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The Body Legal in Barbarian Law by Lisi Oliver
Toronto; Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2011
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Few scholars have the range or expertise to integrate historical, literary, and linguistic evidence as successfully as Lisi Oliver. She has done an important service to historians with The Body Legal in Barbarian Law which provides a rich, erudite argument for how local practice can be understood within the context of broader, cross-cultural trends and customs. This significant contribution to our understanding of medieval law will reframe the debate on many controversial topics in early legal history.

Constitutional Originalism: A Debate by Robert W. Bennett and Lawrence B. Solum
Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2011
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Anyone interested in how the Constitution should be interpreted must read this fascinating debate between Lawrence B. Solum, a leading theorist of originalism, and Robert W. Bennett, one of originalism's most fervent critics. As in a courtroom, after each clearly and respectfully presents his case, the reader gets to be the jury.

Fuel Cycle to Nowhere: U.S. Law and Policy on Nuclear Waste by Richard B. Stewart and Jane B. Stewart
Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011
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Professor Richard B. Stewart and environmental lawyer Jane B. Stewart have teamed up to document U.S. policy on the handling and disposal of nuclear waste. Focusing on legislation and litigation, the authors trace the history of nuclear waste processing, pointing out how, through years of neglect and hasty measures, the government has pursued reprocessing without proper regard for financial and environmental consequences. The authors also detail incidents in which workers have been exposed to radioactivity at waste-processing facilities and note radiation containment issues that have affected workers' health.

Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law by Mark D. West
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011
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In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence—2,700 court opinions—describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. In compelling, poignant, and sometimes horrifying court cases, West finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeling, and whether those emotions are appropriate for the situation.

Confederate Invention: The Story of the Confederate States Patent Office and Its Inventors by H. Jackson Knight
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011
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An essential history and reference guide to Confederate inventors, patents, and wartime inventions, Knight's book provides a groundbreaking study that includes neglected and largely forgotten patents as well as an array of other primary sources. Details on the patent office’s origins, inner workings, and demise, and accounts of southern inventors who obtained patents before, during, and after the war reveal a captivating history recovered from obscurity.

The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature: Estate, Blood, and Body by Cheryl L. Nixon
Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011
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Combining original research with thorough and highly nuanced analysis, The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature is the first full-length scholarly study specifically to address not only fictional representations of the orphan in the eighteenth-century novel, but the lived experiences of individuals who came to be recognized legally, institutionally and culturally as ‘orphaned’ in this period. This illuminating interdisciplinary study will be of considerable value to students and scholars of eighteenth-century literature, social history and law.

Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell
New York: Doubleday, 2011
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Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned is a comprehensive biography of the storied defense attorney. Making elaborate use of transcripts, observers’ accounts, correspondence and newspaper reports, John A. Farrell chronicles Darrow’s most celebrated trials in detail. These cases—including two in which Darrow, almost surely guilty, was himself tried for jury tampering—dominate the narrative, but the author neatly places them within the larger context of this complicated man’s crowded life and practice. Farrell unflinchingly addresses Darrow’s shortcomings, even as he underscores the genuine brilliance of a still-unmatched advocate for underdogs everywhere.

Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism by Bruce Ledewitz
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2011
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Since 1947, the Supreme Court has promised government neutrality toward religion, but in a nation whose motto is "In God We Trust" and which pledges allegiance to "One Nation under God," the public square is anything but neutral—a paradox not lost on a rapidly secularizing America and a point of contention among those who identify all expressions of religion by government as threats to a free society. Yeshiva student turned secularist, Bruce Ledewitz seeks common ground for believers and nonbelievers regarding the law of church and state. He argues that allowing government to promote higher law values through the use of religious imagery would resolve the current impasse in the interpretation of the Establishment Clause. It would offer secularism an escape from its current tendency toward relativism in its dismissal of all that religion represents and encourage a deepening of the expression of meaning in the public square without compromising secular conceptions of government.

Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence by Bill James
New York: Scribner, 2011
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Exploring such phenomena as serial murder, the fluctuation of crime rates, the value of evidence, radicalism and crime, prison reform and the hidden ways in which crimes have shaped, or reflected, our society, Bill James chronicles murder and misdeeds from the 1600s to the present day. James pays particular attention to crimes that were sensations during their time but have faded into obscurity, as well as still-famous cases, some that have never been solved, including the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Boston Strangler and JonBenét Ramsey. Satisfyingly sprawling and tremendously entertaining, Popular Crime is a professed amateur’s powerful examination of the incredible impact crime stories have on our society, culture and history.