February 2009 Archives

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), in the Library of Congress, provides research services for Congressional committees and members of Congress. CRS reports are known for their depth and quality, and they can be excellent resources for legislative history or policy research. Recent reports include:

Free Trade Agreements: Impact on U.S. Trade and Implications for U.S. Trade Policy, January 13, 2009;

Pay Discrimination Claims Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act: A Legal Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc., January 13, 2009;

Tax Cuts for Short-Run Economic Stimulus: Recent Experiences, January 9, 2009;

Wilderness Laws: Permitted and Prohibited Uses, January 7, 2009.

The CRS works exclusively for Congress and does not release its reports directly to the public, but members of Congress are allowed to share reports with the public. Despite efforts by interested organizations and members of Congress, these reports have been difficult to obtain—until now.

WikiLeaks, a non-profit dedicated to government transparency, recently obtained and released 6,780 CRS reports dating back to 1990. WikiLeaks also shared the reports with OpenCRS, a project of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Thanks to these two organizations, you can find in-depth and high-quality reports relevant to your research.

Source: Ross-Blakley Law Library blog

Due to the inclement weather, the Law Library is closing at 6 pm today.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

Photo by jackleg

The Organized Lawyer. Kelly Lynn Anders.
Carolina Academic Press, 2008, softcover, 155 pages. Call number: On Order at the Law Library
Corresponding website: http://theorganizedlawyer.com/

With innumerable responsibilities and countless demands on their time, developing and maintaining an organized workspace is a low priority for many lawyers. In her new book, The Organized Lawyer, Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Washburn University School of Law Kelly Lynn Anders rejects the premise that workplace organization is unimportant, articulating instead the many personal and professional benefits that attorneys derive from an organized workspace, and the dangers they face in ignoring or minimizing the importance of office organization. Written with the needs of lawyers in mind, in this brief 155-page work, Anders invites readers to identify their individual “organizational style,” and to use this information to make decisions about office layout, desk arrangements, storage, filing systems, and personal organizers. Attorneys who apply these suggestions can expect improvements in the functionality of their workspace.

Read the rest of the review here.

Free Pacer Sites Shut Down After Mass Download by Open Records Advocate
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A trial of free Pacer service at 17 public libraries shut down last fall after public records advocates downloaded an estimated 20 percent of the entire database.

At the time, an official from the Government Printing Office told librarians that Pacer security had been compromised and the FBI was conducting an investigation, the New York Times reports. A government notice said the program was suspended “pending an evaluation.”

Aaron Swartz, a 22-year-old Stanford dropout, did the mass download from Pacer at the behest of open records advocate Carl Malamud, who wants to make the court documents available for free on the Internet, the story says. Last year, Malamud used $600,000 in contributions to buy and post 50 years of federal appellate papers. Now he wants to post lower court records.

Read the whole story at this site.

Great Conversations: March 10, 2009
Seymour Hersh, Larry Jacobs, & Walter Mondale
March 10, 2009

Since the second World War, America has been locked in an ongoing constitutional crisis over the authority and roles of the legislative and executive branches. Most recently, the Bush administration’s handling of “enemy combatants” precipitated intense inter-branch disputes over the conduct of American foreign policy and national security. Join three experts as they review the constitutional framework of the American model of governance.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh is widely acknowledged as the most influential investigative reporter of the past 40 years. His focus is, and has always been, the abuse of power in the name of national security. His ground-breaking exposes include many landmarks in American journalism including uncovering the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the C.I.A.’s secret bombing of Cambodia and, most recently, the Abu Ghraib prison abuse in Iraq. Mr. Hersh worked as a reporter for The New York Times from 1972-79 and, since then, has been a freelance writer and regular contributor to The New Yorker on military and security issues. He is the author of seven award-winning books, most recently Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

As the 42nd Vice President of the United States, Walter Mondale redefined the role of the office. He served as a two-term U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Democratic nominee for President in 1984, and U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1993 – 1996. Since then, he has been practicing law, teaching, lecturing, and writing. He is the author of the book The Accountability of Power: Toward a Responsible Presidency as well as numerous articles on domestic and international issues. Vice President Mondale received a B.A. in political science and law degree from the University of Minnesota and served as a Distinguished University Fellow in Law and Public Affairs at the Humphrey Institute. In 1990, he established the Mondale Policy Forum which brings together leading scholars and policymakers for annual conferences on public policy.

U of M Political Science professor Larry Jacobs holds the Walter and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and is director of the Center of the Study of Politics and Governance at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. An expert in American political history, he is the author of several books including Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness which has won numerous prestigious awards. Jacobs earned a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and joined the faculty of the U of M in 1988. For the last several years, he has co-taught an undergraduate course on America’s Constitutional Crisis with Vice President Mondale.

More info is available at: http://www.cce.umn.edu/conversations/

Wayne Sandholtz & Kendall Stiles. International norms and cycles of change.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2009. Call number: KZ1261 .S26 2009

Publisher’s Description:
International lawyers and international relations scholars recognize that international norms change over time. Practices that were once permissible and even "normal" - like slavery, conquest, and wartime plundering - are now prohibited by international rules. Yet though we acknowledge norm change, we are just beginning to understand how and why international rules develop in the ways that they do. Wayne Sandholtz and Kendall Stiles sketch the primary theoretical perspectives on international norm change, the "legalization" and "transnational activist" approaches, and argue that both are limited by their focus on international rules as outcomes. The authors then present their "cycle theory," in which norm change is continual, a product of the constant interplay among rules, behavior, and disputes. Cycles of International Norm Change is the natural follow-on to Prohibiting Plunder, testing the cycle theory against ten empirical cases. The cases range from piracy and conquest, to terrorism, slavery, genocide, humanitarian intervention, and the right to democracy. The key finding is that, across long stretches of time and diverse substantive areas, norm change occurs via the cycle dynamic.

Cycles of International Norm Change further advances the authors' theoretical approach by arguing that international norms have been shaped by two main currents: sovereignty rules and liberal rules. Sovereignty rules are the necessary norms for establishing an international society of sovereign states and deal with the rights, prerogatives, and duties of states. Liberal rules are norms that emerged out of the Enlightenment and enshrine the basic value, dignity, and inherent rights of each person. Sandholtz and Stiles include five cases of sovereignty rules and five of liberal rules in order to reveal the broad cyclic pattern of international change in these two categories of rules.

Atkinson, Logan and Diana Majury, eds. Law, mystery, and the humanities : collected essays. Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2008. Call number: Literature and the Arts K487.C8 L3948 2008

Pubisher’s Description:
The trans-disciplinary study of law and the humanities is becoming a more widespread focus among scholars from a range of disciplines. Complementary in several major ways, concepts and theories of law can be used to formulate fresh ideas about the humanities, and vice versa. Law, Mystery, and the Humanities, a collection of essays by leading scholars, is based on the hypothesis that law has significant contributions to make to ongoing discussions of philosophical issues recurrent in the humanities.

The philosophical issues in question include the role of rationality in human experience, the problem of dissent, the persistence of suffering, and the possibility of transcendence. In each of these areas, law is used to add complexity and offer divergent perspectives, thus moving important questions in the humanities forward by introducing the possibility of alternative analysis. Ranging from discussions of detective fiction, Chomsky’s universal grammar, the poetry of Margaret Atwood, the Great Plague of London, and more, Law, Mystery, and the Humanities offers a unique examination of trans-disciplinary potential.

Naomi R. Cahn. Test tube families : why the fertility market needs legal regulation.
New York : New York University Press, c2009. Call number: KF3830 .C34 2009

Publisher’s Description:
The birth of the first test tube baby in 1978 focused attention on the sweeping advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART), which is now a multi-billion-dollar business in the United States. Sperm and eggs are bought and sold in a market that has few barriers to its skyrocketing growth. While ART has been an invaluable gift to thousands of people, creating new families, the use of someone elses genetic material raises complex legal and public policy issues that touch on technological anxiety, eugenics, reproductive autonomy, identity, and family structure. How should the use of gametic material be regulated? Should recipients be able to choose the best sperm and eggs? Should a child ever be able to discover the identity of her gamete donor? Who can claim parental rights?

Naomi R. Cahn explores these issues and many more in Test Tube Families, noting that although such questions are fundamental to the new reproductive technologies, there are few definitive answers provided by the law, ethics, or cultural norms. The regulatory void outside of minimal requirements for gametic testing and limited protection against deceptive marketing techniques used by fertility clinics creates thorny problems for all involved in the egg and sperm business.

As a new generation of donor kids comes of age, Test Tube Families calls for better regulation of ART. It exhorts legal and policy-making communities to cease applying piecemeal laws and instead create laws that sustain the fertility industry, yet protect the interests of donors, recipients, and the children that result from successful transfers.

Incorporating real-life stories to illustrate her arguments, Cahn provides specific suggestions for legal reforms. The book sets out a series of controversial proposals, including an end to donor anonymity and a plea for states to clarify parentage decisions. She also calls for the federal government to regulate ART processes to ensure that donors are adequately protected against exploitation, that recipients receive the gametes they have been promised, and that the market functions ethically as well as efficiently.

This year people around the world are commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of Louis Braille.

As an adolescent--a student at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles--Louis Braille developed and published the braille code. He thus made it possible, for the first time, for blind people to read and write with relative ease. There is useful information on Louis Braille and his system of raised dots at the websites of, among other organizations, the National Braille Press, the American Printing House for the Blind, and the National Federation of the Blind.

The Braille Commemorative Coin will be released by the United States Mint on Thursday, March 26. Sale of the coin can raise as much as eight million dollars for braille literacy programs.

Incidentally, the National Federation of the Blind is committed to creating in the Jacobus tenBroek Library a comprehensive research collection on non-medical aspects of blindness--in print, in Braille, or in any other format, I invite you to keep me informed of anything passing through your hands that might belong here.

Source: Edward T. Morman, MSLS, PhD
Director, Jacobus tenBroek Library
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND JERNIGAN INSTITUTE
1800 Johnson Street Baltimore MD 21230
410.659.9314 x2225
410.685.2349 (fax)

The Library of Congress has announced the online release of the Stern Collection of Lincolniana, including Lincoln's incredible letter to General Hooker, placing him in command of the army. If you want to read it, go to:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/stern-lincoln/index.html

Click on Lincoln's letters and then click the box at the very left of the first manuscript. Then click on "view text" and then scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see the entire letter transcribed.

An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free and Easy
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Excerpt from the article:

Americans have grown accustomed to finding just about anything they want online fast, and free. But for those searching for federal court decisions, briefs and other legal papers, there is no Google.

Instead, there is Pacer, the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records system designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems. Cumbersome, arcane and not free, it is everything that Google is not.

Recently, however, a small group of dedicated open-government activists teamed up to push the court records system into the 21st century — by simply grabbing enormous chunks of the database and giving the documents away, to the great annoyance of the government.

Read the whole article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Announcing a new Legal History research guide on the Law Library website.

In addition to general information on finding library resources, the guide highlights Legal History Databases & Web Sites, European Legal History, U.S. Government History, General History Databases & Web Sites, Trials, Courts & Judges, Other Countries & Legal Traditions, and Other Recommended Legal History Research Guides that are available.

Deere, Carolyn. The implementation game : the TRIPS agreement and the global politics of intellectual property reform in developing countries.
Oxford : New York ; Oxford University Press, 2009. Call number: K1401.A41994 D44 2009

Publisher’s Description:
With the launch of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) emerged as a symbol of coercion in international economic relations. In the decade that followed, intellectual property became one of the most contentious topics of global policy debate. This book is the first full-length study of the politics surrounding what developing countries did to implement TRIPS and why.

Based on a review of the evidence from 1995 to 2007, this book emphasizes that developing countries exhibited considerable variation in their approach to TRIPS implementation. In particular, developing countries took varying degrees of advantage of the legal safeguards and options-commonly known as TRIPS 'flexibilities'--that the Agreement provides.

To explain this variation, this book argues that TRIPS implementation must be understood as a complex political game played out among developing country governments and a range of stakeholders-developed countries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and industry groups. The contested nature of the TRIPS bargain spurred competing efforts to revise the terms of TRIPS and to influence global IP regulation more broadly. The intensity of the implementation game was amplified by an awareness among the various stakeholders that the IP reforms developing countries pursued would influence these ongoing international negotiations. The book attributes the variation in TRIPS implementation to the interplay between these global IP debates, international power pressures, and political dynamics within developing countries. The book includes historical analysis, compilations of evidence, and analysis supported by examples from across the developing world.

Wasti, Tahir. The application of Islamic criminal law in Pakistan : Sharia in practice.
Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2009. Call number: KPL3952 .W37 2009

Publisher’s Description:
No legal system in the world has aroused as much public interest as Sharia. However, the discourse around Sharia law is largely focussed on its development and the theories, principles and rules that inform it. Less attention has been given to studying the consequences of its operation, particularly in the area of Islamic criminal law. Even fewer studies explore the actual practice of Islamic criminal law in contemporary societies. This book aims to fill these gaps in our understanding of Sharia law in practice. It deals specifically with the consequences of enforcing Islamic criminal law in Pakistan, providing an in-depth and critical analysis of the application of the Islamic law of Qisas and Diyat (retribution and blood money) in the Muslim world today. The empirical evidence adduced more broadly demonstrates the complications of applying traditional Sharia in a modern state.

Clawson, Rosalee A. and Eric N. Waltenburg. Legacy and legitimacy : black Americans and the Supreme Court.
Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2009. Call number: KF8748 .C425 2009

Publisher’s Description:
…Legacy and Legitimacy substantially advances understanding of Black Americans’ attitudes toward the Supreme Court, the Court’s ability to influence Blacks’ opinions about the legitimacy of public institutions and policies, and the role of media in shaping Blacks’ judgments.

Drawing on legitimacy theory—which explains the acceptance of or tolerance for controversial policies—the authors begin by reexamining the significance of “diffuse support” in establishing legitimacy. They provide a useful overview of the literature on legitimacy and a concise history of the special relationship between Blacks and the Court. They investigate the influences of group attitudes and media “framing.” And they employ data from large-scale surveys to show that Blacks with greater levels of diffuse support for the Court are more likely to adopt positions consistent with Court rulings.

The Law Library has added the following two books, authored by University of Minnesota Law School Faculty.

Parisi, Francesco The economics of lawmaking
Parisi, Francesco and Vincy Fon. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2009.
Call number: K3316 .P37 2009

Publisher’s Description:

The Economics of Lawmaking explores the relative advantages and limits of alternative sources of law. Professors Francesco Parisi and Vincy Fon view the sources of law through a law and economics lens, and consider the important issue of institutional design in lawmaking. They consider the respective advantages and proper scope of application of four fundamental sources of law: legislation, judge-made law, customary law, and international law. The defining features of these four sources of law are examined using the formal methods of public choice theory: lawmaking through legislation; lawmaking through adjudication; lawmaking through practice; and lawmaking through agreement.

This book begins by examining the sources of law dependent on collective political decision-making, such as legislation. Multiple issues are considered, such as optimal specificity of law, optimal timing of legal intervention and optimal territorial scope of law, and include a thorough discussion on the sources of law derived from judges' decisions, such as common law. Parisi and Fon provide an extensive study on the roles of litigation and judicial path-dependence on judge-made law, biases in the evolution of legal remedies through litigation, and the effect of alternative doctrines of legal precedent, such as stare decisis and jurisprudence constante. They also consider the customary sources of law, with special attention on the mechanisms that determine their emergence and evolution, and explore sources of law derived from international treaties and conventions. The Economics of Lawmaking is the first systematic law and economics treatment of this field and will shed new light on the process of lawmaking.

Sullivan, E. Thomas and Richard S. Frase.
Proportionality principles in American law : controlling excessive government actions
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.
Call number: K247 .S85 2009

Publisher’s Description:

From the ancient origins of Just War doctrine to utilitarian and retributive theories of punishment, concepts of proportionality have long been an instrumental part of the rule of law and an essential check on government power. These concepts all embody the fundamental value that government and private actions should not be demonstrably excessive relative to their moral and practical justifications. In the American legal system, despite frequent though unacknowledged use of proportionality principles, there is no general theory of what permits courts to invalidate intrusive measures.

In Proportionality Principles in American Law, two renowned legal scholars seek to advance such a theory. They argue that standards of review should be more clearly and precisely defined, and that in most circumstances every intrusive government measure which limits or threatens individual rights should undergo some degree of proportionality review. Across a wide range of legal contexts, E. Thomas Sullivan and Richard S. Frase identify three basic ways that government measures and private remedies have been found to be disproportionate: relative to fault; relative to alternative means of achieving the same practical purposes; and relative to the likely practical benefits of the measure or remedy. Using this structure, the book examines the origins and contemporary uses of proportionality principles in public law, civil liberties, and the criminal justice system, emphasizing the utility of proportionality principles to guide judicial review of excessive government measures.

By constructing a new framework and a general theory for constitutional judicial review, Proportionality Principles in American Law will help courts more consistently and effectively apply proportionality principles to better serve their vital roles as guardians of individual rights and liberties.

Let the Law Library show you the love!
We appreciate all of our library users and hope you will join the Law Library for Valentine's treats on Thursday February 12.

Starting at 11 am, we'll have cookies and refreshments.
Stop by and warm up with a little love from your Law Library!

Generate your own candy hearts at http://www.cryptogram.com/hearts/

"Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage"
(Grand Central Publishing) by Jeff Benedict

The court case was Kelo v. City of New London, and the heroine of the story is the redheaded lead plaintiff, Susette Kelo, who bought the pink cottage of the title as a means of escaping an unhappy marriage.

On a notepad after the closing, she wrote: "I know I have never been happier in my life than I am now, sitting on the porch rocker watching the water go by."

Jeff Benedict, an investigative journalist and author, uses journals, e-mails and other personal documents as well as court transcripts and interviews to present a detailed behind-the-scenes account of the battle over Kelo's and several neighbors' property, after officials of economically struggling New London determine that it had to be razed.

...

Her pink house is still standing — but moved and erected elsewhere in town as a monument to the bulldozed neighborhood's lost cause. Another monument that Benedict points out: More than 40 states' legislatures have rewritten their eminent domain laws to prevent a repetition of the Kelo case.

Read more at: this book review or this article.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will chair a new Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues, her office announced Feb. 5. It will be the first Senate subcommittee to include a specific, global focus on women.

Boxer said the subcommittee would address the "overlooked issue" of violence against women.

"Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes," Boxer said.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof praised the subcommittee's formation on his newspaper blog.

"Issues like trafficking and maternal mortality and sexual violence finally seem to be getting some traction ..." he wrote. "The new Senate subcommittee reflects all this progress and presumably under Senator Boxer will accelerate it."

Boxer also introduced the International Women's Freedom Act of 2009 on Jan. 13 [HR 606]. Sponsored in the House by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the bill would establish a State Department office on international women's rights headed by an ambassador-at-large and a federal commission reporting to Congress and the president on international women's rights.

Sources: Women's e-news, ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship blog

HUP's First New Journal in 30 Years, The Journal of Legal Analysis, is Now Online

The Journal of Legal Analysis, a new open-access law journal co-published by HUP and the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School is up and running. The inaugural issue's articles include

*Adrian Vermeule's Many-Minds Arguments in Legal Theory Abstract,
*Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati and Eric A. Posner's Are Judges Overpaid? A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate, and
*Edward L. Glaeser and Cass R. Sunstein's Extremism and Social Learning.

Check out a description of the publication model on the Harvard UP Blog.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Paula Seeger, Circulation Librarian at the Law Library, has had a chapter published in the book, Academic Library Outreach: Beyond the Campus Walls, ed. Nancy Courtney (Libraries Unlimited/Greenwood, 2009). Call number: Z711.7 .A25 2009

The chapter is titled “Redefining Outreach from Inside the Academy: Law School Libraries and Their Communities�? and highlights the services that academic law libraries are creating to reach not only members of the wider public community, but users within the law school or university who sometimes overlook a law library's many resources available to them.

ABA Guide to Legal Issues for Distance Learning and Copyright

Distance Learning and Copyright: A Guide to Legal Issues explains the disparate treatment between what is permissible in face-to-face teaching situations versus distance learning; in forms educators and attorneys about the legal responsibilities of teaching distance learning courses; and helps educational institutions avoid unwanted copyright infringement liability. This practical guide covers

-The basics of copyright law
-The "instructional exemptions" in the Copyright Act
-Locating authors and orphan works
-Negotiating effective licensing agreements
-The ownership of electronic courses
-The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
-The TEACH Act
-The future of distance learning

The book's appendices such as the educational fair use guidelines for classroom photocopying, music, electronic reserves, library lending and preservation, multimedia presentations, and television broadcasts; sample copyright permission letters; the text of the TEACH Act and a flowchart comparing the current classroom and distance learning rules.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Treatises 101

What is a Treatise?

A book. Or a series of books. But the unique characteristic is that a treatise is about one particular subject. So when you look in the law library's collection you will see treatises on all kinds of subjects.

What makes a treatise a treatise, not just a book? The subject, not the form. A little logic: All treatises are books (unless they are electronic) but not all books are treatises.

Treatises are great secondary sources to use when you begin your research or whenever you need clarification to better understand complex legal issues.

Another way of looking at it:
Treatises are legal texts that are often multivolume in size. Treatises can vary in terms of style and analysis but they generally provide a detailed survey of a particular field of law. See for example, Corbin on Contracts (Law Reserve KF 801.C65). Treatises are a secondary source and lack legal authority. However, because they are written by respected legal scholars they can carry considerable persuasive value depending on how highly the author and the treatise are regarded by the court.

Why use a Treatise?
*To gain an in-depth overview of a single area of law.
*To start your research especially if you don't know much about your subject.
*To find persuasive authority for a case. (Depending on the reputation of the author and the source, a treatise can be a persuasive authority in a court).
*To find precise summaries of issues in a certain area of law.
*To find citations to cases, statutes, regulations and other secondary sources.
*To find analysis, explanation, and criticism of the law.
*To gain familiarity with the keywords, terms of art, issues, key cases, statutes and history of a particular area of law.

Where can I find a treatise?

There are many treatises available in the Law Library. Most of the treatises are found on the first floor (in the KF section), some are on Reserve, and some are in the other areas of the collection. If you want to find a treatise on a particular subject, enter keywords or the subject in the online catalog. Note any call numbers that appear on the
subject, then peruse the section for any treatises of interest.

For a list of selected treatises by topic available at the Law Library go to: http://local.law.umn.edu/library/studyaidpubs.html.

Many thanks to Reference Librarian Mary Rumsey and the Ross-Blakley Law Library blog for contributing to this post.

Here is the list of new titles the Law Library acquired in January 2009. The list is on the library's home page.

January Acquisitions List

In addition, here are five highlighted titles of particular interest:

Federal Judges Revealed by Domnarski, William.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2009. Call number: KF372 .D66 2009

From the Product Description:

The power and influence of the federal judiciary has been widely discussed and understood. And while there have been a fair number of institutional studies-studies of individual district courts or courts of appeal--there have been very few studies of the judiciary that emphasize the judges themselves. Federal Judges Revealed considers approximately one hundred oral histories of Article Three judges, extracting the most important information, and organizing it around a series of presented topics such as "How judges write their opinions" and "What judges believe make a good lawyer."

The principle of legality in international and comparative criminal law by Kenneth S. Gallant.
Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009. Call number: K5165 .G35 2009

From the Publisher’s Description:

This book fills a major gap in the scholarly literature concerning international criminal law, comparative criminal law, and human rights law. The principle of legality (non-retroactivity of crimes and punishments and related doctrines) is fundamental to criminal law and human rights law. Yet this is the first book-length study of the status of legality in international law – in international criminal law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. This is also the first book to survey legality/non-retroactivity in all national constitutions, developing the patterns of implementation of legality in the various legal systems (e.g., Common Law, Civil Law, Islamic Law, Asian Law) around the world. This is a necessary book for any scholar, practitioner, and library in the area of international, criminal, comparative, human rights, or international humanitarian law.

We dissent : talking back to the Rehnquist court : eight cases that subverted civil liberties and civil rights Edited by Michael Avery.
New York : New York University Press, c2009. Call number: KF4749.A2 W4 2009
Contributors: Michael Avery, Erwin Chemerinsky,Marjorie Cohn, Tracey Maclin, Eva Paterson, Jamin Raskin, David Rudovsky, Susan Kiyomi Serrano, and Abbe Smith.

From the Publisher’s Description:

The lawyers and legal commentators who contribute to We Dissent unanimously agree that during Chief Justice William Rehnquists nineteen-year tenure, the Supreme Court failed to adequately protect civil liberties and civil rights. This is evident in majority opinions written for numerous cases heard by the Rehnquist Court, and eight of those cases are re-examined here, with contributors offering dissents to the Courts decisions.… Each chapter focuses on a different case — ranging from torture to search and seizure, and from racial profiling to the freedom of political expression — with contributors summarizing the case and the decision, and then offering their own dissent to the majority opinion. For some cases featured in the book, the Courts majority decisions were unanimous, so readers can see here for the first time what a dissent might have looked like. In other cases, contributors offer alternative dissents to the minority opinion, thereby widening the scope of opposition to key civil liberties decisions made by the Rehnquist Court.

Law in medieval Russia by Ferdinand Feldbrugge.
Leiden ; Boston : Martinus Nijhoff Pub., 2009. Call number: KJC510.A15 L39 no.59

From the Publisher’s Description:

Much of what we know about the colourful Russian middle ages comes from legal sources: the treaties of Russian-Scandinavian warlords with the Byzantine emperors, the gradual penetration of Christianity and Byzantine institutions, the endless game of war and peace among the numerous regional princes, the activities of Hanseatic merchants in the wealthy city-republic of Novgorod, the curious relationships between the Mongol conquerors and Russian rulers and church dignitaries, etc. And, at the even further fringes of medieval Europe, there were the Christian kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia, squeezed between the Islamic empires of Iran and Turkey, but each possessing their elaborate and original legal systems. A discussion of more general questions of legal history and legal anthropology precedes the treatment of these various topics.

Law and practice of EU external relations : salient features of a changing landscape Edited by Alan Dashwood, Marc Maresceau.
Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008. Call number: KJE5057 .L39 2008

From the Publisher’s Description:

Expanding European Union activity on the international scene has led to development of the legal concepts, principles and rules that govern it. External relations law and practice have also been affected by events within the EU. This volume takes stock of the recent developments in the external relations law and practice of the EC/EU and investigates the increasing interaction between these different fields of Union competence. The first part of this book addresses issues that are broadly constitutional or institutional in character. The second part deals with various aspects of substantive external relations considered in a geographical or geo-political perspective. The third part selects two specific substantive law areas – intellectual property law and environment law – as examples which illustrate the specific relationship between domestic policy and external relations.