Featured Acquisitions - September 2005

Justice Curtis in the Civil War Era : At the Crossroads of American Constitutionalism by Stuart Streichler
Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2005
KF4541 .S73 2005 Balcony

During a career as both a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, Benjamin R. Curtis addressed practically every major constitutional question of the mid-nineteenth century, making judgments that still resonate in American law. Aside from a family memoir written by his brother over one hundred years ago, however, no book-length treatment of Curtis exists. Now Stuart Streichler has filled this gap in judicial biography, using Curtis’s life and work as a window on the most serious constitutional crisis in American history, the Civil War.

Curtis was the lead attorney for President Andrew Johnson in the Senate’s impeachment trial, where he delivered the pivotal argument, and his was an influential voice in the pervasive constitutional struggle between states and the federal government. He is best remembered, however, for dissenting in the Dred Scott case, in which he disputed Chief Justice Taney’s proslavery ruling that no black person could ever become a citizen of the United States. In the wake of the decision, Curtis resigned from the court, the only justice in the Supreme Court’s history to do so on grounds of principle. Yet he also clashed with Boston’s abolitionists over enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, and he opposed the Emancipation Proclamation.

In a period when the Constitution was radically transformed from a charter that protected slavery to one that granted all persons equal rights of citizenship, Justice Curtis maintained his faith in the Constitution as an adaptable instrument of self-government and tried to mark out a path for gradual change. Streichler assesses Curtis’s common-law methods in the context of his divisive times and shows how the judge’s views continue to shed light on issues that have become once again relevant, such as the presidential impeachment process and, after 9/11, the use of military tribunals to try civilians.

Companies, International Trade and Human Rights by Janet Dine
Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005
HF1379 .D56 2005 Basement

Seeking reasons for international trading regimes not meeting poverty reduction goals, this book focuses on the role of corporations within the trading system, and the complex relationships between corporations, nation states and international organizations. The actions of corporations and their underlying motives are considered as well as the structure of the international trading system and globalization.

Public Defenders and the American Justice System by Paul B. Wice
Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2005
KF9646 .W53 2005 Balcony

Eighty to ninety percent of the nation's urban criminal defendants are defended in court by public defenders. Thus, understanding how these defender programs operate, their effectiveness and the quality of professional life for these beleaguered and often underpaid attorneys, is a critical factor in improving local criminal justice systems. What is it like to practice law in such an inhospitable environment, where clients often revile their counsel and prosecutors hold defenders in contempt? How does a public defender maintain self-esteem and dignity? What are the particular problems and obstacles of public defender offices? And how might such departments overcome these obstacles so that defendants and defenders, as well as the public, benefit? In vivid prose, and with vignettes and quotes from the lawyers themselves, Wice answers these questions and paints a truer picture of the state of public defenders offices than most of us have from television and the media.

Through a colorful profile of a reform-minded public defender's office Newark, N.J., one of the nation's most crime-ridden smaller cities, Wice examines the public defender system and shows how even the smallest reforms, especially those that address quality of life and work for public defenders, can make a big difference. Comparing the smaller defender's office to larger ones in such cities as New York and Chicago, which have not instituted significant reforms, the author illustrates the successes that can be found when change is implemented. Flaws remain, but with improved services and work environments, this important component of the overburdened criminal justice system can function more effectively, creating a system that benefits lawyers, defendants, and the community alike.

Appraising Strict Liability edited by A.P. Simester
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005
K5064 .A967 2005 2005 Balcony

Strict liability is a controversial phenomenon in the criminal law because of its potential to convict blameless persons. Offences are said to impose strict liability when, in relation to one or more elements of the actus reus, there is no need for the prosecution to prove a corresponding mens rea or fault element. For example, in the 1986 case of Storkwain, the defendant chemists were convicted of selling controlled medicines without prescription simply upon proof that they had in fact done so. It was irrelevant that they neither knew nor had reason to suspect that the 'prescriptions' they fulfilled were forgeries. Thus strict liability offences have the potential to generate criminal convictions of persons who are morally innocent.

Appraising Strict Liability is a collection of original contributions offering the first full-length consideration of the problem of strict liability in the criminal law. The chapters, including European and Anglo-American perspectives, provide a sustained and wide-ranging examination of the fundamental issues. They explore the definition of strict liability; the relationship between strict liability and blame, and its implications for the requirement for culpability in criminal law; the relevance of European and human rights jurisprudence; and the interaction between substantive rules of strict liability and evidential presumptions.

The breadth and depth of the contributions combine to present readers with a sophisticated analysis of the place and legitimacy of strict liability in the criminal law.

Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in the Age of Globalization by Pat Choate
New York : Knopf, 2005
K1401 .C48 2005 Balcony

The problem of pirating and counterfeiting has grown from small-scale imitations of Levi’s jeans and Zippo lighters to a phenomenon that costs the United States an estimated $200 billion dollars per year. Pirated DVDs, computer software, designer clothes, and machinery flood global markets, inflicting heavy losses on U.S. businesses, while counterfeit medicines, auto and aircraft parts, and baby formula regularly cause fatalities around the world. The theft of artistic and scientific creation is draining our economy. It is the great economic crime of the twenty-first century.

Pat Choate, the author of the best-selling Agents of Influence, examines the roots of conflicts over intellectual property and how the establishment of patent and copyright protections helped propel the American economy. He interweaves the stories of Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison to illustrate how the United States transformed itself from a largely agricultural society into a manufacturing, scientific, and technological superpower, giving rise to further copyright and patent protection laws. He traces the emergence of Germany, Japan, and China as rivals to American primacy through copying, counterfeiting, and underpricing American products and media. He reveals the shockingly meager effectiveness of current efforts to defend American businesses, inventors, and artists from corporate espionage. And he sounds a powerfully convincing warning that the general indifference of our government toward the security of American intellectual property is already affecting job security and the economy in general (an estimated $24 billion is lost each year to pirated films, music recordings, books, and other merchandise in China alone).

Hot Property is an impassioned, clear-eyed, and sound assessment of one of the most serious problems facing the American economy today, certain to be one of the most widely discussed books of the year.

Compensation for Personal Injury in English, German and Italian Law: A Comparative Outline by Basil Markesinis ... [et al.]
Cambridge, UK ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2005
KJC1670 .M27 2005 Annex 3

Cross-border claims for personal injuries are becoming more common. Furthermore, European nationals increasingly join class actions in the USA. These tendencies have created a need to know more about the law of damages in Europe and America. Despite the growing importance of this subject, there is a dearth of material available to practitioners to assist them in advising their clients as to the heads of damage recoverable in other countries. This book aims to fill that gap by looking at the law in England, Germany and Italy. The book’s introduction sets out the raw data in the wider context of tort law. The final chapter provides a closer synthesis, largely concerned with methodological issues, and draws some comparative conclusions.

Remedies Reclassified by Rafal Zakrzewski
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005
K2315 .Z35 2005 Balcony

This book is about the law of remedies. It establishes the boundaries of this discrete area of law and provides a new classification of remedies.

Zakrzewski first examines the difficulties of the term 'remedy', and identifies the most robust notion of a remedy. Remedies are broadly approximated to court orders; more strictly, they are the rights arising from these orders. This enables a rigorous separation of remedies from substantive rights, that is, rights which exist before the making of a court order.

The author then reviews established classifications of remedies, showing how they are seriously deficient and developing a new taxonomy based upon the relationship between substantive rights and remedies. This provides a much better understanding of that relationship, especially of the role of judicial discretion in the granting of remedies.

The book then moves on to provide an overview of remedies in private law within the new analytical framework. It shows how each order that may be made by a court in a civil case gives effect to the substantive rights of the parties to the dispute. Particular primary and secondary (or remedial) rights, such as rights to damages, are carefully disentangled from the remedies which effectuate them, and the similarities and differences between various remedies are revealed.

This book provides a new way to view remedies and substantive rights. It insists that the law of remedies must not reproduce parts of the law of substantive rights under a different name. For the first time, remedies are established as a stable and distinct area of law.

Democracy, Inc.: The Press and Law in the Corporate Rationalization of the Public Sphere by David S. Allen
Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2005
KF2750 .A9395 2005 Balcony

In Democracy, Inc., David S. Allen exposes the vested interests behind the U.S. slide toward conflating corporate values with public and democratic values. He argues that rather than being institutional protectors of democratic principles, the press and law perversely contribute to the destruction of public discourse in the United States today.

Allen utilizes historical, philosophical, sociological, and legal sources to trace America's gradual embrace of corporate values. He argues that such values, including winning, efficiency, and profitability actually limit democratic involvement by devaluing discursive principles, creating an informed yet inactive public. Through an examination of professionalization in both the press and the law, corporate free speech rights, and free speech as property, Democracy, Inc. demonstrates that today's democracy is more about trying to control and manage citizens than giving them the freedom to participate. Allen not only calls on institutions to reform the way they understand and promote citizenship but also asks citizens to adopt a new ethic of public discourse that values understanding rather than winning.

Mistake, Fraud and Duties to Inform in European Contract Law edited by Ruth Sefton-Green
Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005
KJC1063 .M57 2005 Annex 3

This book investigates how thirteen European legal systems solve twelve case studies about mistake, fraud or duties to inform in contract law. After considering the historical origins of these legal concepts, national reports explain each system's solution. Comparative observations synthesize and evaluate the national rules. The book shows that significant differences exist in how contract law works in European jurisdictions and that although the solutions proposed are often similar, divergent values underlie the legal rules.

Legal Aspects of the Music Industry: An Insider's View of the Legal and Practical Aspects of the Music Business by Richard Schulenberg
New York : Billboard Books, 2005
KF4291 .S28 2005 Balcony

This comprehensive reference features in-depth discussions of every important music industry contract, all enlivened by personal anecdotes from the author's wide-ranging experiences. Updated to reflect the rapid pace of change in the music industry, this new edition includes a focus on group agreements, live performances, free music on the Internet, the effect of the Millennium Copyright Act, ancillary rights, and the independent record label. Other key issues covered include the artists' rebellion against record company contracts, litigation by superstars and songwriters against record labels, and the industry-wide downturn in record sales.