Юриспруденция, право
Различные книги в жанре Юриспруденция, правоFreeing Speech
The United States is in the midst of a heated conversation over how the Constitution impacts national security. In a traditional reading of the document, America uses military force only after a full and informed national debate. However, modern presidents have had unparalleled access to the media as well as control over the information most relevant to these debates, which jeopardizes the abilities of a democracy’s citizens to fully participate in the discussion. In Freeing Speech, John Denvir targets this issue of presidential dominance and proposes an ambitious solution: a First Amendment that makes sure the voices of opposition are heard.Denvir argues that the First Amendment’s goal is to protect the entire structure of democratic debate, even including activities ancillary to the dissemination of speech itself. Assessing the right of political association, the use of public streets and parks for political demonstrations, the press’ ability to comment on public issues, and presidential speech on national security, Denvir examines why this democratic model of free speech is essential at all times, but especially during the War on Terror.
Evolution of the Judicial Opinion
In this sweeping study of the judicial opinion, William D. Popkin examines how judges' opinions have been presented from the early American Republic to the present. Throughout history, he maintains, judges have presented their opinions within political contexts that involve projecting judicial authority to the external public, yet within a professional legal culture that requires opinions to develop judicial law through particular institutional and individual judicial styles.Tracing the history of judicial opinion from its roots in English common law, Popkin documents a general shift from unofficially reported oral opinions, to semi-official reports, to the U.S. Supreme Court's adoption in the early nineteenth century of generally unanimous opinions. While this institutional base was firmly established by the twentieth century, Popkin suggests that the modern U.S. judicial opinion has reverted—in some respects—to one in which each judge expresses an individual point of view. Ultimately, he concludes that a shift from an authoritative to a more personal and exploratory individual style of writing opinions is consistent with a more democratic judicial institution.
Elusive Citizenship
Since the late nineteenth century, federal and state rules governing immigration and naturalization have placed persons of Asian ancestry outside the boundaries of formal membership. A review of leading cases in American constitutional law regarding Asians would suggest that initially, Asian immigrants tended to evade exclusionary laws through deliberate misrepresentations of their identities or through extralegal means. Eventually, many of these immigrants and their descendants came to accept prevailing legal norms governing their citizenship in the United States. In many cases, this involved embracing notions of white supremacy. John S. W. Park argues that American rules governing citizenship and belonging remain fundamentally unjust, even though they suggest the triumph of a «civil rights» vision, where all citizens share the same basic rights. By continuing to privilege members over non-members in ways that are politically popular, these rules mask injustices that violate principles of fairness. Importantly, Elusive Citizenship also suggests that politically and socially, full membership in American society remains closely linked with participation in exclusionary practices that isolate racial minorities in America.
Downsizing Prisons
Over two million people are incarcerated in America’s prisons and jails, eight times as many since 1975. Mandatory minimum sentencing, parole agencies intent on sending people back to prison, three-strike laws, for-profit prisons, and other changes in the legal system have contributed to this spectacular rise of the general prison population.After overseeing the largest city jail system in the country, Michael Jacobson knows first-hand the inner workings of the corrections system. In Downsizing Prisons , he convincingly argues that mass incarceration will not, as many have claimed, reduce crime nor create more public safety. Simply put, throwing away the key is not the answer.
Doing Time in the Depression
As banks crashed, belts tightened, and cupboards emptied across the country, American prisons grew fat. Doing Time in the Depression tells the story of the 1930s as seen from the cell blocks and cotton fields of Texas and California prisons, state institutions that held growing numbers of working people from around the country and the world—overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately non-white, and displaced by economic crisis. Ethan Blue paints a vivid portrait of everyday life inside Texas and California’s penal systems. Each element of prison life—from numbing boredom to hard labor, from meager pleasure in popular culture to crushing pain from illness or violence—demonstrated a contest between keepers and the kept. From the moment they arrived to the day they would leave, inmates struggled over the meanings of race and manhood, power and poverty, and of the state itself. In this richly layered account, Blue compellingly argues that punishment in California and Texas played a critical role in producing a distinctive set of class, race, and gender identities in the 1930s, some of which reinforced the social hierarchies and ideologies of New Deal America, and others of which undercut and troubled the established social order. He reveals the underside of the modern state in two very different prison systems, and the making of grim institutions whose power would only grow across the century.
Does the Law Morally Bind the Poor?
Consider the horror we feel when we learn of a crime such as that committed by Robert Alton Harris, who commandeered a car, killed the two teenage boys in it, and then finished what was left of their lunch. What we don't consider in our reaction to the depravity of this act is that, whether we morally blame him or not, Robert Alton Harris has led a life almost unimaginably different from our own in crucial respects. In Does Law Morally Bind the Poor? or What Good's the Constitution When You Can't Buy a Loaf of Bread? , author R. George Wright argues that while the poor live in the same world as the rest of us, their world is crucially different. The law does not recognize this difference, however, and proves to be inconsistent by excusing the trespasses of persons fleeing unexpected storms, but not those of the involuntarily homeless. He persuasively concludes that we can reject crude environmental determinism without holding the most deprived to unreasonable standards.
Disabled Education
Enacted in1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act – now called theIndividuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides all children withthe right to a free and appropriate public education. On the face of it, theIDEA is a shining example of law’s democratizing impulse. But is that reallythe case? In Disabled Education, Ruth Colker digs deep beneath theIDEA’s surface and reveals that the IDEA contains flaws that were evident atthe time of its enactment that limit its effectiveness for poor and minoritychildren. Both anexpert in disability law and the mother of a child with a hearing impairment,Colker learned first-hand of the Act’s limitations when she embarked on a legalbattle to persuade her son’s school to accommodate his impairment. Colker wasable to devote the considerable resources of a middle-class lawyer to herstruggle and ultimately won, but she knew that the IDEA would not havebenefitted her son without her time-consuming and costly legal intervention.Her experience led her to investigate other cases, which confirmed hersuspicions that the IDEA best serves those with the resources to advocatestrongly for their children. The IDEAalso works only as well as the rest of the system does: struggling schools thatserve primarily poor students of color rarely have the funds to provideappropriate special education and related services to their students withdisabilities. Through a close examination of the historical evolution of theIDEA, the actual experiences of children who fought for their education incourt, and social science literature on the meaning of “learning disability,”Colker reveals the IDEA’s shortcomings, but also suggests ways in whichresources might be allocated more evenly along class lines.
Disability Harassment
Building on the insights of both disability studies and civil rights scholars, Mark C. Weber frames his examination of disability harassment on the premise that disabled people are members of a minority group that must negotiate an artificial yet often damaging environment of physical and attitudinal barriers. The book considers courts’ approaches to the problem of disability harassment, particularly the application of an analogy to race and sex harassment and the development of legal remedies and policy reforms under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While litigation under the ADA has addressed discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and education, Weber points out that the law has done little to combat disability harassment. He recommends that arguments based on unused provisions of the ADA should be developed and new legal remedies advanced to address the problem. Disability Harassment also draws on case law to explore special problems of harassment in the public schools, and closes with an appeal to judges and lawmakers for expanded legal protection against harassment.
Destructive Messages
Destructive Messages argues that hate speech is dangerous not only when it poses an immediate threat of harm. It is also dangerous when it is systematically developed over time, becoming part of a culturally acceptable dialogue which can foster the persecution of minorities.Tsesis traces a causal link between racist and biased rhetoric and injustices like genocide and slavery. He shows that hate speech and propaganda, when left unregulated, can weave animosity into the social fabric to such a great extent that it can cultivate an environment supportive of the commission of hate crimes. Tsesis uses historical examples to illuminate the central role racist speech played in encouraging attitudes that led to human rights violations against German Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans, and also discusses the dangers posed by hate speech spread on the Internet today. He also offers an examination of the psychology of scapegoating. Destructive Messages argues that when hate speech is systematically developed over time it poses an even greater threat than when it creates an immediate clear and present danger. Tsesis offers concrete suggestions concerning how to reform current law in order to protect the rights of all citizens.
Criminal Justice
This, the twenty-seventh volume in the annual series of publications by the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, features a number of distinguised contributors addressing the topic of criminal justice. Part I considers «The Moral and Metaphysical Sources of the Criminal Law,» with contributions by Michael S. Moore, Lawrence Rosen, and Martin Shapiro. The four chapters in Part II all relate, more or less directly, to the issue of retribution, with papers by Hugo Adam Bedau, Michael Davis, Jeffrie G. Murphy, and R. B. Brandt. In the following part, Dennis F. Thompson, Christopher D. Stone, and Susan Wolf deal with the special problem of criminal responsibility in government—one of great importance in modern society. The fourth and final part, echoing the topic of NOMOS XXIV, Ethics, Economics, and the Law , addresses the economic theory of crime. The section includes contributions by Alvin K. Klevorick, Richard A. Posner, Jules L. Coleman, and Stephen J. Schulhofer. A valuable bibiography on criminal justice by Andrew C. Blanar concludes this volume of NOMOS.