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Featured Items
This is a list of current and past featured items on the Library home page.
Featured Titles
September 2008
Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, A Remarkable Discovery, and the First Amendment in an Age
of Terrorism
by Alan Dershowitz (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)
In September 2006, in a dusty old Manhattan bookstore, the author found an 1801 letter written by his hero, Thomas Jefferson. The letter spoke directly to the issue of intentionally harmful or dangerous speech. Dershowitz verifies the letter's authenticity, explains its importance within the context of Jefferson's writing, and takes his hero to task, point by point. He then applies his extensive knowledge of Jefferson to the question of whether to restrict free speech in an age of terrorism and suicide bombings, when deterrence is rarely an option. Quoting freely from Jefferson's many writings on law, rights, and national survival, the author presents a compelling case that today, Jefferson would probably opt for some narrow restrictions against speech intended to incite violence, but would insist on protecting all other types of speech.
Side Effects: A Prosecutor, A Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial
by Alison Bass (Algonquin Books, 2008)
This is the behind-the-scenes story of a landmark case that exposed increased suicide rates among adolescents taking popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft. The author introduces the reader to an Ivy League university employee who risked her job to expose suspicious practices at her lab, a feisty assistant attorney general who spearheaded the unprecedented lawsuit against a pharmaceutical giant, and the vulnerable children and adults placed at risk because of greed, corruption, and negligence. She reveals how data from drug trials and the suicide risk the drug posed were withheld, allowing GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, to mislead physicians and consumers about the safety and efficacy of the drug. As a result of this case, drug companies finally agreed to publish negative results from their research studies, and a congressional investigation into industry practices prompted the FDA to mandate strict warnings for all antidepressants.
In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near Triumph of American Eugenics
by Victoria F. Nourse (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008)
Believing that criminality and mental illness were inherited, state legislatures in the 1920's and '30's passed laws calling for the sterilization of "habitual criminals" and the "feebleminded," and thousands of men and women were sterilized as a result. But in 1936, inmates at Oklahoma's McAlester prison organized to fight the law. Some wrote newspaper editorials, some studied the science and the law, and others escaped and died to avoid sterilization. Finally, a man named Jack Skinner became the test case in fighting the laws-and the popularity of eugenics - all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dozens of progressive doctors, activists, and judges, including Margaret Sanger and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, backed eugenics laws, and it was only after Americans learned the extent of another large-scale eugenics project - in Nazi Germany - that the inmates gain a victory. This work explores the consequences of this landmark decision and reveals the stories of the forgotten men and women who fought for human dignity and the basic right to have a family.
Defending Humanity: When Force is Justified and Why
by George P. Fletcher and Jens David Ohlin (Oxford University Press, 2008)
This work tackles one of the most controversial questions of our time: when is war justified? When a nation is attacked, few would deny that it has the right to respond with force. But what about preemptive and preventive wars, or crossing another state's borders to stop genocide? The authors argue that much of the confusion on the subject stems from a persistent misunderstanding of the UN Charter. The Charter, they say, appears to be very clear on the use of military force: force is only allowed when authorized by the Security Council or in self-defense. But this has led to the problem of justifying force when the Security Council refuses to act or when self-defense is thought not to apply, and to the dilemma of declaring such interventions illegal or ignoring the UN Charter altogether. The authors suggest that the answer lies in going back to the domestic criminal law concepts upon which the UN Charter was originally based - in particular, the concept of "legitimate defense," which encompasses not only self-defense but also defense of others. This will enable political leaders, courts, and scholars to see the solid basis under international law for states to intervene with force.
Summer 2008
The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America
by Lauri Lebo (New Press, 2008)
In 2004, the rural school board in Dover, Pennsylvania voted to teach intelligent design in ninth-grade biology classrooms. Eleven concerned parents sued, sparking a federal constitutional challenge. In this work, a local journalist traces the compelling backstory of this pivotal case, described by some as a perfect storm of religious intolerance, First Amendment violations, and an assault on American science education. In a community divided across unexpected lines, the judge - a George W. Bush-appointed Republican - eventually condemned the school board's decision as one of "breathtaking inanity." The author follows the story through its surprising twists as she probes one of America's most divisive ongoing cultural conflicts.
Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future
by Newton N. Minow and Craig L. Lamay (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
This work provides an inside look into the origins of the presidential debates and the many battles - both legal and personal - that have determined who has been allowed to debate and under what circumstances. The authors do not dismiss the recent criticism of the debates but do come down solidly in favor of them, arguing that they are one of the great accomplishments of modern American electoral politics. They remind us that the debates were once unique in the democratic world, are now emulated across the globe, and offer the public the only real chance to see the candidates respond to one another directly in a discussion of major social, economic, and foreign policy issues. Looking to the challenges posed by third-party candidates and the emergence of new media such as YouTube, the authors make recommendations for the future, calling for the debates to become less formal and exploring the ways in which the internet might serve to broaden the debates' appeal and informative power.
The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined
America
by Allan M. Brandt (Basic Books, 2007)
From agriculture to big business, from medicine to politics, this work provides a definitive account of how smoking came to be so deeply implicated in our culture, science, policy, and law. No product, the author argues, has been so heavily promoted or has become so deeply entrenched in American consciousness. And no product has received such scientific scrutiny, with the development of new medical knowledge demonstrating the dire effects of smoking. Using a massive archive of previously secret documents, the author shows how the industry engineered a campaign of scientific disinformation seeking to delay, disrupt, and suppress these studies, particularly using special interest lobbying and largesse to elude regulation. But even as the cultural dominance of the cigarette has waned and consumption has fallen dramatically in the U.S., Big Tobacco remains securely positioned to expand into new global markets, where the implications for the future are vast: in the next 100 years, we expect 1 billion tobacco-related deaths worldwide. This work illustrates how one ephemeral product came to play such a dominant role in so many aspects of our lives - and our deaths.
Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk
by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer (Princeton University Press, 2008)
In the last several years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today's patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? This work examines whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective. It presents a wide range of empirical evidence from history, law, and economics showing that, for most businesses today, patents fail to provide predictable property rights. Instead, the authors argue, they produce costly disputes and excessive litigation that outweigh positive incentives. Only in some sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, they say, do patents act as advertised, with their benefits outweighing the related costs. This work serves as a call for change in institutions and laws in this area.
May 2008
Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the
Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World
by Michael I. Meyerson (Basic Books, 2008)
One of the most important documents in American politics and law is The Federalist - the series of essays that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote to persuade the American people to ratify the Constitution. This work presents an introduction to how the Federalist Papers were written and opens a window into the thoughts of the framers on the most troubling and divisive problems of American government, including the powers of the president, the dividing line between the authority of Congress and that of the states, and the proper role of the Supreme Court. The author further explains how the wisdom of Madison and Hamilton can illuminate our current discussion on a wide variety of controversial issues, ranging from the war on terror to medical marijuana. He also reveals the complexity of the personal relationship between the two, which evolved from a volatile political alliance into an unexpected friendship, only to disintegrate into estrangement and animosity.
The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State
by Noah Feldman (Princeton University Press, 2008)
This book tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari`a - the law of the traditional Islamic state - in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then is the shari`a, and given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed, and should it? The author reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law; how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari`a; and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result, he explains, has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. He argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power.
Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment
by Anthony Lewis (Basic Books, 2007)
More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. This freedom is based on just fourteen words in our Constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment. But the freedom we now take for granted did not take hold when the First Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791. It was more than a century later, in 1931, when the Supreme Court first enforced the amendment to protect speakers and the press. This work tells the story of legal and political conflict, hard choices, and determined, sometimes eccentric Americans who led the legal system to realize one of America's great founding ideas. The author reminds us that even our most basic freedoms as Americans have been secured through long struggle - by judges, lawyers, activists, and ordinary citizens - and should never be taken for granted.
Copyright's Paradox
by Neil Weinstock Netanel (Oxford University Press, 2008)
This work explores the tensions between copyright law and free speech, revealing how copyright can impose unacceptable burdens on expression. It provides concrete illustrations of how copyright often prevents speakers from effectively conveying their message, tracing this conflict across both traditional and digital media and considering current controversies such as the remix and copyright culture rampant on YouTube and MySpace, hip-hop music and digital sampling. The author juxtaposes the dramatic expansion of copyright holders' proprietary control against the individua's newly found ability to digitally cut, paste, edit, remix, and distribute sound recordings, movies, TV programs, graphics, and texts the world over. He tests whether, in light of these developments and others, copyright still serves as a vital engine of free expression. He argues that copyright should be limited to how it can best promote robust debate and expressive diversity, and he presents a blueprint for how that can be accomplished.
March 2008
Worst-Case Scenarios
by Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard University Press, 2007)
Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu, scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now frighteningly real possibilities. How can we steer a path between willful inaction and reckless overreaction? This work explores these and other worst-case scenarios and shows how private individuals and public officials might best respond to low-probability risks of disaster-emphasizing what we will lose from precautions as well as from inaction. It also offers an understanding of the uses and limits of cost-benefit analysis, especially when current generations are imposing risks on future generations. Throughout, the author uses climate change as a defining case, but he also discusses terrorism, depletion of the ozone layer, genetic modification of food, hurricanes, and worst-case scenarios faced in our ordinary lives.
Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President
by Jill Norgren (New York University Press, 2007)
This work recounts the life story of one of the 19th century's most accomplished advocates for women's rights. Born on a farm in upstate New York in 1830, she married young, but after her husband's premature death, she earned a college degree, became a teacher, and moved to Washington, DC with plans to become an attorney-an occupation all but closed to women at that time. Not only did she become one of the first female attorneys in the U.S., but in 1879, she became the first woman ever allowed to practice at the bar of the Supreme Court. In 1884, Lockwood continued her trailblazing ways as the first woman to run a full campaign for the U.S. Presidency. She ran for President again in 1888. Although her candidacies were unsuccessful, as she knew they would be, she demonstrated that women could compete with men in the political arena.
The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession
by Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2008)
In this work, the authors look behind current anti-lawyer media images to explore the historical role of lawyers as a balancing force in times of social, economic, and political change. They confront the hypocrisy of critics from both the right and the left, as well as their attempts to exploit popular misperceptions about lawyers and judges, most often to further their own social and political agendas. By revealing the facts and reasoning behind the decisions in such cases as the infamous McDonald's coffee spill, the authors provide a clear explanation of the operation of the law while addressing misconceptions about the number of lawsuits, runaway jury verdicts, and legal "technicalities" that turn criminals out on the street. Acknowledging that no system is perfect, the authors propose a slate of reforms for the bar, the judiciary, and law schools that will enable today's lawyers - and tomorrow's - to live up to the noble potential of their profession.
Torture and Democracy
by Darius Rejali (Princeton University Press, 2007)
This study of modern torture takes the reader from the late 19th century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As the author traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he argues that, as the 20th century progressed, democracies not only tortured, but they set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the U.S., Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave no marks. As democracy and human rights spread after WWII, so too did these methods. The author also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering the new apologists for torture point by point.
Winter 2007
We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in
the Internet Age
by Scott Gant (Free Press, 2007)
The rise of the internet and the blogosphere has blurred the once distinct role of the media in our society. Are bloggers journalists, even if they receive no income? Even if they are unedited and sometimes irresponsible? Many traditional news organizations would say no. The author says otherwise and argues that we should afford bloggers and everyone else who disseminates information and opinion in the U. S. the same rights and privileges that traditional journalists enjoy. He puts forth specific ideas about how to change existing laws and makes suggestions for new laws that will properly account for the undeniable reality that "we're all journalists now."
Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice
by Christopher J. Dodd (Crown, 2007)
In the summer of 1945, Thomas J. Dodd, the father of U. S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, traveled to the devastated city of Nuremberg to serve as a staff lawyer at the war crimes trials. Thanks to his agile legal mind and skills at interrogating the defendants - including such notorious figures as Hermann Goring, Albert Speer, and Rudolf Hess - he quickly rose to become the number two prosecutor in the U. S. contingent. Over the course of fifteen months, Dodd described his efforts and his impressions of the proceedings in nightly letters to his wife, Grace. The letters remained in the Dodd family archives, unexamined, for decades. They are published here, along with Christopher Dodd's reflections on his fathe's life and career
The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process
by Christopher L. Eisgruber (Princeton University Press, 2007)
Long on partisan rancor and short on serious discussion, today's appointments process reveals little about what kind of judge a nominee might make. This book describes a new and better way of deliberating about who should serve on the Court - an approach that puts the burden on nominees to show that their judicial philosophies and politics are acceptable to senators and citizens alike. The author argues that the solution is to investigate how nominees would answer a basic question about the Court's role: when and why is it beneficial for judges to trump the decisions of elected officials? Through an examination of the politics and history of the Court, the author demonstrates that pursuing this question would reveal far more about nominees than do other tactics, such as investigating their views of specific precedents or the framers' intentions.
The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution
by David O. Stewart (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
This work traces the struggles within the Constitutional Convention as the delegates hammered out the charter for the world's first constitutional democracy. Relying on the words of the delegates themselves to explore the Convention's sharp conflicts and hard bargaining, the author lays out the passions and contradictions of the often painful process of writing the Constitution. Revolutionary principles required that the people have power, but could the people be trusted? Would a stronger central government leave room for the states? Would the small states accept a Congress in which seats were allotted according to population rather than to each sovereign state? And what of slavery? At different points during that summer, more than half of the delegates threatened to walk out, and some actually did, but Washington's leadership and the delegates' inspired compromises held the Convention together.
September 2007
Ellery's Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle Over School
Prayer
by Stephen D. Solomon (University of Michigan Press, 2007)
This is the story of how one student's objection to mandatory school prayer and Bible reading led to one of the most controversial court cases of the 20th century. Abington School District v. Schempp began its journey through the nation's courts in 1956, when 16-year old Ellery Schempp protested his school's compulsory prayer and Bible-reading period by reading silently from the Koran. Ejected from class for his actions, he sued the school district. The Supreme Court's decision in his favor was one of the most important rulings on religious freedom in U.S. history. The author brings to life the personal and legal drama of the case: the family's struggle against the ugly reactions of neighbors and the impassioned courtroom clashes as lawyers on both sides argued about the meaning of religious freedom. The political and cultural roots of the controversy are also explored.
Defending the Damned: Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office
by Kevin Davis (Atria: New York, 2007)
Chicago was the nation's deadliest city in 2001, recording 666 homicides, and for
lawyers in the Cook County Public Defender's Office Murder Task Force, that meant a
steady flow of new clients. Eight out of ten people arrested for murder in Chicago are
represented by public defenders. They're assigned the most challenging and seemingly
hopeless cases, yet they always fight to win. Veteran journalist Kevin Davis reveals the
compelling true story of a team of battle-scarred lawyers fighting against all odds - this
is both a human story and a courtroom drama, where life and death hang in the balance. He
explores the motives that compel these lawyers to come to work in this dark corner of the
criminal justice system and exposes their insular and often misunderstood world.
Inventing Human Rights: A History
by Lynn Hunt (W.W. Norton & Co.: New York, 2007)
How were human rights invented, and how does their history influence their perception and
our ability to preserve them today? Human rights is a concept that only came to the
forefront during the 18th century. When the American Declaration of Independence declared
"all men are created equal," and the French proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, they created a new ethical standard for politics around the world. But why then,
and how did such a revelation come to pass? In this work of cultural and intellectual
history, the author grounds the creation of human rights in the rejection of torture as a
means of finding out truth; the changing idea of human relationships displayed by novelists,
playwrights, and artists; and the spread of empathy beyond insular communities. She traces
the extraordinary rise of rights, their momentous eclipse in the 19th century, and their
culmination as a principle with the U.N.'s proclamation in 1948. She finishes the work
with a diagnosis of the state of human rights today.
Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary
by Cass R. Sunstein et al (Brookings Institution Press, 2006)
How do the political leanings of judges affect their activity on the bench? This book produces real answers by looking at what judges actually do, injecting fact and analysis into a discussion that is all too often overwhelmed by sound bites and ideological howling. The authors examine thousands of judicial votes to analyze the influence of ideology on judicial decisions. Focusing primarily on the federal courts of appeals, they scrutinize decisions on some of the most controversial issues in American law and politics - abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance regulation, disability discrimination, environmental protection, and gay rights. They help bring precision to an impassioned debate by quantifying how ideology affects legal judgments.
July 2007
The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America
by Jeffrey Rosen (Times Books, 2007)
This work recounts the history of the Supreme Court through the personal and philosophical rivalries of eight larger-than-life personalities who dominated the Court and set many of the precedents and traditions the Court continues to follow today. The story begins with Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson, whose differing visions of America set the tone for the Court's first hundred years, and continues with Justices Harlan and Holmes, who clashed over the limits of majority rule. The author then examines the Warren Court era through the lens of Justices Black and Douglas, and rounds out the history with a pairing from our own era, Justices Rehnquist and Scalia, and an assessment of Chief Justice Roberts. Throughout the work, the author seeks to show that the temperament a justice brings to the bench can have as much influence on the Court's rulings as any elaborate legal ideology.
Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History
by Daniel Kanstroom (Harvard University Press, 2007)
This legal and social history of deportation aims to answer two fundamental questions: how should we understand deportation and what are the antecedents of our current deportation system? The answers, the author argues, involve much more than immigration and citizenship law. From the post-Revolutionary Alien and Sedition laws, the Fugitive Slave laws, and Indian "removals," to the Chinese exclusion and deportation laws, labor "deportations," the Palmer Raids, the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the uses of today's immigration system, the author argues that deportation has always involved not just border control but social control as well. He concludes that it has now become a crude and inefficient legal tool in ill-defined "wars" on terror and crime.
Lawyers' Poker: 52 Lessons That Lawyers Can Learn From Card Players
by Steven Lubet (Oxford University Press, 2006)
In a series of engaging and informative lessons, this work examines how the tactics of the poker table can be adapted to litigation, negotiation, and virtually every aspect of law practice, and explains how they can be used by lawyers to win their cases. Lawyers, the author asserts, are constantly faced with decisions that require swift action but that are made based on spotty information. Decisions like which depositions to take, which theories to pursue, which questions to ask, and whether to settle or proceed to trial are each influenced by the opponent's behavior. Poker games are much the same, as each player must continually decide whether to raise, call, or fold without seeing some or all of other players' cards, and one of the key strategies is to show strength when your cards are weak and show weakness when your cards are strong. The author concludes that the best card players, like the best lawyers, have a knack for getting their adversaries to react exactly at they want, and that talent separates the winners from the losers. He draws on the insights of seasoned card players to show that attorneys have a lot to learn from such players.
A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America
by Saul Cornell (Oxford University Press, 2006)
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment, with some asserting that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns, and others arguing that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. This comprehensive history of this bitter controversy seeks to prove that both sides are wrong. The author asserts that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right—an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well-regulated militia. He argues that the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. This work provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns.