Here is the list of new titles the Law Library acquired in May 2009. The list is on the Library's home page.
In addition, here are several highlighted titles of particular interest:
Hugo van der Merwe, Victoria Baxter, Audrey R. Chapman, eds. Assessing the impact of transitional justice : challenges for empirical research.
Washington, D.C. : United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009. Call number: K5301 .A976 2009
Publisher’s Description:
As new forms of government replace repressive regimes, the perennial question arises: how to deal with the wrongdoers of the old regime? In the effort to heal and rebuild societies torn by violence, new governments and the international community have tried mechanisms ranging from criminal trials and financial restitution to public denunciation to more symbolic measures such as truth commissions. The results have been mixed. But out of the often failed transitional justice processes of the past, a body of empirical research is emerging that can provide, if not prescriptive answers, at least better questions.
In Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice, fourteen leading researchers study seventy countries that have suffered from autocratic rule, genocide, and protracted internal conflict. The authors gauge the effectiveness of various transitional justice mechanisms in wide-ranging sociocultural contexts. In a dramatic departure from the typically discursive, anecdotal literature, they use empirical research to make statistical comparisons among the bewildering array of factors that can affect the success or failure of transitional justice. Their findings will prove vitally important for policymakers, legal advocates, and anyone else faced with the daunting task of implementing or monitoring restorative justice processes.
Ayelet Shachar. The birthright lottery : citizenship and global inequality.
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2009. Call number: K3224 .S53 2009
Publisher’s Description:
The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. There is little doubt that securing membership status in a given state bequeaths to some a world filled with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. Gaining privileges by such arbitrary criteria as one’s birthplace is discredited in virtually all fields of public life, yet birthright entitlements still dominate our laws when it comes to allotting membership in a state.
In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. Located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery further advocates redistributional obligations on those benefiting from the inheritance of membership, with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.
Elisa Morgera. Corporate accountability in international environmental law.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009. Call number: K3585 .M67 2009
Publisher’s Description:
What is the current and future role of international environmental law in directing and controlling the conduct of business enterprises, particularly multinational corporations? This book responds to this topical question by identifying corporate accountability standards and discussing their implementation by international organizations.
This is the first book to examine systematically all international sources of corporate accountability standards with specific reference to environmental protection and to elaborate on their theoretical and practical implications for international environmental law. The book argues that although international environmental law does not bind multinational corporations and other business entities, growing international practice points to the emergence of legal standards. These standards allow adapting and translating inter-State obligations embodied in international environmental law into specific normative benchmarks to determine the legitimacy of the conduct of the private sector against internationally recognized values and rules.
The role of international organizations that, in the absence of State intervention, identify and promote the application of selected international environmental standards is analyzed in depth. This analysis demonstrates how these international organizations are a driving force in establishing and operating international standards for corporate environmental accountability.
Dan Markel, Jennifer M. Collins, and Ethan J. Leib. Privilege or punish : criminal justice and the challenge of family ties.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2009. Call number: K5001 .M37 2009
Publisher’s Description:
This book answers two basic but under-appreciated questions: first, how does the American criminal justice system address a defendant's family status? And, second, how should a defendant's family status be recognized, if at all, in a criminal justice system situated within a liberal democracy committed to egalitarian principles of non-discrimination? After surveying the variety of "family ties benefits" and "family ties burdens" in our criminal justice system, the authors explain why policymakers and courts should view with caution and indeed skepticism any attempt to distribute these benefits or burdens based on one's family status. This is a controversial stance, but Markel, Collins, and Leib argue that in many circumstances there are simply too many costs to the criminal justice system when it gives special treatment based on one's family ties or responsibilities.
Privilege or Punish breaks new ground by offering an important synthetic view of the intersection between crime, punishment, and the family. Although in recent years scholars have been successful in analyzing the indirect effects of certain criminal justice policies and practices on the family, few have recognized the panoply of laws (whether statutory or common law-based) expressly drawn to privilege or disadvantage persons based on family status alone. It is critically necessary to pause and think through how and why our laws intentionally target one's family status and how the underlying goals of such a choice might better be served in some cases. This book begins that vitally important conversation with an array of innovative policy recommendations that should be of interest to anyone interested in the improvement of our criminal justice system.
