Here is the list of new titles the Law Library acquired in August 2009. The list is on the Library's home page.
In addition, here are a few highlighted titles of particular interest:
Dignam, Alan J. and Michael Galanis. The globalization of corporate governance. Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2009.
Call number: K1327 .D54 2009
Publisher's Description:
The process of economic globalization, as product and capital markets have become increasingly integrated since WWII, has placed huge, and it is argued by some, irresistible pressures on the world's 'insider' stakeholder oriented corporate governance systems. Insider corporate governance systems in countries such as Germany, so the argument goes, should converge or be transformed by global product and capital market pressures to the 'superior' shareholder oriented 'outsider' corporate governance model prevalent in the UK and the US. What these pressures from globalization are, how they manifest themselves, whether they are likely to cause such a convergence/ transformation and whether these pressures will continue, lie at the heart of the exploration in this volume. The Globalization of Corporate Governance provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of the key corporate governance systems in the UK, the US and Germany from the perspective of the development of economic globalization. As such it is a valuable resource for those interested in how economic and legal reforms interact to produce change within corporate governance systems.
Billias, George Athan. American constitutionalism heard round the world, 1776-1989 : a global perspective. New York : New York University Press, c2009.
Call number: KF4541 .B56 2009
Publisher's Description:
American constitutionalism represents this country's greatest gift to human freedom, yet its story remains largely untold. For over two hundred years, its ideals, ideas, and institutions influenced different peoples in different lands at different times. American constitutionalism and the revolutionary republican documents on which it is based affected countless countries by helping them develop their own constitutional democracies. Western constitutionalism--of which America was a part along with Britain and France--reached a major turning point in global history in 1989, when the forces of democracy exceeded the forces of autocracy for the first time.
Historian George Athan Billias traces the spread of American constitutionalism--from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean region, to Asia and Africa--beginning chronologically with the American Revolution and the fateful "shot heard round the world" and ending with the conclusion of the Cold War in 1989. The American model contributed significantly by spearheading the drive to greater democracy throughout the Western world, and Billias's landmark study tells a story that will change the way readers view the important role American constitutionalism played during this era.
Baber, Walter F. and Robert V. Bartlett. Global democracy and sustainable jurisprudence : deliberative environmental law. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2009.
Call number: K3585 .B33 2009
Publisher's Description:
In Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence, Walter Baber and Robert Bartlett explore the necessary characteristics of a meaningful global jurisprudence, a jurisprudence that would underpin international environmental law. Arguing that theories of political deliberation offer useful insights into the current "democratic deficit" in international law, and using this insight as a way to approach the problem of global environmental protection, they offer both a theoretical foundation and a realistic deliberative mechanism for creating effective transnational common law for the environment. Their argument links elements not typically associated: abstract democratic theory and a practical form of deliberative democracy; the legitimacy-imparting value of deliberative democracy and the possibility of legislating through adjudication; common law jurisprudence and the development of transnational environmental law; and conceptual thinking that draws on Deweyan pragmatism, Rawlsian contractarianism, Habermasian critical theory, and the full liberalism of Bohman, Gutmann, and Thompson.
Baber and Bartlett offer a democratic method for creating, interpreting, and implementing international environmental norms that involves citizens and bypasses states--an innovation that can be replicated and deployed across a range of policy areas. Transnational environmental consensus would develop through a novel model of juristic democracy that would generate legitimate international environmental law based on processes of hypothetical rule making by citizen juries. This method would translate global environmental norms into international law--law that, unlike all current international law, would be recognized as both fact and norm because of its inherent democratic legitimacy.
Boyle, Kevin, ed. New institutions for human rights protection Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.
Call number: K3240 .N495 2009
Publisher's Description:
This book presents a multi-faceted approach to one of the most crucial challenges facing Human Rights institutions today - the implementation gap that exists between human rights norms and their enforcement by States. Comprising contributions from renowned international scholars in the field of human rights, New Institutions for Human Rights Protection examines how the human rights commitments entered into by States might be translated more effectively into protection for individuals in practice and the crucial role that human rights institutions, at both a national and international level, have to play in this endeavor.
Focusing on recent developments in respect to institutions such as the UN Human Rights Council and the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), these essays present a thorough account of the challenges and objectives facing the international community today with respect to human rights. From an account of the origins and aims of the UN Human Rights Council to its potential conflict with the missions of other Treaty bodies and from an observation on the role of institutions in the field of racism and discrimination to the potency of human rights norms and institutions to uphold minority interests, this volume offers original and diverse perspectives on the role of fledgling human rights institutions.
