On June 28, 1972 in a South Bronx subway station, John Skagen,a white off-duty policeman on his way home, suddenly and withoutapparent provocation, ordered James Richardson, a black man on hisway to work, to get against the wall and put his hands up.Richardson had a gun, and the two exchanged shots. In the meleethat followed, Skagen was fatally wounded by a cop who rushed tothe scene. In the ensuing trial, William Kunstler handledRichardson's defense and the author of this book, then assistantdistrict attorney, prosecuted the case. Here is a first-hand,behind-the-scenes account of every step of the proceedings.

David Boies, the star trial lawyer in a country obsessedwith legal drama, proves endlessly fascinating in this compulsivelyreadable account of his extraordinary career.A man of almostsuperhuman accomplishment, Boies argued a string of headline-makingcases before being catapulted to international prominence when herepresented Al Gore before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. Brash, reckless, and prideful, he is also charming,charismatic, unerringly articulate in the courtroom, and supremelycomfortable in the public eye. Legal journalist Karen Donovan,herself a lawyer, had unprecedented access to Boies for nearly twoyears. In v. Goliath she gives us a scintillating chronicleof the legal dramas in which Boies has played a crucial role and ariveting, up-close portrait of a singularly gifted lawyer.

This is primarily a textbook for graduate and upper-levelundergraduate students of law. However, practising lawyers andpolicy-makers who are looking for an introduction to WTO law willalso find it invaluable. The book covers both the institutional andsubstantive law of the WTO. While the treatment of the law is oftenquite detailed, the main aim of this textbook is to make clear thebasic principles and underlying logic of WTO law and the worldtrading system. Each section contains questions and assignments, toallow students to assess their understanding and develop usefulpractical skills. At the end of each chapter there is a helpfulsummary, as well as an exercise on specific, true-to-lifeinternational trade problems.

There is no more powerful, detested, misunderstood AfricanAmerican in our public life than Clarence Thomas. SupremeDiscomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas is a hauntingportrait of an isolated and complex man, savagely reviled by muchof the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society,internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and ruralpoverty in Georgia, to elite educational institutions, to thepinnacle of judicial power. His staunchly conservative positions oncrime, abortion, and, especially, affirmative action have exposedhim to charges of heartlessness and hypocrisy, in that he ishimself the product of a broken home who manifestly benefited fromracially conscious admissions policies. Supreme Discomfort is a superbly researched and reportedwork that features testimony from friends and foes alike who havenever spoken in public about Thomas before—including a candidconversation with his fellow justice and ideological ally, AntoninScalia. It offers a long-overdue windo

Co-edited and introduced by Toni Morrison, winner of the NobelPrize in Literature, Birth of a Nation'hood elucidates as neverbefore the grim miasma of the O.J. Simpson case, which has elicitedgargantuan fascination. As they pertain to the scandal, the issues of race, sex,violence, money, and the media are refracted through twelvepowerful essays that have been written especially for this book bydistinguished intellectuals--black and white, male and female.Together these keen analyses of a defining American moment cast achilling gaze on the * and spectacle of the insidious tensionsthat rend our society, even as they ponder the proper historical,cultural, political, legal, psychological, and linguisticramifications of the affair. With contributions by: Toni Morrison, George Lipsitz, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., withAderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh, Nikol G. Alexanderand Drucilla Cornell, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Ishmael Reed,Leola Johnson and David Roediger, Andrew Ross, P

'We have no choice but to go fight,' WaLty said,his voice still hoarse, his delivery slow. 'We try to piecetogether some proof. We go to court and fight Likehell, and when we Lose we can tell our clients that we foughtthe good fight. In every Lawsuit,somebody wins, somebody Loses.Sure, we'll get our butts kicked, but at this point I'drather walk out of the courtroom with my head upthan deal with sanctions and malpractice claims.'

In this amazing story of high stakes competition between twotitans, Richard Moran shows how the electric chair developed notout of the desire to be more humane but through an effort by onenineteenth-century electric company to discredit the other. In 1882, Thomas Edison ushered in the “age of electricity” whenhe illuminated Manhattan’s Pearl Street with his direct current(DC) system. Six years later, George Westinghouse lit up Buffalowith his less expensive alternating current (AC). The two menquickly became locked in a fierce rivalry, made all the morecomplicated by a novel new application for their product: theelectric chair. When Edison set out to persuade the state of NewYork to use Westinghouse’s current to execute condemned criminals,Westinghouse fought back in court, attempting to stop the firstelectrocution and keep AC from becoming the “executioner’scurrent.” In this meticulously researched account of the ensuinglegal battle and the horribly botched first execution, Moran r

From prosecuting (and defending) murderers in the Bronx tohandling the public and private problems of Manhattan’s elite, Mouthpiece recounts the colorful adventures of New YorkCity’s ultimate legal operator. “In the pages before us, the Counselor tells a saga’s worth oftales of the city. As the saying goes, he’s got a million ofthem.” — Tom Wolfe, from his Introduction Edward Hayes is that unusual combination: the likable lawyer, onewho could have stepped off the stages of Guys and Dolls or Chicago . Mouthpiece is his story—an irreverent,entertaining, and revealing look at the practice of law in moderntimes and a social and political anatomy of New York City. Itrecounts Hayes’s childhood in the tough Irish sections of Queensand his eventual escape to the University of Virginia and then toColumbia Law School. Not at all white-shoe-firm material, Hayesheaded to the hair-raising, crime-ridden South Bronx of themidseventies—first as a homicide prosecutor and then as a defenseattor

A brilliant new approach to the Constitution and courts of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.For Justice Breyer, the Constitution s primary role is to preserve and encouragewhat he calls active liberty : citizen participation in shaping government and its laws. As this book argues, promoting active liberty requires judicial modesty and deference to Congress; it also means recognizing the changing needs and demands of the populace. Indeed, the Constitution s lasting brilliance is that its principles may be adapted to cope with unanticipated situations, and Breyer makes a powerful case against treating it as a static guide intended for a world that is dead and gone. Using contemporary examples from federalism to privacy to affirmative action, this is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the role and power of our courts.

This 2004 book is a comparative study of the American legaldevelopment in the mid-nineteenth century. Focusing on Illinois andVirginia, supported by observations from six additional states, thebook traces the crucial formative moment in the development of anAmerican system of common law in northern and southern courts. Theprocess of legal development, and the form the basic analyticalcategories of American law came to have, are explained as theproducts of different responses to the challenge of new industrialtechnologies, particularly railroads. The nature of those responseswas dictated by the ideologies that accompanied the social,political, and economic orders of the two regions. American commonlaw, ultimately, is found to express an emerging model ofcitizenship, appropriate to modern conditions. As a result, theprocess of legal development provides an illuminating perspectiveon the character of American political thought in a formativeperiod of the nation.

This 2005 book argues that Europeanization and globalizationhave led to ever-more intensive legalization at transnationallevel. What accounts for compliance beyond the nation-state? Theauthors tackle this question by comparing compliance withregulations that have been formulated in a very similar way atdifferent levels of governance. They test compliance with rules atthe national level, at the regional level (EU), and at a globallevel (WTO), finding that in fact the EU has higher levels ofcompliance than both international and national rules. The authorsargue that this is because the EU has a higher level oflegalization, combined with effective monitoring mechanisms andsanctions. In this respect it seems that the European Union hasindeed achieved a high level of legalization and compliance, thoughthe authors add that this achievement does not settle the relatedqueries with the legitimacy of transnational governance andlaw.

The fact that London was parliamentarian rather than royalistwas one of the principal reasons for the defeat of Charles I in theEnglish Civil War. This book reinterprets London's role. Itexamines the relation of the municipality and of the City fathersas business magnates with both of the early Stuart kings and theirparliaments, and explores the business connections of the City withthe royal court, concluding that, far from being the natural alliesof the king and court as is generally assumed, the City elite hadmostly been seriously alienated from them by 1640. Professor Ashtonoffers an interpretation not only of the City's role in the yearsbefore 1640 but also of the reasons lying behind its support forparliament in 1642. It is both a contribution to the debate on theorigins of the Civil War and a study in depth of the connectionbetween big business and politics in early Stuart England.

This historical narrative of the Salem witch trials takesits dialogue from actual trial records but applies modernpsychiatric knowledge to the witchcraft hysteria. Starkey's senseof drama also vividly recreates the atmosphere of pity and terrorthat fostered the evil and suffering of this human tragedy.

The death penalty is one of the most hotly contested issues inAmerica today. Evidence continues to mount that many innocentpeople have been executed or are currently living on death row, andthat minority groups and the poor suffer from a shoddy publicdefense system and discriminatory application of capital charges.Meanwhile, the myth of deterrence has been revealed to be false,and an increasing number of Americans are beginning to questiontheir support for capital punishment. Legal Lynching offers a succinct, accessible introduction to thedebate over the death penalty's history and future, exposing achilling frequency of legal error, systemic racial and economicdiscrimination, and pervasive government misconduct. This is anessential book for readers across the political spectrum who wishto cut through the common myths and assumptions about the efficacyand morality of state-sanctioned killing.