Featured Acquisitions

Good Faith in the Jurisprudence of the WTO: The Protection of Legitimate Expectations, Good Faith Interpretation and Fair Dispute Settlement by Marion Panizzon
Oxford ; Portland, Or. : Hart, 2006
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What does the concept of good faith express? This book is the first to discuss what good faith means in international trade law. As a reference guide for scholars and practitioners it analyses the case law of WTO dispute settlement practice.

The book describes how, why and when the concept of good faith links the WTO Agreements with other public international norms. The concept of good faith appears frequently in treaties and customary rules, but is most often considered a general principle of law. WTO law uses the corrolaries of pacta sunt servanda, the prohibition of abus de droit and the protection of legitimate expectation alongside the principle of good faith.

Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made by Jim Newton
New York : Riverhead Books, 2006
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Earl Warren played a key role in nearly every defining political moment in American history in the latter half of the twentieth century. He began as an aggressive county prosecutor offended by graft and vice, then rose through California politics. As attorney general and governor, he led the country's fastest-growing state during a time of enormous change, his support for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II one of the few blemishes on an otherwise progressive record. From his historic governorship to his pivotal years as chief justice to his role as chairman of the commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Warren traversed the Depression and the Cold War, the struggles to defend America against foreign enemies, and the emergence of a muscular commitment to individual liberty.

As chief justice from 1953 to 1969, Warren refashioned the place of the Supreme Court in American life, overseeing cases that desegregated schools (Brown v. Board of Education), established a constitutional right of privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), outlawed prayer in public schools (Engel v. Vitale), created a right to counsel in state trials (Gideon v. Wainwright), codified voting rights (Baker v. Carr), and revolutionized police procedure (Miranda v. Arizona). Through those cases, Warren became a target for conservative ideologues, but he also carved a place for himself as one of the Court's most respected justices and reconstructed American society into the institutions and values it upholds today.

Jim Newton brings readers the first truly complete consideration of Earl Warren, taking advantage of unprecedented access to governmental, academic, and private documents pertaining to Warren's life, as well as the extensive cooperation of Warren's living children and associates. Newton illuminates both the public and the private Warren, the father of six whose own father was murdered, the stoic leader of the Masons who was touched by the difficulties of children, the sturdy yet prickly man. The result is a monumental biography of a complicated and principled figure that will become a seminal work of twentieth-century American history.

Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment: A History of Search & Seizure, 1789-1868 by Andrew E. Taslitz
New York : New York University Press, c2006
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The modern law of search and seizure permits warrantless searches that ruin the citizenry's trust in law enforcement, harms minorities, and embraces an individualistic notion of the rights that it protects, ignoring essential roles that properly-conceived protections of privacy, mobility, and property play in uniting Americans. Many believe the Fourth Amendment is a poor bulwark against state tyrannies, particularly during the War on Terror.

Historical amnesia has obscured the Fourth Amendment's positive aspects, and Andrew E. Taslitz rescues its forgotten history in Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment, which includes two novel arguments. First, that the original Fourth Amendment of 1791â€”born in political struggle between the English and the colonistsâ€”served important political functions, particularly in regulating expressive political violence. Second, that the Amendment's meaning changed when the Fourteenth Amendment was created to give teeth to outlawing slavery, and its focus shifted from primary emphasis on individualistic privacy notions as central to a white democratic polis to enhanced protections for group privacy, individual mobility, and property in a multi-racial republic.

With an understanding of the historical roots of the Fourth Amendment, suggests Taslitz, we can upend negative assumptions of modern search and seizure law, and create new institutional approaches that give political voice to citizens and safeguard against unnecessary humiliation and dehumanization at the hands of the police.

Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy by Joan Burbick
New York, N.Y. : New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2006
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In this first-of-its-kind archaeology of Americaâ€™s gun culture, progressive cultural historian, critic, and gun owner Joan Burbick takes us on a journey from gun shows to NRA conventions, using firsthand observations and interviews with a wide range of gun owners and gun advocates as a jumping-off point for a fascinating exploration of the rise of the gunâ€”from Buffalo Bill and the mythology of the frontier to Ronald Reagan, the first sitting president to address the NRA.

Gun Show Nation examines the lethal politics of gun ownership, uncovering a powerful, conservative political ideology that places the individual citizen armed with a gun at the bulwark of our democracy.

Talking directly to gun lobby strategists, Burbick reveals the pro-gun movementâ€™s deliberate effort to co-opt the language of rights from the civil rights movement to appeal to a disaffected white electorate, crafting a powerful conservative response to liberal efforts to achieve social, economic, and racial justice in the 1960s.

An illuminating examination of how guns have changed and challenged our beliefs in democracy, Gun Show Nation shows us what America looks like from the floor of a gun show.

Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How the People Can Correct It) by Sanford Levinson
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006
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The Constitution is one of the most revered documents in American politics. Yet this is a document that regularly places in the White House candidates who did not in fact get a majority of the popular vote. It gives Wyoming the same number of votes as California, which has seventy times the population of the Cowboy State. And it offers the President the power to overrule both houses of Congress on legislation he disagrees with on political grounds. Is this a recipe for a republic that reflects the needs and wants of today's Americans?

Taking a hard look at our much-venerated Constitution, Sanford Levinson here argues that too many of its provisions promote either unjust or ineffective government. Under the existing blueprint, we can neither rid ourselves of incompetent presidents nor assure continuity of government following catastrophic attacks. Less important, perhaps, but certainly problematic, is the appointment of Supreme Court judges for life. Adding insult to injury, the United States Constitution is the most difficult to amend or update of any constitution currently existing in the world today.

Democratic debate leaves few stones unturned, but we tend to take our basic constitutional structures for granted. Levinson boldly challenges the American people to undertake a long overdue public discussion on how they might best reform this most hallowed document and construct a constitution adequate to our democratic values.

Soldier Slaves: Abandoned by the White House, Courts and Congress by James W. Parkinson and Lee Benson
Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press, c2006
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Decades-old war abuses are given up-to-the-minute relevance in this book about World War II American soldiers seeking restitution from Japanese companies that used them as slave laborers during the war. Their tale is told by the lawyer representing them, James Parkinson. With the help of a well-known journalist, Parkinson ties the present to the past by interspersing horrific war narrative with modern-day dramas played out in courtrooms and congressional hearing rooms as lawyers, judges, senators, and congressmen debate the merits of a case now known as the JPOW case. In the process, wartime brutality confronts peacetime prosperity, and economics, not military might, determines the outcome.

Using the personal history of one of the veterans he represents--a munitions mechanic from the Army Air Corps named Harold Poole--to illustrate what happened, Parkinson traces a path that began with the infamous Bataan Death March of April 1942 and three and a half years of forced labor, followed by years of silence forced on the veterans by their own government and lingering medical and emotional problems. Readers will be drawn into the case as the extent of the abuse meted out by the Japanese is revealed and the POWs' effort to be compensated unfolds. While Parkinson agrees that there might be legitimate debate over whether the soldiers are entitled to back wages from the Japanese corporations who benefited from their labor, he is adamant that their story be more widely known. With the support of influential senators like Orrin Hatch and Joseph Biden and the publication of this book, he is reaching thousands of Americans.

Religion and the Constitution: Free Exercise and Fairness by Kent Greenawalt
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2006
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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 members of religious sects be able to use peyote in worship? Should pacifists be forced to take part in military service when there is a draft, and should this depend on whether they are religious? How can the law address the refusal of parents to provide medical care to their children--or the refusal of doctors to perform abortions? 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 the first of two major volumes on the intersection of constitutional and religious issues in the United States, Kent Greenawalt focuses on one of the Constitution's main clauses concerning religion: the Free Exercise Clause. Beginning with a brief account of the clause's origin and a short history of the Supreme Court's leading decisions about freedom of religion, he devotes a chapter to each of the main controversies encountered by judges and lawmakers. Sensitive to each case's context in judging whether special treatment of religious claims is justified, Greenawalt argues that the state's treatment of religion cannot be reduced to a single formula.

Calling throughout for religion to be taken more seriously as a force for meaning in 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.

Same Sex Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines by Andrew Koppelman
New Haven : Yale University Press, c2006
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Must a state in which gay marriage is not legal recognize such a marriage performed in another state? The Constitution does not require recognition in all cases, but it does forbid states from nullifying family relationships based in other states, or from making themselves havens for people who are trying to escape obligations to their spouses and children. In this book, Andrew Koppelman offers workable legal solutions to the problems that arise when gay couples cross state borders. Drawing on historical precedents in which states held radically different moral views about marriage (for example, between kin, very young individuals, and interracial couples), Koppelman shows which state laws should govern in specific situations as gay couples travel or move from place to place.

Americans are profoundly divided over same-sex marriage, and now that gay civil unions and marriages are legal in some states, the issue has become increasingly urgent. Koppelman offers a sensible approach that will appeal to the best instincts of both sides.

America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism edited by Gary L. McDowell and Johnathan O'Neill
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
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America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism shows in detail the Enlightenment origin of the U.S. Constitution. It provides vivid analysis of how the Enlightenment's basic ideas were reformulated in the context of America. It is particularly successful in bringing out the competing strains of Enlightenment thought and of articulating crucial Enlightenment concepts of public opinion, equality, public reason, legislature and judiciary, revolution, law, and the people in their American context. The collection is timely given contemporary debates between republicans and liberals about constitutional interpretation which are addressed throughout.

Institutional Games and the U.S. Supreme Court edited by James R. Rogers, Roy B. Flemming and Jon R. Bond
Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2006
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Over the course of the past decade, the behavioral analysis of decisions by the Supreme Court has turned to game theory to gain new insights into this important institution in American politics. Game theory highlights the role of strategic interactions between the Court and other institutions in the decisions the Court makes as well as in the relations among the justices as they make their decisions. Rather than assume that the justicesí votes reveal their sincere preferences, students of law and politics have come to examine how the strategic concerns of the justices lead to ìsophisticatedî behavior as they seek to maximize achievement of their goals when faced with constraints on their ability to do so. In Institutional Games and the U.S. Supreme Court, James Rogers, Roy Flemming, and Jon Bond gather various essays that use game theory to explain the Supreme Court's interactions with Congress, the states, and the lower courts. Offering new ways of understanding the complexity and consequences of these interactions, the volume joins a growing body of work that considers these influential interactions among various branches of the U.S. government.

Economic Damages in Intellectual Property: A Hands-On Guide to Litigation edited by Daniel Slottje
Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley, c2006
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Determining the worth of intellectual property (IP) is a complicated task. An IP litigator needs to conclude the monetary damage occurring as a result of harm done to an inventor's or a company's reputation as well as the economic damage caused by compromise of an idea or invention due to its unauthorized usage.

Edited by litigation expert Daniel Slottje, Economic Damages in Intellectual Property: A Hands-On Guide to Litigation sheds light on how to quantify damages in IP litigation matters with revealing contributions from IP professionals, attorneys, economics professors, certified public accountants and other damages professionals.

This essential resource is thoroughly researched with timely insight on quantification of damages; evaluation of damage claims in trade secrets; patent, copyright, and trademark cases; economic damages; and much more.

With IP litigation becoming more and more prevalent today, the demand increases for IP professionals and attorneys to understand how economists, accountants, and financial analysts quantify damages in IP matters. Economic Damages in Intellectual Property: A Hands-On Guide to Litigation demystifies this process and provides you with an "at-your-fingertips" resource brimming with current, relevant information in the field of intellectual property litigation.

Getting Away With Murder on the Texas Frontier: Notorious Killings & Celebrated Trials by Bill Neal
Lubbock, Tex. : Texas Tech University Press, c2006
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In 1916, in the tiny West Texas town of Benjamin, a gunman slips into a courtroom and murders the defendant. In 1912, in Fort Worth’s finest hotel, a young man kills an old gentleman in cold blood in the middle of the lobby. The verdict in both of these murderers’ trials? Not guilty. The explanation? “This is Texas.”

Laws passed by politicians in far-off Austin meant little to Westerners living on the Texas frontier. Sagebrush justice relied less on written statutes than on common sense, grass-roots fairness, and vague notions of folk law drawn from the Old South’s Victorian code of chivalry and honor. In this very different time and place, a murderer might go free based on the following reasoning: “The son-of-a-gun is guilty all right, but we must turn him loose. He owes me for a pair of boots, and if we convict him I’ll never get my money.” Inexperienced prosecutors, a lack of modern crime-detection methods, unavailability of witnesses, an acceptance of violence in society, and a laissez-faire attitude toward trial tactics all conspired to make guilty verdicts a rarity.

Bill Neal spent over four decades frequenting county courthouses in West Texas and hearing tales of sensational crimes and celebrated trials of bygone years. Most of the stories gathered here have never before been published, and each is supported by a wealth of primary research.

International Law and Indigenous Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Plant Biodiversity, and Traditional Medicine by Chidi Oguamanam
Toronto : University of Toronto Press, c2006
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In the past, efforts to reconcile the western concept of intellectual property with indigenous knowledge have not taken into account the schism between this knowledge and western scientific forms. As knowledge assumes increasing importance in the quest for self-determination, cultural survival, and economic empowerment, the gulf between indigenous and western scientific knowledge assumes a new meaning. In International Law and Indigenous Knowledge, Chidi Oguamanam argues that the crisis of legitimacy indigenous knowledge poses for the intellectual property system compels a re-thinking of the concept of intellectual property itself.

Drawing on interdisciplinary research,International Law and Indigenous Knowledge takes as its framework the legal doctrinal methodology, focusing on international legal and policy developments regarding the protection of indigenous knowledge. Using traditional medicine and biodiversity to illustrate his thesis, Oguamanam argues that recent international legal and policy developments in the direction of a cross-cultural approach to intellectual property rights are desirable trends. Such developments come closer to addressing the rift between western and non-western knowledge systems as well as the crisis of legitimacy in the conventional intellectual property system.

Proving the Unprovable: The Role of Law, Science, and Speculation in Adjudicating Culpability and Dangerousness by Christopher Slobogin
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007
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It is hard enough in many cases simply figuring out whether a person has committed an antisocial act. It is harder still to determine the extent to which he or she intended the act, and why he or she committed it. And most difficult of all is divining whether a person will harm again. The law has increasingly turned to mental health professionals to help address these issues, particularly the last two. Because of their familiarity with and study of human behavior, psychiatrists, psychologists and other clinicians are thought to possess special expertise in assessing culpability and dangerousness. Members of these groups routinely furnish the courts with evaluations of insanity and other mental state at the time of the offense, and even more frequently proffer predictions about future behavior. Both culpability and dangerousness are exceedingly difficult to gauge; even mental health professionals well-versed in the behavioral sciences cannot claim a high degree of reliability in their efforts to address these issues. Though the current trend in evidence law is to demand a rigorous demonstration of scientific validity from expert witnesses, especially when those experts are mental health professionals proffered by the defense, this book argues that this is a mistake. Such a position undermines the fairness of the process and could quite possibly even diminish its reliability, given the defense's constitutional entitlement to tell its story and the inscrutability of past and future mental states. At the same time, Professor Slobogin proposes a number of ways the courts can ensure that experts provide the best possible information about ultimately unknowable past mental states and future behavior.