Featured Acquisitions

Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice by Greg Berman and John Feinblatt
New York : New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2005
KF9223 .B47 2005 Balcony

Public confidence in American criminal courts is at an all-time low. Victims, communities, and even offenders view courts as unable to respond adequately to complex social and legal problems including drugs, prostitution, domestic violence, and quality-of-life crime. Even many judges and attorneys think that the courts produce assembly-line justice.

Increasingly embraced by even the most hard-on-crime jurists, problem-solving courts offer an effective alternative. As documented by Greg Berman and John Feinblatt — both of whom were instrumental in setting up New York's Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center, two of the nation's premier models for problem-solving justice — these alternative courts re-engineer the way everyday crime is addressed by focusing on the underlying problems that bring people into the criminal justice system to begin with.

The first book to describe this cutting-edge movement in detail, Good Courts, an in-depth look at Oregon’s Portland Community Court and reviews the growing body of evidence that the problem-solving approach to justice is indeed producing positive results around the country.

Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar by John P. Heinz, et al.
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2005
KF298 .U73 2005 Balcony

Over the past several decades, the number of lawyers in large cities has doubled, women have entered the bar at an unprecedented rate, and the scale of firms has greatly expanded. This immense growth has transformed the nature and social structure of the legal profession. In the most comprehensive analysis of the urban bar to date, Urban Lawyers presents a compelling portrait of how these changes continue to shape the field of law today.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Chicago lawyers, the authors demonstrate how developments in the profession have affected virtually every aspect of the work and careers of urban lawyers-their relationships with clients, job tenure and satisfaction, income, social and political values, networks of professional connections, and patterns of participation in the broader community. Yet despite the dramatic changes, much remains the same. Stratification of income and power based on gender, race, and religious background, for instance, still maintains inequality within the bar.

The authors of Urban Lawyers conclude that organizational priorities will likely determine the future direction of the legal profession. And with this landmark study as their guide, readers will be able to make their own informed predictions.

God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law by Marci A. Hamilton
New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005
KF9434 .H36 2005 Balcony

God vs. the Gavel challenges the pervasive assumption that all religious conduct deserves constitutional protection. While religious conduct provides many benefits to society, it is not always benign. The thesis of the book is that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else - and truth be told, religion is capable of great harm.

This may not sound like a radical proposition, but it has been under assault since the 1960s. The majority of academics and many religious organisations would construct a fortress around religious conduct that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute child abuse by clergy, medical neglect of children by faith-healers, and other socially unacceptable behaviours. This book intends to change the course of the public debate over religion by bringing to the public’s attention the tactics of religious entities to avoid the law and therefore harm others.

Optional Law: The Structure of Legal Entitlements by Ian Ayres
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2005
K487.E3 A997 2005 Balcony

Spurred by the advances in option theory that have been remaking financial and economic scholarship over the past thirty years, a revolution is taking shape in the way legal scholars conceptualize property and the way it is protected by the law. Ian Ayres's Optional Law explores how option theory is overthrowing many accepted wisdoms and producing tangible new tools for courts in deciding cases.

Ayres identifies flaws in the current system and shows how option theory can radically expand and improve the ways that lawmakers structure legal entitlements. An option-based system, Ayres shows, gives parties the option to purchase--or the option to sell--the relevant legal entitlement. Choosing to exercise a legal option forces decisionmakers to reveal information about their own valuation of the entitlement. And, as with auctions, entitlements in option-based law naturally flow to those who value them the most. Seeing legal entitlements through this lens suggests a variety of new entitlement structures from which lawmakers might choose. Optional Law provides a theory for determining which structure is likely to be most effective in harnessing parties' private information.

Proposing a practical approach to the foundational question of how to allocate and protect legal rights, Optional Law will be applauded by legal scholars and professionals who continue to seek new and better ways of fostering both equitable and efficient legal rules.

Legal Aspects of Implementing the Kyoto Protocol Mechanisms: Making Kyoto Work edited by David Freestone and Charlotte Streck
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005
K3593.A41992 Z4 2005 Balcony

The first protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in Kyoto in 1997. It is a unique international law instrument which sets stringent, legally binding targets for the reduction of emissions of the "greenhouse gases" (primarily carbon dioxide) which contribute to climate change. The targets are unprecedented in an environmental agreement and will involve substantial financial commitment in virtually all industrialized countries. This is also the first international agreement to include "economic instruments" to assist parties to meet the targets. These economic instruments, known as the "Kyoto Mechanisms" or the "flexibility mechanisms" are joint implementation, the Clean Development Mechanism, and emissions trading.

The Kyoto Protocol defined these mechanisms, but did not set out the details necessary for their operation. After protracted negotiations, detailed rules were finalized at the Seventh Session of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Marrakech. The 'Marrakech Accords' run to almost 250 pages, but still leave many important practical issues unaddressed. As the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism begins to operate and more and more projects are developed to take advantage of the Kyoto Mechanisms, the key issues and problems are now becoming more apparent.

Drawing on the emerging body of expertise in this complex area, this book conveys a knowledge of what is becoming known as 'Carbon Finance'. It thereby aims to contribute to the development of the market for carbon emission reductions - one of the objectives of the Kyoto mechanisms.

Interpreting State Constitutions: A Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System by James A. Gardner
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2005
KF4552 .G37 2005 Basement

Interpreting State Constitutions examines and proposes a solution to a problem central to contemporary debates over the enforcement of civil liberties: how courts, government officials, and lawyers should go about interpreting the constitutions of the American states.

With the Supreme Court's retreat from the aggressive protection of individual rights, state courts have begun to interpret state constitutions to provide broader protection of liberties. This development has reversed the polarity of constitutional politics, as liberals advocate unimpeded state power while conservatives lobby for state subordination to a constitutional law controlled centrally by the Supreme Court.

James A. Gardner here lays out the first fully developed theory of subnational constitutional interpretation. He argues that states are integral components of a national system of overlapping and mutually checking authority and that the purpose of this system is to protect liberty and defend against federal domination. The resulting account provides valuable prescriptive advice to state courts, showing them how to fulfill their responsibilities to the federal system in a way that strengthens American constitutional discourse.

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2005
KF228.W353 S85 2005 Balcony

The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground.

Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains.

A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution.

Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey by Linda Greenhouse
New York : Times Books : H. Holt and Co., c2005
KF8745.B555 G74 2005 Balcony

From 1970 to 1994, Justice Harry A. Blackmun (1908-1999) wrote numerous landmark Supreme Court decisions, including Roe v. Wade, and participated in the most contentious debates of his era-all behind closed doors. In Becoming Justice Blackmun, Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times draws back the curtain on America's most private branch of government and reveals the backstage story of the Supreme Court through the eyes and writings of this extraordinary justice.

Greenhouse was the first print reporter to have access to Blackmun's extensive archive and his private and public papers. From this trove she has crafted a compelling narrative of Blackmun's years on the Court, showing how he never lost sight of the human beings behind the legal cases and how he was not afraid to question his own views on such controversial issues as abortion, the death penalty, and sex discrimination. Greenhouse also tells the story of how Blackmun's lifelong friendship with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger withered in the crucible of life on the nation's highest court, revealing how political differences became personal, even for the country's most respected jurists.

Becoming Justice Blackmun, written by America's preeminent Supreme Court reporter, offers a rare and wonderfully vivid portrait of the nation's highest court, including insights into many of the current justices. It is a must-read for everyone who cares about the Court and its impact on our lives. draws back the curtain on America's most private branch of government and reveals the backstage story of the Supreme Court through the eyes and writings of this extraordinary justice.

To Provide for the General Welfare: A History of the Federal Spending Power by Theodore Sky
Newark [Del.] : University of Delaware Press ; London : Associated University Presses, c2003
KF4629 .S58 2003 Balcony

The framers of the United States Constitution gave Congress the power to tax in order to provide for the "general welfare of the United States." This book traces the constitutional controversy to which that power gave rise and its role in fueling a massive expansion in federal activity and authority. Early chapters consider the framing of the power and the battle between Hamilton and Madison over its scope. The book then examines the contribution of the presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, and Lincoln, as well as the Reconstruction, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson eras, to the resolution that paved the way for the definitive Supreme Court decisions of the New Deal period. The work updates this account with a perspective on the influence of the postwar twentieth-century presidents in shaping the modern exercise of the spending power. It speculates as well on a possible nexus between the spending power evolution and contemporary scholarship on transforming constitutional change. In this way the book documents how Americans came to read their Constitution to help them better their roads, schools, cultural institutions, and health care to provide themselves with social insurance and safety net programs for times of need. The book will contribute to a better understanding of the critically important spending power and its potential in helping us confront twenty-first century challenges.

The Abolition of Antitrust edited by Gary Hull
New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Publishers, c2005
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The Abolition of Antitrust asserts that antitrust laws—on economic, legal, and moral grounds—are bad, and provides convincing evidence supporting arguments for their total abolition. Every year, new antitrust prosecutions arise in the U.S. courts; Gary Hull and the contributing authors look at some of these cases—as well as the very Antitrust Act itself—and conclude that they are based on an erroneous interpretation of the history of American business, premised on bad economics. For Hull, antitrust prosecutions are based on a horrible moral inversion: that it is acceptable to sacrifice America’s best producers.

The contributors explain how key antitrust ideas, for instance, “monopoly,” “restraint of trade,” and “anticompetitive behavior,” have been used to justify prosecution, and then make clear why those ideas are false. They sketch the historical, legal, economic, and moral reasoning that gave rise to the passage and growth of antitrust legislation.

This dynamic and accessible work, now available in paperback, is not simply a polemical argument for a particular policy position. On publication, Adam Mossof at Michigan State University commented, “The essays in this book present a sustained economic, historical, moral, and legal broadside against the various federal statutes known as antitrust doctrine. They explode the cherished myths underlying the antitrust laws, and expose their intellectual fountainhead in a morality of self-sacrifice that is incompatible with individual rights, free enterprise, and objective law. With the publication of this text, businessmen, lawyers, economists, policymakers, legislators, and judges finally have access to a systemic critique of the antitrust laws. From here on, if antitrust continues to violate the rights of businessmen and to ravage the American economy, it is not for lack of knowing how and why.”

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row by David R. Dow
Boston : Beacon Press, c2005
KF9227.C2 D69 2005 Balcony

The story of the death row inmates who changed one Texas lawyer’s mind about capital punishment

When David Dow took his first capital case, he supported the death penalty. He changed his position as the men on death row became real people to him, as he came to witness the profound injustices they endured: from coerced confessions to disconcertingly incompetent lawyers; from racist juries and backward judges to a highly arbitrary death penalty system.

Dow’s eye-opening book is captivating because he allows the men, and their cases, to speak for themselves. For instance, one inmate’s lawyer literally slept through his trial; another inmate was executed because the jury never heard from two eyewitnesses who swore he was no the murderer; and yet another inmate was allowed to represent himself at trial despite the fact that his mental imbalance, which included attempts to issue a subpoena to Jesus Christ, was evident.

It is these concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented that prove the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it’s precisely this fundamental—and lethal—injustice, Dow argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether.

The Celluloid Courtroom: A History of Legal Cinema by Ross D. Levi
Westport, Conn. : Praeger Publishers, 2005
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The genre of legal cinema is an extensive and revealing one: it is a body of films that depicts lawyers, clients, criminals, judges, and juries, often not as they actually are, but as we would like them to be. The idealized courtroom of many legal movies tells us a great deal about what we think of our justice system and what we want it to reflect about America, but the films in the genre vary widely in how they do this. From To Kill a Mockingbird to Liar, Liar, from A Time to Kill to Twelve Angry Men, we see certain stereotypes repeating themselves again and again: the judge as stern referee, the jury as an ultimately fair body of decisionmakers, the lawyer as hardworking and passionate fighter for the underdog. In this new and comprehensive study of this understudied category of film, author Ross D. Levi argues that, contrary to popular belief, legal movies show us a system that is far more fair than our actual one, with corruption downplayed and greed made subordinate to compassion and compromise.

These are films that have affected as much as reflected the American justice system, as we enter the courts hoping, often against hope, that they will be something like what we've seen in the movies. With a comprehensive filmography, penetrating analysis--both legal and cinematic--and engaging and enlightening discussion, The Celluloid Courtroom is an indispensable guide to a key aspect of American movies and American justice.