In his 1996 State of the Union Address, President Bill Clinton announced that the "age of big government is over."  Some Republicans accused him of cynically appropriating their themes, while many Democrats thought he was betraying the principles of the New Deal and the Great Society.  Mark Tushnet argues that Clinton was stating an observed fact:  the emergence of a new constitutional order in which the aspiration to achieve justice directly through law has been substantially chastened.

Tushnet argues that the constitutional arrangements that prevailed in the United States from the 1930s to the 1990s have ended.  We are now in a new constitutional order--one characterized by divided government, ideologically organized parties, and subdued constitutional ambition.  Contrary to arguments that describe a threatened return to a pre-New Deal constitutional order, however, this book presents evidence that our current regime's animating principle is not the old belief that government cannot solve any problems but rather that government cannot solve any more problems.

This is a major new analysis of the constitutional arrangements in the United States.  Though it will not be received without controversy, it offers real explanatory and predictive power and provides important insights to both legal theorists and political scientists. 

Legal though lags behind modern science in focusing on and setting priorities for global conservation.  An extinction spasm is imminent, many scientists argue, due to the ongoing global devastation of biological hotspots, home to a disproportionate share of all life forms, including perhaps millions of unknown species.  These hotspots have already lost 88 percent of their primary vegetation and are likely to lose much more, yet few legal measures exists to protect them.  Environmental legal protections are often incomprehensive and feebly enforced.  Even worse, 62 percent of all hotspots are unprotected.  Kunich provides a brief history and science of extinction.  He discusses the importance of saving species from extinction and analyzes the legal measures directed toward preserving biodiversity in nations that harbor hotspots.

Blending scientific and legal expertise, Kunich proves that a devastating ecological crisis is imminent or even underway already, and that conservation law has yet to catch up with biological science.  He challenges readers with a "hotspots wager,"  arguing that we have vastly more to gain than lose by legally protecting biological hotspots, and that foregoing them in favor of the relatively minor and immediate returns arising from their devastation is both foolish and, ultimately, dangerous.

Though originally an interloper in a system of justice characterized by courtroom battles, plea bargaining now dominates American criminal justice.  This book traces the evolution of plea bargaining from its present pervasive role.  Through the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, judges showed far less enthusiasm for plea bargaining than did prosecutors.  After all, plea bargaining did not assure judges "victory."  Moreover, judges did not suffer under the workload prosecutors faced, and they had principled objections to dickering for justice and to sharing sentencing authority with prosecutors.  The revolution in tort law in the late nineteenth century, however, brought on a flood of complex civil cases, which persuaded judges of the wisdom of efficient settlement of criminal cases.

The most vivid testimony to the dominance of plea bargaining is this simple face:  It is difficult to name a single innovation in criminal procedure during the last 150 years that has been incompatible with plea bargaining's progress and survived.  With the advent of the United States Sentencing Guidelines in 1987, plea bargaining's triumph in America's federal courts was complete.  By handing unprecedented sentencing discretion to prosecutors, the Guidelines have ensured that those who always had the greatest incentive to plea bargain now have the power to make it happen. 

These studies by an academic who is also a former practising lawyer seek to establish the principles of biblical law as represented in the Sinai traditions.  Specific topics covered include adultery, family law, slavery, animals and wealth;respect for life and the general biblical moral tradition are also discussed.

The collection also deals with wider issues of prophecy and law, the relationship of Torah and Mishpat (especially in relation to Second Isaiah), and laws in the book of Ruth, and includes a discussion of the place of biblical law in contemporary society.

Determining Boundaries in a Conflicted World argues that conferring binding status on the principle of uti possidetis,  as was done by the Badinter Commission  Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, is not justifiable.  Suzanne Lalonde examines the origins of the uti possidetis principle, its evolution and colonial roots as well as more recent applications, to determine whether it merits the overriding importance now attributed to it.  She concludes that while the doctrine may have considerable utility in some cases, it is only one principle among many that must be considered if future disputes are to be resolved so as to promote long term peace and stability. Determining Boundaries in a Conflicted World sounds a cautionary note, showing that the idea that uti possidetis can provide a one-size-fits-all, legally incontestable solution to all territorial disputes is an illusion. 

Thanks to a strong, bipartisan freedom of speech movement, the First Amendment is in good shape.  But where's America's movement to protect political democracy?  Certainly not on the Supreme Court, where the current five-Justice conservative majority has created one of the most ferociously activist and anti-democratic Courts in history.  No American expects the justices to uphold every law passed by a popular majority, but we do expect them at least to defend basic democratic process and values.  For the Court to decide that the "individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote"--as it did in Bush v. Gore--undermines basic principles Americans have been fighting for since the nation began.  By measuring the Rehnquist court against earlier twentieth-century courts, Taskin cuts through the flabby reasoning, double standards, and "moral dyslexis" of the current majority.  Other decisions, some famous and some obscure, have announced that citizens have no constitutionally protected right to an education (much less an equal one), that geometrically imperfect congressional districts with an African American or Hispanic majority are presumptively unconstitutional, that public television channels can sponsor closed debates between Democrats and Republicans which exclude Independent candidates, and that private corporations have a constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of cash to influence public initiative and referendum campaigns.  While skewing our politics, the conservative Court routinely strikes down progressive federal legislation, turning the Constitution thoroughly against national democratic purposes.  Taking on the elitist and reactionary impulses of contemporary conservatism, Overruling Democracy lays out a compelling plan for "we, the people" to overrule the Court with some basic constitutional changes in the new century.  Raskin's aggressive "constitutional patriotism" shows the way forward to a more democratic constitution, judiciary, and nation.

Determining Damages:The Psychology of Jury Awards examines whether jurors are able to  assess damages in a fair and predictable manner. Jury decisions about damages have been deemed biased, capricious, unreliable,hostile to corporate defendants, excessively generous, and out of control. In this book, Greene and Bornstein provide an empirical analysis of the ways that jurors and juries determine damage  awards. A theme that pervades the book is that in many respects,  jurors charged with the complex task of compensating the injured and punishing the wrongdoers do a commendable job of it. When jury decisions diverge from what we expect, the difficulty of the decision-making context may be at least as much to blame as any  moral or intellectual failings on the part of individual jurors. 

The authors discuss the factors that influence damages   assessment, such as the identity of the plaintiff, defendant, and jurors themselves; the severity and nature of the injury; and the conduct of the litigants. They also examine the different reasoning processes that jurors use to determine what they believe are just awards. The book culminates with a discussion that considers  whether or not our jury system should be reformed. Should damage awards be capped? What are the effects of bifurcating trials? Or should the role of the juror be eliminated completely?  The authors’ detailed analysis suggests that aspects of the present
jury system may contribute more to unpredictable and unfounded  decisions than do jurors’ abilities to be fair and reasonable.