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 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Sweeping and important.... Provides a fascinating vision ofjustice and history. --The Washington Post Book World From the head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission comes alandmark study of the ways in which prejudice has shaped Americanjustice from the Civil War era to the present. With an ear tuned tothe social subtext of every judicial decision, Mary Frances Berryexamines a century's worth of appellate cases, ranging from anineteenth-century Alabama case in which a white woman was deniedher divorce petition because an affair between a white man (herhusband) and a black woman (his lover) was "of no consequence," tosuch recent, high-profile cases as the William Kennedy Smith andO.J. Simpson trials. By turns shocking, moving, ironic, and tragic,each tale ends in the laying down of law. And because the lawperpetuates myths of race, gender, and class, they are stories thataffect the lives of us all.
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
In pursuit of fairness at any cost, we have created a societyparalyzed by legal fear: Doctors are paranoid and principalspowerless. Little league coaches, scared of liability, stopvolunteering. Schools and hospitals start to crumble. The commongood fades, replaced by a cacophony of people claiming their“individual rights.” By turns funny and infuriating, this startling book dissects thedogmas of fairness that allow self-interested individuals to bullythe rest of society. Philip K. Howard explains how, trying to honorindividual rights, we removed the authority needed to maintain afree society. Teachers don’t even have authority to maintain orderin the classroom. With no one in charge, the safe course is toavoid any possible risk. Seesaws and diving boards are removed.Ridiculous warning labels litter the American landscape: “Caution:Contents Are Hot.” Striving to protect “individual rights,” we ended up losing muchof our freedom. When almost any decision that someone disagreeswi
