Featured Acquisitions - Alexander Campbell King Law Library

Featured Acquisitions - March 2008

See also: Recent Acquisitions in Selected Subject Areas


		The International Judge: An Introduction to the Men and Women Who Decide the World's Cases by Daniel Terris, Cesare P.R. Romano, and Leigh Swigart Waltham, Mass. : Brandeis University Press ; Hanover, NH : Published by University Press of New England, c2007 K2146 .T47 2007 Balcony Over the last century, international law, once reserved for arcane matters of diplomacy and trade, has come to encompass a broad range of human experience and activity. In the wake of major historical developments, the nations of the world have created a new set of legal institutions designed to resolve disputes between global actors, settle conflicts that might otherwise play out on the battlefield, and offer the promise of justice to those who cannot find it within their own countries. The success of these institutions rests ultimately on the shoulders of just over two hundred men and women who serve in a role unheard-of less than a hundred years ago: the international judge. Based on interviews with over thirty international judges, this volume is the first comprehensive portrait of the men and women in this new global profession. It begins with an overview of international courts and a profile of international judges as a group. The authors examine closely the working environments of international judges in courts around the world, highlighting the challenge of carrying out work in multiple languages, in the context of intricate bureaucratic hierarchies, and with a necessary interdependence between judges and court administrations. Arguing that international judges have to balance their responsibilities as interpreters of the law and as global professionals, the authors discuss the challenges of working within the fluid settings of international courts. Profiles of five individual judges provide insight into the experience and dilemmas of the men and women on the international bench.
		Introduction to Middle Eastern Law by Chibli Mallat Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007 KMC79 .M35 2007 Annex 1st Floor This book provides an introduction to the laws of the Middle East, defining the contours of a field of study that deserves to be called 'Middle Eastern law'. It introduces Middle Eastern law as a reflection of legal styles, many of which are shared by Islamic law and the laws of Christian and Jewish Near Eastern communities. It offers a detailed survey of the foundations of Middle Eastern law, using court archives and an array of legal sources from the earliest records of Hammurabi to the massive compendia of law in the Islamic classical age through to the latest decisions of Middle Eastern high courts. It focuses on the way legislators and courts conceive of law and apply it in the Middle East. It also builds on the author's extensive legal practice, with the aim of introducing the Middle Eastern law's main sources and concepts in a manner accessible to non-specialist legal scholars and practitioners alike.
		Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities that Could Make or Break Your Business by Paul Goldstein New York : Portfolio, 2007 KF2979 .G64 2007 Balcony The world of intellectual property has always been a roller coaster, but the ups and downs are now steeper than ever. Creators of IP - inventors, writers, artists, software engineers, and the companies that employ them - need to protect themselves from those who think nothing of stealing their hard work in the name of "free culture." At the same time, legitimate users need to know how to protect themselves from overzealous IP owners. With the rules constantly changing, billions of dollars are at stake, as are the fates of publishers, consumer goods producers, drug companies, even a single employee who takes his or her experience to a new job. Intellectual Property explains how companies can manage each area of IP - patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets - in the face of evolving laws and rapidly changing markets. This is the one book that every non-lawyer in business needs to survive and win in the intellectual property arena.
		The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial by James Q. Whitman New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, c2008 KJC9601 .W45 2008 Annex 3rd Floor To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." But what is reasonable doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the original purpose of "reasonable doubt." It was not originally a legal rule at all, he shows, but a theological one. The rule as we understand it today is intended to protect the accused. But Whitman traces its history back through centuries of Christian theology and common-law history to reveal that the original concern was to protect the souls of jurors. In Christian tradition, a person who experienced doubt yet convicted an innocent defendant was guilty of a mortal sin. Jurors fearful for their own souls were reassured that they were safe, as long as their doubts were not "reasonable." Today, the old rule of reasonable doubt survives, but it has been turned to different purposes. The result is confusion for jurors, and a serious moral challenge for our system of justice.
		Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance: The Diary of David J. Mays, 1954-1959 edited by James R. Sweeney Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, c2008 KF373.M393 A3 2008 Balcony These private writings by a prominent white southern lawyer offer insight into his states embrace of massive white resistance following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. David J. Mays of Richmond, Virginia, was a highly regarded attorney, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, and a member of his city's political and social elite. He was also a diarist for most of his adult life. This volume comprises diary excerpts from the years 1954 to 1959. For much of this time Mays was counsel to the commission, chaired by State Senator Garland Gray, that was charged with formulating Virginia's response to federal mandates concerning the integration of public schools. Later, Mays was involved in litigation triggered by that response.
		Censoring the Word by Julian Petley Oxford : New York : Seagull Books, c2007 K3254 .P48 2007 Balcony The aftershocks of 9/11 and the ubiquitous 'war on terror' have given new license to censors of all stripes; 'national security' is once again invoked to justify the clipping of the coinage of civil liberties, while the rise of various forms of religious extremism is inhibiting some people's willingness to speak their minds. Censorship has not only not gone away, it is taking on new forms. Before we can understand the means and motives of censorship, we must first know what free expression is and how it has come to constitute one of our most fundamental rights. What are the 'classic' arguments for freedom of expression? Are these arguments still valid today? Was freedom of expression ever claimed as an absolute right? Is the state still an agent of censorship? Or has its place been taken by vast, unaccountable corporate interests? These are just a few of the questions raised in this essay at the beginning of a new century and, possibly, a new dispensation governing our right freely to express our opinions.
		Who Owns Knowledge?: Knowledge and the Law edited by Nico Stehr and Bernd Weiler New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Publishers, c2008 K487.S3 W46 2008 Balcony Who Owns Knowledge? explores the emerging linkages between the extension of knowledge and the law. It anticipates that the legal system will not only be called upon to adjudicate in matters of creative minds, but will be expected to do so to an ever increasing degree. Who Owns Knowledge? will be of interest to those interested in the subjects of intellectual property, the history and development of modern legal and economic systems and their entanglements, and how judicial systems make choices between the legal and economic systems and, especially, between the public and private good and their often opposing interests.
		That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity by James Dawes Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2007 HV6322.7 .D39 2007 Sohn Library That the World May Know tells the story of the successes and failures of the modern human rights movement. Drawing on firsthand accounts from fieldworkers around the world, the book gives a clear picture of the human cost of confronting inhumanity in our day. This book interweaves personal stories, intellectual and political questions, art and aesthetics, and actual "news" to give us a compelling picture of humanity at its conflicted best, face-to-face with humanity at its worst.
		Prohibiting Plunder: How Norms Change by Wayne Sandholtz New York : Oxford University Press, c2007 K3791 .S26 2007 Balcony For much of history, the rules of war decreed that "to the victor go the spoils." The winners in warfare routinely seized for themselves the artistic and cultural treasures of the defeated; plunder constituted a marker of triumph. By the twentieth century, international norms declared the opposite, that cultural monuments should be shielded from destruction or seizure. Prohibiting Plunder: How Norms Change traces and explains the emergence of international rules against wartime looting of cultural treasures, and explores how anti-plunder norms have developed over the past 200 years. The book covers highly topical events including the looting of thousands of antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, and the return of "Holocaust Art" by prominent museums, including the highly publicized return of five Klimt paintings from the Austrian Gallery to a Holocaust survivor. The historical narrative includes first-hand reports, official documents, and archival records. Equally important, the book uncovers the debates and negotiations that produced increasingly clear and well-defined anti-plunder norms. The historical accounts in Prohibiting Plunder serve as confirming examples of an important dynamic of international norm change. International norms evolve through a succession of such cycles, each one drawing on previous developments and each one reshaping the normative context for subsequent actions and disputes. Prohibiting Plunder shows how historical episodes interlinked to produce modern, treaty-based rules against wartime plunder of cultural treasures.
		Civil Human Rights in Russia: Modern Problems of Theory and Practice edited by F.M. Rudinsky New Brunswick, NJ : Transaction Publishers, c2008 JC599.R9 C555 2008 Basement The fall of the Soviet communist regime in 1991 offers a challenging contrast to other instances of democratic transition and change in the last decades of the twentieth century. The 1991 revolution was neither a peaceful revolution from below as occurred in Czechoslovakia nor a negotiated transition to democracy like those in Poland, Hungary, or Latin America. It was not primarily the result of social modernization, the rise of a new middle class, or of national liberation movements in the non-Russian union republics. Instead, as Gordon Hahn argues, the Russian transformation was a bureaucrat-led, state-based revolution managed by a group of Communist Party functionaries who won control over the Russian Republic in the mid-1990s.
		Other People's Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey's Schools by Deborah Yaffe New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, c2007 KFN2190 .Y34 2007 Basement In 1981, when Raymond Abbott was a twelve-year-old sixth-grader in Camden, New Jersey, poor city school districts like his spent 25 percent less per student than the state's wealthy suburbs did. That year, Abbott became the lead plaintiff in a landmark class-action lawsuit demanding that the state provide equal funding for rich and poor schools. Over the next twenty-five years, as the non-profit law firm representing the plaintiffs won ruling after ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court, Abbott dropped out of school, fought a cocaine addiction, and spent time in prison before turning his life around. Raymond Abbott's is just one of the many human stories that have too often been forgotten in the policy battles New Jersey has waged for two generations over equal funding for rich and poor schools. Other People's Children, the first book to tell the story of this decades-long school funding battle, interweaves the public story - an account of legal and political wrangling over laws and money - with the private stories of the inner-city children who were named plaintiffs in the state's two school funding lawsuits, Robinson v. Cahill and Abbott v. Burke. Although these cases have shaped New Jersey's fiscal and political landscape since the 1970s, most recently in legislative arguments over tax reform, the debate has often been too abstract and technical for most citizens to understand. Written in an accessible style and based on dozens of interviews with lawyers, politicians, and the plaintiffs themselves, Other People's Children crystallizes the arguments and clarifies the issues for general readers.
		Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution by Woody Holton New York : Hill and Wang, 2007 KF4541 .H58 2007 Balcony Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the Framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The Framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post-Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many meddling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the Framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizens' rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans. If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the Framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton presents the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the Framers' original Constitution was received by average Americans and how the same class of Americans that produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere.
		Biobazaar: The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology by Janet Hope Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2008 K1519.B54 H67 2008 Balcony Fighting disease, combating hunger, preserving the balance of life on Earth: the future of biotechnological innovation may well be the future of our planet itself. And yet the vexed state of intellectual property law - a proliferation of ever more complex rights governing research and development - is complicating this future. At a similar point in the development of information technology, "open source" software revolutionized the field, simultaneously encouraging innovation and transforming markets. The question that Janet Hope explores in Biobazaar is: can the open source approach do for biotechnology what it has done for information technology? Her book is the first sustained and systematic inquiry into the application of open source principles to the life sciences.
		How International Law Works: A Rational Choice Theory by Andrew T. Guzmán Oxford [UK] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008 KZ3410 .G89 2008 Basement How International Law Works presents a theory of international law, how it operates, and why it works. Though appeals to international law have grown ever more central to international disputes and international relations, there is no well-developed, comprehensive theory of how international law shapes policy outcomes. Filling a conspicuous gap in the literature on international law, Andrew T. Guzman builds a coherent theory from the ground up and applies it to the foundations of the international legal system. Using tools from across the social sciences, Guzman deploys a rational choice methodology to explain how a legal system can succeed in the absence of coercive enforcement. He demonstrates how even rational and selfish states are motivated by concerns about reciprocal noncompliance, retaliation, and reputation to comply with their international legal commitments. Contradicting the conventional view of the subject among international legal scholars, Guzman argues that the primary sources of international commitment - formal treaties, customary international law, soft law, and even international norms - must be understood as various points on a spectrum of commitment rather than wholly distinct legal structures.
		Worst of the Worst: Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations edited by Robert I. Rotberg Cambridge, Mass. : World Peace Foundation ; Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, c2007 JC571 .W8893 2007 Sohn Library Repressive regimes tyrannize their own citizens and threaten global stability and order. Worst of the Worst identifies and describes the world's most odious states, singling out those that are aggressive beyond their own borders and can hence be characterized as rogue states. It establishes a framework for measuring and assessing repression, helping policymakers prioritize and plan.
		Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom by Charles Halpern San Francisco : Berrett-Koehler Publishers, c2008 CT275.H2584 A3 2008 Basement This book is about working for a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world while cultivating the wisdom that supports and deepens this work. Charles Halpern is a social entrepreneur with a remarkable record of institutional innovation. He founded the Center for Law and Social Policy, the nation's first public interest law firm, litigating landmark environmental protection and constitutional rights cases. As founding dean of the new City University of New York School of Law, he initiated a bold program for training public interest lawyers as whole people. Later, as president of the $400 million Nathan Cummings Foundation, he launched an innovative grant program that drew together social justice advocacy with meditation and spiritual inquiry. Halpern describes his journey and the teachers and colleagues he encountered on the way - a cast of characters that includes Barney Frank and Ralph Nader, Ram Dass and the Dalai Lama. Making Waves and Riding the Currents demonstrates the life-enhancing benefits of integrating a commitment to social justice with the cultivation of wisdom. It is a real-world guide to effectively achieving social and institutional change while maintaining balance, compassion, and hope.