faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. Robin Buller is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Typically the Jim Crow Era of segregation is understood as beginning directly after Reconstruction and going into the mid-twentieth century with the dual climaxes of the Brown vs. Board Supreme Court decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott Movement in Montgomery, Alabama. What this narrative suggests is that Jim Crow was a southern phenomenon. Such a view is unfortunately ill conceived. Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), written by Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Associate Professor of History at Smith College, reshapes contemporary memory of when and why Jim Crow laws were enacted. In Colored Travelers, Dr. Pryor details how while antebellum-era Northern black abolitionists simultaneously fought to abolish slavery, they also pushed the limits of what citizenship meant by attempting to freely travel within it. They did this by challenging Northern Jim Crow laws set to undermine the mobility of black people in general, but th

John Corvino is Professor of Philosophy at the Wayne State University in Detroit. His academic work focuses on topics in moral, social, and legal philosophy surrounding sexuality, gender, marriage, religious conviction, and discrimination. But John is also an active public philosopher who frequently participates in public debates over these topics. He produces and appears in a popular YouTube series of short videos devoted to the philosophical discussion of controversial topics. He is the author of What’s Wrong with Homosexuality?, co-author (with Maggie Ghallagher) of Debating Same Sex Marriage, and.co-author (with Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis) of Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, all published with Oxford University Press. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

On May 23, 1957, US Army Sergeant Robert Reynolds was acquitted of murdering Chinese officer Liu Ziran in Taiwan. Reynolds did not deny shooting Liu but claimed self-defense and, like all members of US military assistance and advisory groups, was protected under diplomatic immunity. Reynolds’s acquittal sparked a series of riots across Taiwan that became an international crisis for the Eisenhower administration and raised serious questions about the legal status of US military forces positioned around the world. In American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy (Kentucky University Press, 2017), Stephen G. Craft provides a multi-archival study of the causes and consequences of the Reynolds trial and the ensuing protests. After more than a century of what they perceived as unfair treaties imposed by Western nations, the Taiwanese regarded the special legal status of resident American personnel with extreme distrust. While Eisenhower and his advisers considered Taiwan to be a vital

Jon Olafsson is Professor in the n the department of Comparative and Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. His research is focused on democracy, political participation, dissent, reconciliation, and social criticism. Jon has written extensively about the efforts in Iceland – from roughly 2010 to 2013 - to revise the nation’s constitution. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Seth Barrett Tillman, an instructor in the Department of Law at Maynooth University in Ireland, is one of the few scholars to have researched and written about the history of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Prof. Tillman has also submitted amicus briefs (friend of the court briefs) in three recent federal cases regarding whether President Trump has violated the clause. In this podcast interview, Prof. Tillman discusses the historical origins of the clause, its original understanding during the early republic, and its possible application to the Trump presidency. In short, Prof. Tillman contends that the clause does not apply to elective offices; rather, it only applies to appointed offices in the federal government. Although conceding that there are good reasons to want such a clause to apply to the President, he contends that it is simply not a proper understanding of the clause to apply it to President Trump. Here’s some reading: Prof. Tillman and Josh Blackman’s New York

The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World (Brookings Institution Press, 2017) is an important and in depth study of American interaction with the intricate concept of Sovereignty, from the Founding Fathers to Donald Trump. Stewart Patrick delineates for the reader the fraught concept of sovereignty, showing how it has changed in both meaning and importance for Americans since the foundation of the United States. Going back to John Locke and going forward to John Bolton, Patrick demonstrates that sovereignty is not a static or monolithic concept or idea, but one which is both flexible and enduring. Stewart Patrick is the James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Charles Coutinho holds a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to t

Sovereignty is a key concept in Native American and Indigenous Studies, but its also a term that is understood in multiple ways. Working across the boundaries of legal and literary theory, David J. Carlson‘s Imagining Sovereignty: Self-Determination in American Indian Law and Literature (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016) examines the works, both creative and theoretical, of many Native intellectuals who have considered sovereignty in the past century. Sovereignty emerges in this study as a necessarily imprecise concept that mediates between indigenous communities and also with the settler colonial government of the United States. Carlson discusses thinkers who have previously been seen as opposed, showing ways that their disparate projects can in fact be seen via the idea of self-determination as in many ways complementary. James Mackay is Assistant Professor of British and American Studies at European University Cyprus, and is one of the founding editors of the open access Indigenous Studies journal

The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information (Stanford University Press, 2017) dispels the myth that transparency of information will result in a perfect government. Dr. Mark Fenster discusses the motivations of transparency movements and justifications for state secrecy. Through the lens of communications theory, Fenster raises questions about the utility of disclosed information and how it may or may not be deemed valuable by the public. Fenster also examines the state’s ability to keep secrets and what, if any, outcomes result from information disclosure. In conclusion, Fenster asserts transparency, on its own, will not fix the state, but focused efforts on good governance just might. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sandy Goldberg is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He specializes in epistemology and philosophy of language, with particular interest in the social aspects of knowledge and speech; these foci converge in his ongoing work on testimony. Sandy has written several books including Relying on Others (Oxford 2010) and, more recently, Assertion (Oxford 2015); his forthcoming book is titled To the Best of Our Knowledge, and is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the ‘worst of the worst.’ The 1976 decision ushered in the ‘modern’ period of the US death penalty, resulting in the execution of over 1,400 inmates, with over 8,000 individuals currently sentenced to die. Each chapter of Frank Baumgartner‘s, Marty Davidson’s, Kaneesha Johnson’s, Arvind Krishnamurthy’s, and Colin Wilson’s Deadly Justice : A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty (Oxford University Press, 2017) addresses a specific factual question and provides statistical evidence about how the modern death penalty has functioned. Baumgartner is Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina. Davidson, Johnson, Krishnamurthy, and Wilson were all students at North Carolina during the research for the book.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho

If any place (outside contemporary North Korea) can be called “Totalitarian,” it would be Stalinist Russia. Under the “Greatest Genius of All Time,” Soviet “citizens” enjoyed no free speech, no free press, and no free assembly. The one-party Bolshevik dictatorship deprived them of their voices, their property, their livelihoods, their liberty, and often their lives all in the name of building a kind of society—Communism—that existed only in the minds of Party theoreticians. To me at least, it seems odd that such a place would even have something called a “constitution.” What use is a constitution when there is no real law? But the USSR had several constitutions. In her excellent book Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution (Routledge, 2017), Samantha Lomb describes how one of them was received in the provinces and discussed by Party officials and the populous. She finds some remarka