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Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers
James F. Simon
The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and the president's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency. James Simon, author of the acclaimed What Kind of Nation, brings to vivid life the passionate struggle during the worst crisis in the nation's history, the Civil War. The issues that underlaid that crisis -- race, states' rights, and the president's wartime authority -- resonate today in the nation's political debate.
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Membership for Taiwan in the United Nations
Lung-chu Chen
Membership for Taiwan in the United Nations offers the reader a spectrum of articles from today's leading legal scholars, politicians, and policy makers who thoughtfully examines the challenges and the unwavering determination behind Taiwan's pursuit of membership in the United Nations. It also includes a transcript of the international conference on Taiwan and the United Nations which captures the passion of those who care deeply about the fate of Taiwan
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Originalism, Federalism, and the American Constitutional Enterprise: A Historical Inquiry
Edward A. Purcell Jr.
In this historical examination of American federalism, Edward A. Purcell Jr. refutes the widely accepted notion that the founding fathers carefully crafted a constitutional balance of power between the states and the federal government. His argument is based on close analysis of the Constitution’s original structure and the ways that structure both induced and accommodated changes over the centuries.
There was no clear agreement among the founding fathers regarding the “true” nature of American federalism, Purcell contends, nor was there a consensus on “correct” lines dividing state and national authority. Furthermore, even had there been some true “original” understanding, the elastic and dynamic nature of the constitutional structure would have made it impossible for subsequent generations to maintain any “original” or permanent balance. Purcell traces the evolution of federalism through the centuries, focusing particularly on shifting interpretations founded on political interests. He concludes with insights into current issues of federal power and a discussion of the grounds on which legitimate decisions about federal and state power should rest.
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Remedies: Public & Private, 4th ed
David I. Levine, David J. Jung, David Schoenbrod, and Angus Macbeth
Table of Contents Only
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Saving our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People (2006)
David Schoenbrod
Congress empowered the Environmental Protection Agency on the theory that only a national agency that is insulated from accountability to voters could produce the scientifically grounded pollution rules needed to save a careless public from its own filth. In this provocative book, David Schoenbrod explains how his experience as an environmental advocate brought him to this startling realization: letting EPA dictate to the nation is a mistake.
Through a series of gripping and illuminating anecdotes from his own career, the author reveals the EPA to be an agency that, under Democrats and Republicans alike, delays good rules, imposes bad ones, and is so big, muscle-bound, and remote that it does unnecessary damage to our society. EPA stays in power, he says, because it enables elected legislators to evade responsibility by hiding behind appointed bureaucrats. The best environmental rules—those that have done the most good—have come when Congress had to take responsibility or from states and localities rather than the EPA.
With the passion of an authentic environmentalist, Schoenbrod makes a sensible plea for “bottom-up” environmental protection now. The responsibility for pollution control belongs not in agencies but in legislatures, and usually not at the federal level but rather closer to home.
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Democratizing Capital: The History, Law And Reform of the Community Reinvestment Act
Richard D. Marsico
Since 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has required banks to meet the credit needs of their local communities, including low-income neighborhoods. Since then, banks have committed to make more than $1 trillion in loans for housing, small businesses, small farms, and economic development in low-income neighborhoods. Despite this record, the CRA and its implementing regulations have been unsatisfactory to banks, advocates, and even bank regulators charged with enforcing the law. Author Richard Marsico traces this dissatisfaction to an imbalance in banking regulators' resolution of the CRA's tension between requiring banks to lend to low-income neighborhoods, but not requiring them to allocate credit, resulting in a CRA enforcement regime that is unpredictable and inconsistent. It will be relevant to people interested in studying, understanding, enforcing, complying with, and improving the CRA, including students, scholars, government officials, bankers, attorneys, and activists. It can be used as a supplement to a traditional banking course, in community economic development and clinical courses, and in other courses that focus on urban policy, law and social change, community organizing, and economic justice.
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Thomas Jefferson: The Revolution of Ideas
Richard B. Bernstein
In this new concise biography Thomas Jefferson historian R.B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder not as a great political figure, but as leader of a "revolution of ideas that would make the world over again".
Bernstein examines Jefferson's strengths and weaknesses, his achievements and failures, his triumphs, contradictions, and failings. Thomas Jefferson details his luxurious (and debt-burdened) life as a Virginia gentleman to his passionate belief in democracy, from his tortured defense of slavery to his relationship with Sally Hemings. An architect, inventor, writer, diplomat, propagandist, planter, party leader Jefferson was multifaceted, and Bernstein explores these roles even as he illuminates Jefferson's central place in American enlightenment the "revolution of ideas" that did so much to create the nation we are today. Bernstein also examines the less-remembered points in Jefferson's thinking the nature of the Union, his vision of who was entitled to citizenship, his dread of debt (both personal and national).
Thomas Jefferson is the latest title in the Oxford Portraits series, which offers informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Each volume in the series is heavily based on primary documents, including writings by and about each subject. Every Oxford Portrait is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, original letters, manuscripts, and memorabilia that frame the personality and achievements of its subject against the backdrop of history. Every volume in the series can be incorporated into the American history curriculum at the middle and high school levels. -
Democracy by Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government (2003)
Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod
Schools, welfare agencies, and a wide variety of other state and local institutions of vital importance to citizens are controlled by attorneys and judges rather than governors and mayors. In this book, Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod explain how this has come to pass, why it has resulted in service to the public that is worse, not better, and what can be done to restore control of these programs to democratically elected - and accountable - officials.
Sandler and Schoenbrod tell how the courts, with the best intentions and often with the approval of elected officials, came to control ordinary policy making through court decrees. These court regimes, they assert, impose rigid and often ancient detailed plans that can founder on reality. Newly elected officials, who may wish to alter the plans in response to the changing wishes of voters, cannot do so unless attorneys, court-appointed functionaries, and lower-echelon officials agree. The result is neither judicial government nor good government, say Sandler and Schoenbrod, and they offer practical reforms that would set governments free from this judicial stranglehold, allow courts to do their legitimate job of protecting rights, and strengthen democracy.
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The Complete Retirement Survival Guide : Everything You Need to Know to Safeguard Your Money, Your Health, and Your Independence
Peter J. Strauss and Nancy M. Lederman
Table of Contents only
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The Essentials of NY Mental Health Law: A Straightforward Guide for Clinicians of All Disciplines
Stephen H. Behnke, J.D., PH.D; Michael L. Perlin, J.D.; and Marvin Bernstein, J.D.
Table of Contents only
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Thomas Jefferson
Richard B. Bernstein
Thomas Jefferson designed his own tombstone, describing himself simply as "Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia." It is in this simple epitaph that R.B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder--not as a great political figure, but as leader of "a revolution of ideas that would make the world over again."
In Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein offers the definitive short biography of this revered American--the first concise life in six decades. Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into a swift, insightful, evenhanded account. Here are all of Jefferson's triumphs, contradictions, and failings, from his luxurious (and debt-burdened) life as a Virginia gentleman to his passionate belief in democracy, from his tortured defense of slavery to his relationship with Sally Hemings. Jefferson was indeed multifaceted--an architect, inventor, writer, diplomat, propagandist, planter, party leader--and Bernstein explores all these roles even as he illuminates Jefferson's central place in the American enlightenment, that "revolution of ideas" that did so much to create the nation we know today. Together with the less well-remembered points in Jefferson's thinking--the nature of the Union, his vision of who was entitled to citizenship, his dread of debt (both personal and national)--they form the heart of this lively biography.
In this marvel of compression and comprehension, we see Jefferson more clearly than in the massive studies of earlier generations. More important, we see, in Jefferson's visionary ideas, the birth of the nation's grand sense of purpose. -
What Kind of Nation Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (2003)
James F. Simon
The bitter and protracted struggle between President Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall defined the basic constitutional relationship between the executive and judicial branches of government. More than one hundred fifty years later, their clashes still reverberate in constitutional debates and political battles.
In this dramatic and fully accessible account of these titans of the early republic and their fiercely held ideas, James F. Simon brings to life the early history of the nation and sheds new light on the highly charged battle to balance the powers of the federal government and the rights of the states. A fascinating look at two of the nation's greatest statesmen and shrewdest politicians, What Kind of Nation presents a cogent, unbiased assessment of their lasting impact on American government. -
Laboring Below the Line: The New Ethnography of Poverty, Low-Wage Work, and Survival in the Global Economy (2002)
Frank W. Munger
Frank Munger, editor
Introduction: Identity as a Weapon in the Moral Politics of Work and Poverty
As the distribution of wealth between rich and poor in the United States grew more and more unequal over the past twenty years, this economic gap assumed a life of its own in the popular culture. The news and entertainment media increasingly portrayed the lives of the poor with such stereotypes as the lazy welfare mother and the thuggish teen, offering Americans few ways to learn how the "other half" really lives. Laboring Below the Line works to bridge this gap by synthesizing a wide range of qualitative scholarship on the working poor. The result is a coherent, nuanced portrait of how life is lived below the poverty line, and a compelling analysis of the systemic forces in which poverty is embedded, and through which it is perpetuated. Laboring Below the Line explores the role of interpretive research in understanding the causes and effects of poverty. Drawing on perspectives of the working poor, welfare recipients, and marginally employed men and women, the contributors―an interdisciplinary roster of ethnographers, oral historians, qualitative sociologists, and narrative analysts―dissect the life circumstances that affect the personal outlook, ability to work, and expectations for the future of these people. For example, Carol Stack views the work aspirations of an Oakland teenager for whom a job is important, even though it strains her academic performance. And Ruth Buchanan looks at low-wage telemarketing workers who are attempting to move up the economic ladder while balancing family, education, and other important commitments. What emerges is a compelling picture of low-wage workers―one that illustrates the precarious circumstances of individuals struggling with the economic conditions and institutions that surround them Each chapter also explores the capacity for economic survival from a different angle, with ancillary commentary complementing the ethnographies with perspectives from other fields of study, such as economics. At this moment of governmental retrenchment, ethnography's complex, nonstereotypical portraits of individual people fighting against poverty are especially important. Laboring Below the Line reveals the ambiguities of real lives, the potential for individuals to change in unexpected ways, and the even greater intricacy of the collective life of a community.
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Brandeis and the Progressive Constitution: Erie, the Judicial Power, and the Politics of the Federal Courts in Twentieth-Century America
Edward A. Purcell, Jr.
This book examines both the constitutional jurisprudence of Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis and one of his most famous and controversial opinions, Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938). This landmark decision led to a significant relocation of power from federal to state courts, and, says the author, it provides a window on the legal, political, and ideological battles over the federal courts in the New Deal era and after.
Purcell received the Coif Triennial Book Award and the Triennial Griswold Prize for this book.
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Transitional Justice
Ruiti G. Teitel
Ruti Teitel explores the ways in which a society should respond to evil rule. This is an insightful analysis of one of the most fundamental political science issues of our times - how the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere should deal with the legal systems inherited from their authoritarian pasts.
Should the past system be repudiated altogether? Should the leaders from the authoritarian period be punished? If so, how? Under what principles of law would punishment be justified, given that the leaders were, in general, acting legally according to the legal systems in effect at the time? This book is the first systematic treatment of these issues.
Teitel brings an exceptional breadth of knowledge to bear on the problem, a must read for anyone interested in the role of law in contemporary world politics.
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A Practical Companion to the Constitution: How the Supreme Court Has Ruled on Issues from Abortion to Zoning
Jethro K. Lieberman
This is the most comprehensive and readable one-volume reference book in print, accessible to lay readers and specialists alike, on the meaning of the American Constitution as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. It is an indispensable tool for students and lay persons who want to understand today's constitutional controversies and their background in our history. It is equally useful to lawyers and other specialists who seek quick reviews of constitutional issues with immediate reference to cases for further research.
Unlike conventional treatises that discuss the Constitution clause by clause or under a few broad concepts, this book uniquely treats every aspect of the Constitution and every constitutional topic in alphabetical order, in more than 1,000 short essays. It is extensively cross-referenced and exhaustively indexed, so that even a reader with only a minimal notion of the Constitution or constitutional law can quickly find clear answers to questions about pressing issues of the day.
Among the other unique features: a set of introductory essays on the background of the Constitution and the many difficulties of interpreting it; a concordance to each word and phrase in the Constitution; a year-by-year chronology of justices who have served on the Supreme Court; and a table of the more than 2,650 Supreme Court cases from 1792 to the present referred to in the book, listing the vote, the author of the majority opinion, the concurring and dissenting justices, and the length of the opinions. -
Thomas Jefferson and Bolling v Bolling
Richard B. Bernstein
The manuscript account of the arguments in the case of Bolling v Bolling, chiefly in the hand of Thomas Jefferson, has been published for the first time in this book. The manuscript, which is now in the collection of the Henry E Huntington Library, contains the most complete known account of arguments submitted to an American colonial court. The book's introduction to the court case places it into its proper context.
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Competition Policy in America 1888-1992: History, Rhetoric, Law
Rudolph J.R. Peritz
Americans have long appealed to images of free competition in calling for free enterprise, freedom of contract, free labor, free trade, and free speech. This imagery has retained its appeal in myriad aspects of public policy--for example, Senator Sherman's Anti-Trust Act of 1890, Justice Holmes's metaphorical marketplace of ideas, and President Reagan's rhetoric of deregulation.
In Competition Policy in America, 1888-1992, Rudolph Peritz explores the durability of free competition imagery by tracing its influences on public policy. Looking at congressional debates and hearings, administrative agency activities, court opinions, arguments of counsel, and economic, legal, and political scholarship, he finds that free competition has actually evoked two different visions--freedom not only from oppressive government, but also from private economic power. He shows how the discourse of free competition has mediated between commitments to individual liberty and rough equality--themselves unstable over time. This rhetorical approach allows us to understand, for example, that the Reagan and Carter programs of deregulation, both inspired by the rhetoric of free competition, were driven by fundamentally different visions of political economy.
Peritz's historical inquiry into competition policy as a series of government directives, inspired by two complex yet distinct and sometimes contradictory visions of free competition, provides an indispensable framework for understanding modern political economy-- whether political campaign finance reform, corporate takeover regulation, or current attitudes toward the New Deal Legacy. Competition Policy in America will be of great interest to lawyers, historians, economists, sociologists, and policy makers in both government and business. -
Amending America: If We Love The Constitution So Much, Why Do We Keep Trying To Change It?
Richard B. Bernstein
Even as we marvel at the grandeur of our constitutional system, we can't resist tinkering with it. Amending America tells the dramatic story of how, over the past 206 years, the American people have reshaped the Constitution to meet the country's changing needs. It describes how we have adopted 27 amendments since 1789-and debated and rejected 10,000 more.
A provocative examination of one of America's most important yet least-known democratic tools, Amending America brings to life events in our history that continue to resonate today as, as various politicians have set their hearts on amendments to balance the budget, to ban abortion, or to allow school prayer.
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