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
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.
Located at the intersection of law, political science,philosophy, and literary theory, this is a work of constitutionaltheory that explores the nature of American constitutionalinterpretation through a reconsideration of the long-standingdebate between the interpretive theories of originalism andnonoriginalism. It traces that debate to a particular set ofpremises about the nature of language, interpretation, andobjectivity, premises that raise the specter of unconstrained,unstructured constitutional interpretation that has hauntedcontemporary constitutional theory. It presents the novel argumentthat a critique of the underlying premises of originalism dissolvesnot just originalism but nonoriginalism as well, which leads to therecognition that constitutional interpretation is already andalways structured. It makes this argument in terms of the firstprinciple of the American political system: by their fidelity tothe Constitution, Americans are a textual people in that they livein and through the terms of a fun
In this 2008 book, legal scholars, philosophers, historiansand political scientists from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, theUnited Kingdom and the United States analyze the common law throughthree of its classic themes: rules, reasoning andconstitutionalism. Their essays, specially commissioned for thisvolume, provide an opportunity for thinkers from differentjurisdictions and disciplines to talk to each other and to theirwider audience within and beyond the common law world. This bookallows scholars and students to consider how these themes andconcepts relate to one another. It will initiate and sustain a moreinclusive and well-informed theoretical discussion of the commonlaw's method, process and structure. It will be valuable tolawyers, philosophers, political scientists and historiansinterested in constitutional law, comparative law, judicialprocess, legal theory, law and society, legal history, separationof powers, democratic theory, political philosophy, the courts andthe relationship of the comm
The Religious Right has dedicated much of the last thirty years to molding the federal judiciary, always with an eye toward casting the Supreme Court in its image. Through broad political work that has involved grassroots campaigns as much as aggressive lobbying, and a welltended career path for conservative law students and attorneys, the Right has been incredibly effective in influencing major Court decisions on everything from laws banning prayer in school to women's secure access to abortion and birth control. How will the courts set in place in recent decades confront stem cell research, gay rights, or euthanasia in a new era? In The Court and the Cross, attorney and legal journalist Frederick Lane draws on legal history and savvy political analysis to expose, in layperson's terms, the Religious Right's unrelenting efforts to declare the United States a Christian nation.
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
An English court in 1736 described rape as an accusation“easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defendedby the party accused, though never so innocent. ”To prove thecrime, the law required a woman to physically resist, to put up a“hue and cry,” as evidence of her unwillingness. Beginning in the1970s, however, feminist and victim-advocacy groups began changingattitudes toward rape so the crime is now seen as violent initself: the legal definition of rape now includes everything fromthe sadistic serial rapist to the eighteen-year-old who hasconsensual sex with a fourteen-year-old. This inclusiveness means there are now more rapists among us. Andmore of rape’s camp followers: the prison-makers, the communitywatchdogs, law-and-order politicians, and the real-crime/real-timeentertainment industry. Vanessa Place examines the ambiguity ofrape law by presenting cases where guilt lies, but lies uneasily,and leads into larger ethical questions of what defines guilt, whatis justice, and wh
Computers and the Law provides readers with an introduction tothe legal issues associated with computing – particularly in themassively networked context of the Internet. Assuming no previousknowledge of the law or any special knowledge of programming orcomputer science, this textbook offers undergraduates of alldisciplines and professionals in the computing industry anunderstanding of basic legal principles and an awareness of thepeculiarities associated with legal issues in cyberspace. This isnot a law school casebook, but rather a variety of carefullychosen, relevant cases presented in redacted form. The full casesare available on an ancillary Web site. The pervasiveness ofcomputing in modern society has generated numerous legalambiguities. This book introduces readers to the fundamentalworkings of the law in physical space and suggests the opportunityto create new types of laws with nontraditional goals.
'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.'
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
