Law suits over coffee burns, playground injuries, even bad teaching:  litigation "horror stories" create the impression that Americans are greedy, quarrelsome, and sue-happy.  The truth, as this book makes clear, is quite different.  What Thomas Burke describes in Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights is a nation not of litigious citizens, but of litigious policies -- laws that promote the use of litigation in resolving disputes and implementing public policies.  This book is a cogent account of how such policies have come to shape public life and everyday practices in the United States.

The charter school movement has grown significantly since the first charter school opened in Minnesota in 1992.  A decade later, over 2,200 charter schools are operating across thirty-four states, the District of Columbia, and Albert, Canada, with a total enrollment of more than 550,000 students and a continued growth forecast.  The movement has also received considerable financial aid from the federal government with U.S. appropriations rising from $6 million to $145 million in just over five years.

The Charter School Landscape addresses both pro- and anticharter opinions with sound logic, data, and references -- elements often missing in a charter school discourse frequently motivated by passion and politics.  The contributors illuminate issues particular to each state and offer lessons for analysts and policymakers everywhere.  As a whole, The Charter School Landscape suggests that charter schools continue to have a significant impact on the institution of public education and on the concept of the "real public school."

In this fresh examination of the Microsoft antitrust case, Richard Gordon critically analyzes the economics of the U.S. government's arguments.  The conclusion is that the government presented a sketchy, incoherent, invalid economic case and relied upon creating the impression of misdeeds to persuade the courts.  The primary charge is that Microsoft possessed an impregnable monopoly in operating systems for personal computers.  According to the government, Microsoft created, included in its operating system, and vigorously promoted its internet browser solely to prevent the development of the Java/Netscape alternative.  The promotion of this browser was considered predatory.  Microsoft allegedly undertook similar acts against a clear statement of its charges and failed to substantiate the critical allegations.  In this book, he concentrates on the underlying economics of the government arguments as well as Microsoft's refutations.

Readers in economics, law and public policy will find this well researched analysis enlightening. 

The nations that drafted the UN Charter in 1945 were more concerned about peace than about justice.  As a result, the Charter prohibits all use of force by states except in the event of an armed attack of when authorized by the Security Council.

This arrangement has only very imperfectly withstood the test of time and changing world conditions.  It did not anticipate the cold war which incapacitated the Security Council through the permanent members' frequent recourse to the veto.  It required states not to use force in self-defense until after they had become the object of an actual armed attack, the Charter failed to address a growing phenomenon of clandestine subversion and of instantaneous nuclear threats.  Perhaps most of all, the Charter failed to make allowance for the dramatic rise in public support for human rights.

Fortunately, although the Charter is very hard to amend, the drafters did agree that it should be interpreted flexibly by the UN's principal political institutions.  In nearly sixty years, the text has undergone extensive interpretation through this practice.  In this way the norms governing use of force in international affairs have been adapted to meet changing circumstances and new challenges.  The book also relates these changes in law and practice to changing public values pertaining to the balance between maintaining peace and promoting justice.

The United States Constitution has already been interpreted to provide a variety of family-related protections which, if applied consistently, also protect same-sex couples and their children.   Only by radically reformulating and severely undermining existing protections can courts and commentators justify the claim that the Federal Constitution does not offer a wealth of family protections, including the right to marry a same-sex partner.

Discussing the constitutional implications of civil unions with a special focus on how they might be treated in the interstate context, Strasser explains how the courts and commentators have reworked and significantly weakened a variety of constitutional protections in their attempts to establish that same-sex couples are not afforded constitutional protections.  He further suggests that the constitutional protections for religion support rather than undermine the constitutional protection of same-sex unions.

The eastwards expansion of the European Union is one of the most explosive economic and political issues of the early 21st century.  Economic and financial stability combined with rising prosperity in the applicant countries are increasingly seen as necessary preconditions for European Union membership.

This authoritative volume, written by scholars and practitioners from Central and Western Europe and the United States, confronts the issues involved in three of the countries most likely to be successful applicants - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia.  A spotlight is turned on the banking and financial industries, as they are crucial to the achievement of economic stability.  The blend of expertise deployed, which draws on in-depth knowledge and extensive experience in central banking, financial and commercial law, business, practical policy making and economic analysis, ensures that this book is highly timely, relevant and insightful.

"When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population."  So a political commissar in the Rwanda Patriotic Front reflected after the 1994 massacre of as many as one million Tutsis in Twanda.  Underlying his statement is the realization that, although ordered by a minority of state functionaries, the slaughter was performed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, including even judges, human rights activists, and doctors, nurses, priests, friends, and spouses of the victims.  Indeed, it is its very popularity that makes the Rwandan genocide so unthinkable.  The book makes it thinkable.

Rejected easy explanations of the geocide as a mysterious evil force that was bizarrely unleashed, one of Africa's best-known intellectuals situates the tragedy in its proper context.  He coases to the surface the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors.  He finds answers in the nature of political identities generated during colonialism, in the failures of the nationalist revolution to transcend these identities, and in regional demographic and political currents that reach well beyond Rwanda.  In so doing, Mahmood Mamdani usefully broadens understandings of citizenship and political identity in postcolonial Africa,

There have been few attempts to explain the Rwandan horror, and none has succeeded so well as this one.  Mamdani's analysis provides a solid foundation for future studies of the massacre.  Even more important, his answers point a way out of crisis:  a direction for reforming political identity in central Africa and preventing future tragedies.