This work examines the experiences of African Americans under the law and how African American culture has fostered a rich tradition of legal criticism. Moving between novels, music, and visual culture, the essays present race as a significant factor within legal discourse. Essays examine rights and sovereignty, violence and the law, and cultural ownership through the lens of African American culture. The volume argues that law must understand the effects of particular decisions and doctrines on African American life and culture and explores the ways in which African American cultural production has been largely centered on a critique of law.

This reference work compares the formation of contract in the legal systems of England, France, Iran and other Islamic systems. The preliminary part gives a historical sketch and describes the sources of law for the four legal systems and then describes the development and general theory of contract law in the four systems. Part one then analyzes in detail the basic notions of formation of contract including the range of psychological elements and their means of expression. The author goes on to describe and compare the function and determination of offer and acceptance in the four legal systems. Part two analyzes the mechanism of formation of import of a contract in respect of both offer and acceptance. The book has been extensively researched and includes references to Roman law and other modern legal systems. The work has been indexed and cross-referenced.

An in-depth examination of the relationship between gay rights, public opinion, and legislation since the late 1800s. In this comprehensive overview of how the American legal system has approached issues pertaining to sexual orientation and how the law has advanced-or hindered-civil rights, author Lee Walzer reveals that while the United States has the world's most developed lesbian and gay community, it lags other countries on equality for sexual minorities. Gay Rights on Trial focuses on four significant cases that have shaped the development of gay rights, including detailed discussion of majority and dissenting decisions and analysis of their legacy and impact. Also included are a chronology; a section of key people, laws, and concepts; a table of cases; key legal documents such as the Defense of Marriage Act and the Vermont Civil Union Act; and an annotated bibliography. Introductory essay covers issues from the changing notions of morality and the law to the various sides in gay rights disputes Contains edited excerpts of key legal documents such as Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state laws prohibiting homosexual conduct

A Collection of Fascinating Maritime Lawsuits.Reprint of the sole edition."The book contains interesting narratives of out-of-the-way occurrences at sea and of the litigation to which they led." --American Law Review 62 (1928) 159.CONTENTS: Drake at the Suit of Doughty. Sallee Rovers at Winchester. The Battle of New Brighton. The Casting Away of the "Adventure." Neptune as Defendant. The Marooning of Robert Jeffery. The Cruise of the "Pylades."The "Felicidade." An Act of State. The Illeanon Pirates.William Senior [1861-1937] was the author of Doctors' Commons and the Old Court of Admiralty: A Short History of Civilians in England (1922) and The Historyof Maritime Law (1974.)

The impact,and indeed long term survival of the European Community depends to a great extent on the effective practical implementation of Community law. This book compares the role of the Commission and national administrations in supervising and enforcing EC law, paying attention to what powers have been granted and what constraints exist, and when the Commission and national administrations are treated differently, and if that difference is justified. The main object of the book is to analyse the main tools for supervision, such as inspections, and the main infringement procedures. Issues such as deadlines to act, discretion, the capacity of Administrations to cope with their responsibilities in this area, and the problem of administrative coordination, are examined. The author also offers an overview of the system of EC administrative law procedures, which have evolved to prosecute infringements committed by Member States. The author analyses the reasons lying behind the creation of those procedures, and the interaction between them, and focuses on the importance of Article 169. The book relies primarily on an analysis of legislation, case-law and the most relevant legal rules, but also draws on the literature in political science and public management. This analysis is supplemented by the results of questionnaires and interviews with both national and Commission officials comparing their different views.

This book tackles the regulatory issues of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) or Remotely-Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS), which have profound consequences for privacy, security and other fundamental liberties. Collectively known as "drones," they were initially deployed for military purposes: reconnaissance, surveillance and extrajudicial executions. Today, we are witnessing a growth of their use into the civilian and humanitarian domain. They are increasingly used for goals as diverse as news gathering, aerial inspection of oil refinery flare stacks, mapping of the Amazonian rain-forest, crop spraying and search and rescue operations. The civil use of drones is becoming a reality in the European Union and in the US.The drone revolution may be a new technological revolution. Proliferation of the next generation of "recreational" drones show how drones will be sold as any other consumer item. The cultural perception of the technology is shifting, as drones are increasingly being used for humanitarian activities, on one hand, but they can also firmly be situated in the prevailing modes of postmodern governance on the other hand. This work will be of interest to researchers in Criminology and Criminal Justice interested in issues related to surveillance, security, privacy, and technology. It will also provide a criminological background for related legal issues, such as privacy law, aviation law, international criminal law, and comparative law.

"Must reading for anyone who seeks a better understanding of the U.S. Supreme Court's role in race relations policy."
--"Choice"

"Beware Those committed to the Supreme Court as the ultimate defender of minority rights should not read Race Against the Court. Through a systematic peeling away of antimajoritarian myth, Spann reveals why the measure of relief the Court grants victims of racial injustice is determined less by the character of harm suffered by blacks than the degree of disadvantage the relief sought will impose on whites. A truly pathbreaking work."
--Derrick Bell

As persuasive as it is bold. Race Against The Court stands as a necessary warning to a generation of progressives who have come to depend on the Supreme Court of the perils of such dependency. It joins with Bruce Ackerman's We, the People and John Brigham's Cult of the Court as the best in contemporary work on the Supreme Court.
--Austin Sarat, William Nelson, Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

The controversies surrounding the nominations, confirmations, and rejections of recent Supreme Court justices, and the increasingly conservative nature of the Court, have focused attention on the Supreme Court as never before. Although the Supreme Court is commonly understood to be the guardian of minority rights against the tyranny of the majority, Race Against The Court argues that the Court has never successfully performed this function. Rather the actual function of the Court has been to perpetuate the subordination of racial minorities by operating as an undetected agent of majoritarian preferences in the political preferences. In this provocative, controversial, and timely work, Girardeau Spann illustrates how the selection process for Supreme Court justices ensures that they will share the political preferences of the elite majority that runs the nation. Customary safeguards that are designed to protect the judicial process from majoritarian predispositions, Spann contends, cannot successfully insulate judicial decisionmaking from the pervasive societal pressures that exist to discount racial minority interests.

The case most often cited as the icon of Court sensitivity to minority rights, Brown v. Board of Education, has more recently served to lull minorities into believing that efforts at political self-determination are futile, fostering a seductive dependence and overreliance on the Court as the caretaker of minority rights. Race Against The Court demonstrates how the Court has centralized the law of affirmative action in a way that stymies minority efforts for meaningful political and economic gain and how it has legitimated the legal status quo in a way that causes minorities never even to question the inevitability of their subordinate social status.

Spann contends that racial minorities would be better off seeking to advance their interests in the pluralist political process and proposes a novel strategy for minorities to pursue in order to extricate themselves from the seemingly inescapable grasp of Supreme Court protection. Certain to generate lively, heated debate, "Race Against The Court" exposes the veiled majoritarianism of the Supreme Court and the dangers of allowing the Court to formulate our national racial policy.

From wiretapping American citizens to waterboarding foreign prisoners, the Bush administration has triggered an uproar over its tactics in the War on Terror-and over its justifications for using them. Through a close study of the legal advice provided to President Bush, former Justice Department attorney Harold Bruff provides an incisive and scathing critique of those justifications, which he finds at odds with both American law and moral authority.

Bruff rigorously examines legal opinions regarding NSA surveillance, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, the denial of Geneva Convention protection, trial by military commissions, and suspect interrogation techniques. He shows that Bush's claims of executive power exceed anything found in U.S. history or judicial precedent, that clear statutory limitations were treated with contempt, and that Bush and his lawyers strove to exclude both congressional and judicial participation in setting antiterrorist policy.

Bruff dissects the legal underpinnings employed by John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and others to defend an inflated view of presidential power, showing how they combined ideology, policy advocacy, and selective readings of legal precedent to bolster executive actions. Most important, he brings into sharp focus legitimate counterarguments from the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Office of Legal Counsel that challenged or refuted these legally suspect views and yet were largely ignored or even ridiculed by the president's advisers. Offering contrasts with the legal advice provided previous presidents, he also reviews the fundamental constitutional limits on executive action and the principles of professional responsibility that govern lawyers when they counsel government clients.

As Bruff observes, bad advice to presidents is never in short supply, but legal advice should be objective and reliable. His book points up the urgent need for advisers to serve both the president and the nation by finding a middle ground between limiting presidential power and allowing it the flexibility it needs to respond to crises. Both highly readable and authoritative, it is a must for legal scholars and an eye-opener for every citizen concerned with preserving our nation's commitment to the rule of law.

This book provides insights into the viability of the idea of global constitution. Global constitutionalism has emerged as an alternative paradigm for international law. However, in view of the complex and varied structure of contemporary constitutionalism, in reality it is extremely difficult to use constitutional law to provide a new paradigm for international law. The book argues that the cultural paradigm can offer functional tools for the global constitutionalism discourse. In other words, global constitutionalism could be handled in the context of a global "constitutional culture" instead of a global constitution. This would provide a more realistic basis for discussing global constitutionalization of a society as diverse as the international community, where a globalized polity and a globalized legal system have not yet been achieved.

In Self-determination and Minority Rights in China, Linzhu Wang examines the rights of China's minorities from the perspective of self-determination. The book offers an insight into the ethnic issues in contemporary China, by examining the principle of self-determination in shaping China's ethnic grouping and appraising the rights of the minorities and their limits. Based on a comprehensive survey of the practice of self-determination in the Chinese context and the Regional Ethnic Autonomy regime, the author seeks to answer the questions of how the ethnic policies and laws have come to be, why they are problematic, and what can be done to promote minority rights in China.

For some, he was "America's leading smut king," hauled into court repeatedly over thirty years for peddling obscene publications through the mail. But when Samuel Roth appealed a 1956 conviction, he forced the Supreme Court to finally come to grips with a problem that had plagued both American society and constitutional law for longer than he had been in business. For while the facts of "Roth v. United States" were unexceptional, its constitutional issues would define the relationship of obscenity to the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in "Roth" for the first time tried to definitively rule on the issue of obscenity in American life and law--and failed. In this first book-length examination of the case, Whitney Strub lays out the history of obscenity's meaning as a legal concept, highlights the influence of antivice crusaders like Anthony Comstock and John Sumner, and chronicles the shadowy career that led Roth to spend nearly a decade of his life imprisoned for the allegedly obscene materials that he sent through the mails. Strub then unwraps the events that produced "Roth v. United States," placing the trial in the context of its times--the Kinsey Reports, the Kefauver hearings, free speech debates--by using Roth's own private papers along with the records of the various prosecutions and the memos of the justices.

The significance of "Roth," as Strub reveals, lay in the two faces of Justice William Brennan's majority opinion--which on the one hand reflected the liberalizing attitude toward sexual matters in mid-century America, but on the other kept "obscene" expressions beyond First Amendment protection. Because that ruling points up the contradictions of a society where the prurient and repressive commingle uncomfortably, Strub shows how Roth says much more about American sexual values than Brennan's written words necessarily acknowledged.

In our era of internet pornography and "Fifty Shades of Grey," it may be difficult to imagine a time when obscenity was a matter for the courts. As Strub tracks the legacy of "Roth" and obscenity law through the ongoing policing of acceptable sexuality into the twenty-first century, his riveting narrative brings those times to life and helps readers navigate the fine line between what is socially acceptable and what is criminally obscene.

Mark Tushnet presents a concise yet comprehensive overview of free expression law, understood as a form of constitutional law. Confronting the major issues of free expression - speech critical of government, libel law, hate speech regulation, and the emerging challenges posed by new technologies - he evaluates the key questions and potential difficulties for future generations. Contrasting the United States with current law in Europe and elsewhere, Tushnet argues that freedom of expression around the world should reflect deference to legislative judgements, unless those judgements reflect inadequate deliberation or bias, and that much of the existing free expression law is consistent with this view. Key features include: Comprehensible for both students of law and non-specialist readers interested in freedom of expression from a legal perspective Viewpoints from multiple legal systems including analysis of decisions made by the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights Explains the two legal doctrinal structures: categorical, rule-bound approaches and standards-based approaches List of key references for further reading, allowing readers to extend their knowledge of the topic past the advanced introduction. This Advanced Introduction will be an essential foundational text for students of law, as well as those from a political science background who can view freedom of expression from a legal perspective.

In June of 1972, the Democratic National Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., was the site of one of the most famous burglaries in U.S. history. The abortive Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up is reexamined in this book from the unique perspective of the Supreme Court judges, who grappled with its political and legal ramifications. Howard Ball presents the litigation in the U.S. vs. Nixon case from the inside out, analyzing the constitutional issues that faced the court and the way in which the justices worked to resolve conflicts, overcome obstacles, and arrive at an institutional opinion. In recounting the tragedy of Watergate from the viewpoint of the judges, the book makes use of a number of important original sources, including interviews and letters from the justices. Perhaps most important in telling this story, though, are the conference notes and docket sheets of the Court members, especially those of Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., and William O. Douglas. To set the Watergate tapes litigation against the proper background, Ball also examines the role of the federal judiciary in the political system, the crucial concept of judicial review, and the Supreme Court's processes and personnel at the time of the litigation. A selected bibliography and comprehensive index conclude the work. As a unique chronicle of the Watergate scandal, this book will be a valuable resource for courses in American history, legal studies, and the Supreme Court, as well as a significant addition to academic, legal, and public libraries.

Professor Roger Stenson Clark has played a pivotal role in developing International Criminal Law, and the movement against nuclear weapons. He was one of the intellectual and moral fathers of the International Criminal Court. This Festschrift brings together forty-one appreciative friends to honour his remarkable contribution. The distinguished contributors provide incisive contributions ranging from the reform of the Security Council, to rule of law and international justice in Africa, to New Zealand cultural heritage, to customary international law in US courts, and more. Threaded through these richly diverse contributions is one common feature: a belief in values and morality in human conduct, and a passion for transformative use of law, 'for the sake of present and future generations.'

An introductory survey of the government's role in America's continuing drive for equality. Today's lingering inequalities, particularly the "American dilemma" of racism, runs throughout U.S. history. Equal Protection provides readers with a historical overview of the controversies over the issue of equality, an understanding of how government-and, particularly, the courts and Congress-has reacted to these controversies, and the role these issues have played in shaping U.S. society. This volume follows the push for equal treatment regardless of age, gender, disabilities, economic status, or sexual orientation. It focuses on legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, and political initiatives and movements such as The Great Society, the ERA, and the War on Poverty. Here are American's interpretations of equal rights, then and now. Includes a section of A-Z entries covering people, laws, events, judicial decisions, statutes, and concepts related to equal protection in the United States Primary source documents include court decisions, executive orders, and legislation that shaped the status of equal protection in our society today

Using insights from multilevel governance and pluralism, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of European private law in the Dutch and German legal order. It focuses on the question whether the coexistence of national and European state and non-state actors is detrimental or beneficial for the predictability, consistency, accessibility and responsiveness of European private law. On the one hand, the discourse on multilevel governance draws attention to the possibility that problems may arise if interdependent actors do not sufficiently interact. This may be the case in European private law, where national and European legislators and courts have become increasingly interdependent on one another in ensuring that European private law develops predictably, consistently, accessibly, and responsively. The book analyzes the development of European private law by national and European state actors through codifications, blanket clauses, soft laws and general principles in the light of interdependence. In addition, non-state actors have played an increasingly important role in developing binding rules in European private law. This development necessitates more interaction between actors, and more attention for the potentially binding effect of privately developed rules on third parties' rights. The book accordingly develops a normative framework to determine the extent to which private actors should be able to develop binding rules, based on principles of democracy, private autonomy, and concerns for hetero-determination. On the other hand, pluralism perspectives advocate the development of European private law at different levels and jurisdictions in the light of responsiveness, regulatory competition, and opportunities for mutual learning. The book explores whether these benefits have materialized in the development of European private law, drawing attention to failed and successful instances of regulatory competition and mutual learning, and resulting innovations. The book sketches new governance techniques that may help interdependent actors take into account one another's initiatives and benefit from each other's insights, although they may also entail hetero-determination.

"Defining the Family: Law, Technology, and Reproduction in an Uneasy Age" provides a sweeping portrait of the family in American law from the nineteenth century to the present. The family today has come to be defined by individuality and choice. Pre-nuptial agreements, non-marital cohabitation, gay and lesbian marriages have all profoundly altered our ideas about marriage and family. In the last few years, reproductive technology and surrogacy have accelerated this process of change at a breathtaking rate. Once simple questions have taken on a dizzying complexity: Who are the real parents of a child? What are the relationships and responsibilities between a child, the woman who carried it to term, and the egg donor? Between viable sperm and the wife of a dead donor?

The courts and the law have been wildly inconsistent and indecisive when grappling with these questions. Should these cases be decided in light of laws governing contracts and property? Or it is more appropriate to act in the best interests of the child, even if that child is unborn, or even unconceived? No longer merely settling disputes among family members, the law is now seeing its own role expand, to the point where it is asked to regulate situations unprecedented in human history. Janet L. Dolgin charts the response of the law to modern reproductive technology both as it transforms our image of the family and is itself transformed by the tide of social forces.

Church-state relations are becoming more and more critical. Deepening controversies over church-state relations, the increasing religious pluralism of American society, and the changing makeup of the Supreme Court are forcing a rethinking of approaches to church and state in the public policy realm. Stephen Monsma offers a new approach rooted in structural pluralism as a normative way to understand church-state relations. He suggests that the government should use a principle of positive neutrality in handling church-state relations. He integrates historical, theoretical, social, and legal perspectives and writes in a lively manner for interdisciplinary audiences of students, scholars, and general readers. This study provides an historical background of church and state relations in American society and discusses the development of church-state theory and practice. The author argues that confusions today can be traced back to flaws in the disestablishment settlement of the eighteenth century, flaws which have come to light in the twentieth century. He looks at this pluralist society and the concept of positive neutrality and of religious freedom historically and theoretically and then applies his approach to current issues relating to national policy and Supreme Court decision-making.

Lopeman examines the impact advocacy of intentional judicial activism by a justice of a state supreme court can have on establishing the court as a policy maker. He examines the attitudinal model and the judicial role model of decision making and concludes that, while the attitudinal model might describe the decision-making process in the U.S. Supreme Court, the judicial role model better describes decision making in state supreme courts. This judicial role model allows the activist to transform a court into a policy maker.

The traditions, recent history, and biographies of recent justices of the Indiana, West Virginia, and Ohio courts are examined to establish a significant relationship between the presence of an activist advocate justice and active policy making by the courts. These courts' decisions in cases with policy making potential are contrasted with decisions in similar cases of three state supreme courts that did not have an advocate justice. Lopeman argues that the presence of an activist advocate explains a court's transformation to active policy making, and that other apparent explanations are insufficient. He emphasizes that the motives of an activist advocate are likely to determine the permanence of policy making in the court. This volume is an important resource for political scientists, legal scholars, and other researchers involved with judicial decision making, state politics, and state constitutional law.

This study proposes a multilateralist method of choice of law in order to alleviate the great disarray that currently exists in American choice law. In the early 20th century, there was a fairly-uniform multilateralist method of choice law. In the 1920s and 30s, however, scholars adn courts began to reject this method. Viewed as too mechanical the method sometimes resulted in the choice of law of a state with only a tenuous connection to the controversy. Currently, state courts use four different approached to choice law with numerous material variations. This study rejects these approaches on normative, constitutional, and practical grounds. Instead, it advocates that courts adopt a multilateralist approach to choice of law that is forum- and content-neutral and that respects the rights of both individuals and states. The study also argues that such an approach should satisfy a constitutional standard that requires a court not choose one state's law when another state has a significantly closer connection to controversy.

The proposed method consists of two parts. The first part determines the states that have created legal relations applying to the dispute. When more than one state has created a legal realtions applying to the dispute. When more than one state has created a legal relation that applies to the controversy, the second part adopts the law of the state that had the closest connection. The study then applies the suggested method to numerous choice of law problems.