New Books In Law

In From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction (University of Missouri Press, 2017) , Forrest Nabors sets out to show that congressional Republicans regarded the work of Reconstruction in the same way they regarded the work of the Founders: as regime change, from monarchy in the one case and from oligarchy in the other, to republicanism. Nabors examines the writings and speeches of Republicans in the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth Congress (1863-1869), recovering their political analysis of the antebellum South. While Reconstruction scholars have typically emphasized black citizenship as the central concern of congressional Republicans, Nabors demonstrates that they identified Southern oligarchy (tightly linked to slavery) as the problem of the age.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his new book, The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy (Harvard University Press, 2017), Steven Remy, professor of history at City University of New York, examines the Malmedy massacre which took place on December 17, 1944 and the trial that followed after the conclusion of World War II. Remy effectively demonstrates how in the decade following the trial how a network of German and American sympathizers succeeded in discrediting the trial. Remy directly looks at the accusations of torture, which the defendants and their allies alleged led to false confessions. Although these allegations were false, Remy demonstrates how amnesty advocates used them successfully to not only discredit the trial, but distorted our understanding of one of the most brutal massacres in American military history.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colleen Murphy’s new book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), argues that attaining some degree of justice is possible in nations transitioning to democratic states. There are many historical instances of nations whose citizens take action to change the nature of their regime from one of authoritarianism to democracy. Whether from France in the 1790s to Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s, the challenges facing new leaders to look to the future while accounting for the past can be daunting. Murphy argues that transitions need some degree of justice in order to be successful and she seeks to identify the key elements of just transitions. Murphy notes that a just result can take different forms, because of differences in culture, traditions, and the nature of the old regime. She further notes that transitional justice is not as clear and definitive as more familiar forms of justice, such as the retributive justice of the criminal law or the corrective

The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian Revolution (Encounter Books, 2017), written by legal scholar Stephen F. Williams, uses a biographic account of the life and career of Vasily Maklakov to explore issues of legality and rule of law in Tsarist Russia from 1905, following the promulgation of the October Manifesto, which established a legislative body for the first time since the 1600s, till the Bolshevik Revolution. Maklakov, a moderate Kadet (Constitutional Democrat) reformer and practicing defense attorney (most famous for his defense of the Jewish Menahem Beilis, sometimes considered the Russian Dreyfus), was a delegate to the Second, Third and Fourth Dumas who advocated for political compromise, the establishment of rule of law and gradual constitutional reform. He advocated for a wide range of amendments to the Tsarist legal code, especially in the realms of religious freedom, national minorities, judicial independence, citizens judicial remedies, and peasant rights. As such Maklako

In his new book, The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial (Princeton University Press 2016), Lawrence R. Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College examines the trial of John Demjanjuk. The Right Wrong Man examines Demjanjuk’s legal odyssey that began in 1975. Over the course of the next several decades Demjanjuk was tried twice, first in Israel where he was thought to be “Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka” only to be exonerated, owing to a case of mistaken identity. He was then tried in Munich for his actual crimes as a guard at the Sobibor death camp. The Right Wrong Man is a fascinating look at the law’s effort to bring closure to the horrific events of the Holocaust.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drawing on materials from archives in eight southern US states, Melissa Milewski’s Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to the Civil Rights Era (Oxford University Press, 2017) examines how African Americans utilized courts for disputes over property, personal injury, and workplace compensation, among other fields. She argues for a reexamination of African American agency through the use of the courts. In a fascinating juxtaposition, Milewski‘s work also addresses the white lawyers, juries, judges and, of course, often plaintiffs or defendants within these cases, some of whom operated out of concern, some through paternalism, and some, either overtly or not, in order to maintain white supremacy.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Claiming Turtle Mountain’s Constitution: The History, Legacy, and Future of a Tribal Nation’s Founding Documents (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Turtle Mountain Tribal Court Associate Justice and UNC-Chapel Hill American Studies Assistant ProfessorKeith Richotte, Jr., offers a critical examination of one tribal nation’s decision to adopt a constitution. In an auditorium in Belcourt, North Dakota, on a chilly October day in 1932, Robert Bruce and his fellow tribal citizens held the political fate of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in their hands. Bruce, and the others, had been asked to adopt a tribal constitution, but he was unhappy with the document, as it limited tribal governmental authority. However, white authorities told the tribal nation that the proposed constitution was a necessary step in bringing a lawsuit against the federal government over a long-standing land dispute. Bruce’s choice, and the choice of his fellow citizens, has shaped tribal gove

In her recent book, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Stephanie Hinnershitz (Cleveland State University) examines the important but overlooked contributions of Asian Americans to civil rights activism in the U.S. South. Hinnershitz takes a thematic focus across the long 20th century to show how Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and South Asians contested discrimination in land ownership, education, sexual relations and marriage, and business entrepreneurship. From “self-Orientalizing” as non-colored people to invoking their privileges as foreign nationals or refugees, the strategies and arguments that Asian Americans employed in the long and uneven struggle for equality were as varied as they were creative. Hinnershitz uses a wide-ranging source base including legal opinions, newspapers, and oral histories to narrate heartbreaking losses as well as surprising victories, such as the injunction against Klan viol

Judith Giesberg, an expert on the history of women and gender during the Civil War, is professor and director of graduate studies in the history department at Villanova University and Editor of The Journal of the Civil War Era. Two of her previous books include Civil War Sisterhood: The United States Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition (2000), which is about the understudied roles of women in relief efforts during the war, and “Army at Home”: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front (2009), which concerns the experiences of working class women in the north. She is also the principal editor of Emilie Davis’s Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia (2014). Her latest book, and the subject of our discussion, is Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of an American Morality (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Giesberg argues that the Civil War is the turning point for the influential rise of postwar anti-pornog

The recent spate of revelations about high-profile sexual predators who have been harassing and assaulting women, sometimes for decades, along with the #MeToo campaign, have drawn renewed attention to the pernicious problem of discrimination in the workplace. We speak about these issues with Suja Thomas, whose new book, with co-author Sandra Sperino, shows us how (male) judges have invented an entire body of jurisprudence to justify dismissing sexual harassment cases before they can even get to juries. Join us for this timely and provocative discussion about Unequal: How American Courts Undermine Discrimination Law (Oxford University Press, 2017). Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queen

In her new book, Asylum by Boat: Origins of Australia’s Refugee Policy (New South Press, 2017), Claire Higgins, a Senior Research Associate at the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales Law School, explores the origins of Australia’s refugee policy. She investigates the Australian government’s response to the arrival by boat, in the late 1970s, of thousands of Vietnamese refugees. Unlike today, however, while boat turn-backs and detention were considered, these policies were rejected.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seana Shiffrin is Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at UCLA. She defends the “thinker theory” of freedom of speech, which holds that a central reason for upholding a moral and legal system of free speech is that such a system is necessary for free thought and reflective action. This view is articulated in her book, Speech Matters:On Lying, Morality, and the Law (Princeton 2014). 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 this podcast I talk with James Forman Jr. about his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). Mass incarceration and the carceral state are hot topics in law and criminology, as the American criminal justice system faces mounting criticism for imprisoning disproportionate numbers of minorities, especially blacks. But as James Forman Jr. lays out in this book, the war on crime that saw its origins in the 1970s found a great deal of support among African American citizens, community leaders, and politicians across America’s urban landscape. Locking Up Our Own tries to understand this phenomenon. James Forman Jr. is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of criminal procedure and criminal law policy, constitutional law, juvenile justice, and education law and policy. His particular interests are schools, prisons, and police, and those institutions race and class dimensions.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m

Within a few generations after the death of Muhammad Muslims developed complex legal and theological traditions that shaped the boundaries of what was deemed Islamic. In Coercion and Responsibility in Islam: A Study in Ethics and Law (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mairaj Syed, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of California, Davis, examines how the constraints of interpretive traditions were tested under questions of coercion. He demonstrates that very often theological and legal reasoning moves beyond our expectations and interpretive conclusions are contradictory within seemingly uniform schools. He shows how members of the Mu’tazila and Ashari schools of theology determine the legal and moral responsibility of individuals who have been pressured to say or do something under coercive conditions. He also explores Hanafi and Shafi’i legal definitions of coercion and the various types of reasoning principles for drawing what is licit. These conundrums are hashed out through h

In this podcast I talk with Tracy A. Thomas about her book Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law (New York University Press, 2016). Professor Thomas is the John F. Seiberling Chair of Constitutional Law and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at the University of Akron School of Law. She is also editor of the Gender and the Law Prof Blog.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In New Treaty, New Tradition: Reconciling New Zealand and Maori Law (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), Carwyn Jones, Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, explores Māori law and legal traditions with an eye on how they ebb and flow with changing social, environmental, and political circumstances in New Zealand. From the Treaty of Waitangi to recent land claim resolutions, Jones argues that genuine reconciliation needs to take into account Indigenous traditions in the settlement process.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 19th century New York socialites enjoyed a newfound celebrity status thanks to their conspicuous wealth and the attention of the rapidly expanding newspaper industry. Many of these women sought to use their status to promote causes important to them, most notably the suffrage movement. Johanna Neuman‘s Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York University Press, 2017) describes the role they played in the suffrage campaigns in fin-de-siecle America, one that saw social rank exploited to advance a radical cause. As Neuman explains, their efforts in support of the enfranchisement of women were the most dramatic example of their growing degree of involvement in public affairs, as elite women worked to advance a variety of causes dear to them. Coming at a time when the suffrage movement was becalmed by setbacks and disagreements over goals, their participation gave the effort much-needed resources and energy. By organizing rallies, raising fu

The relationship between religion and economic activity has attracted generations of scholars working in myriad settings. In recent years, many have turned to questions of how Islamic ideas are generative of economic activity, to Islamic finance and capital, and to the relationship between contemporary Islam and capitalism more broadly. In Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Patricia Sloane-White builds on this work by asking “not only how the spread of global capitalism transforms the lives of Muslims… but how capitalism empowers the spread of Islam.” Drawing from interviews and ethnographic fieldwork over a seven-year period, and a wealth of knowledge from over two decades of research in Malaysia, Sloane-White argues that the “sharia space” of the today’s corporate Islamic workplace is a third domain between the public and the private in which employees must submit to the guidance of their professional and personal lives by

In her inspiring new book, Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mengia Hong Tschalaer charts the strivings and creative struggles of Muslim women’s organizations in contemporary North India for gender justice. Carefully historicized and brimming with nuanced analysis, this book shows the discursive and political strategies through which overlapping and at times competing women’s organizations navigate a contested and complicated public sphere, as they seek to curate a gender emancipatory understanding of Islam. The major strength of this book is the way it presents a vivid picture of the quest for gender justice on the ground, leavened by such critical processes as the composition of gender-just nikah-namas. This important book will engage the interests of a range of scholars and courses on Islam, gender, South Asia, and Islamic law and society. SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marsh

This week on the podcast, Daniel Bennet joins us to talk about his new book, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Bennett is assistant professor of political science at John Brown University. From Hobby Lobby to Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court has ruled on controversial social policy issues. At the center of many of these cases are a set of legal organizations, what Bennett calls Christian Conservative Legal Organizations or CCLOs, including the American Center for Law and Justice and Alliance Defending Freedom. In his book, he explains how CCLOs advocate for issues central to Christian conservatives, highlights the influence of religious liberty on the CLM’s broader agenda, and reveals how the Christian Right has become accustomed to the courts as a field of battle in today’s culture wars. Bennett studies these groups as a type of interest group and legal advocacy the primary strategy to fulfill their interests.Lear