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Books > Law > Jurisprudence & general issues > Legal profession > General
The "superb" (The Guardian) biography of an American who stood
against all the forces of Gilded Age America to fight for civil
rights and economic freedom: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall
Harlan. They say that history is written by the victors. But not in
the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court. Almost
a century after his death, John Marshall Harlan's words helped end
segregation and gave us our civil rights and our modern economic
freedom. But his legacy would not have been possible without the
courage of Robert Harlan, a slave who John's father raised like a
son in the same household. After the Civil War, Robert emerges as a
political leader. With Black people holding power in the Republican
Party, it is Robert who helps John land his appointment to the
Supreme Court. At first, John is awed by his fellow justices, but
the country is changing. Northern whites are prepared to take away
black rights to appease the South. Giant trusts are monopolizing
entire industries. Against this onslaught, the Supreme Court seemed
all too willing to strip away civil rights and invalidate labor
protections. So as case after case comes before the court,
challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He
breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the
nation's prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant
laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the US. Harlan's
dissents, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson, were widely read and
a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall called Harlan's
Plessy dissent his "Bible"--and his legal roadmap to overturning
segregation. In the end, Harlan's words built the foundations for
the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras.
Spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and
beyond, The Great Dissenter is a "magnificent" (Douglas Brinkley)
and "thoroughly researched" (The New York Times) rendering of the
American legal system's most significant failures and most
inspiring successes.
This book provides an empirically grounded, in-depth investigation
of the ethical dimensions to in-house practice and how legal risk
is defined and managed by in-house lawyers and others. The growing
significance and status of the role of General Counsel has been
accompanied by growth in legal risk as a phenomenon of importance.
In-house lawyers are regularly exhorted to be more commercial,
proactive and strategic, to be business leaders and not (mere)
lawyers, but they are increasingly exposed for their roles in
organisational scandals. This book poses the question: how far does
going beyond being a lawyer conflict with or entail being more
ethical? It explores the role of in-housers by calling on three key
pieces of empirical research: two tranches of interviews with
senior in-house lawyers and senior compliance staff; and an
unparalleled large survey of in-house lawyers. On the basis of this
evidence, the authors explore how ideas about in-house roles shape
professional logics; how far professional notions such as
independence play a role in those logics; and the ways in which
ethical infrastructure are managed or are absent from in-house
practice. It concludes with a discussion of whether and how
in-house lawyers and their regulators need to take professionalism
and professional ethicality more seriously.
Harvard Law-graduate authors Yussuf Aleem and Jake Slowik built a
multi-million dollar law practice before they were 30 years old
using a novel strategy of business niche specialization. They have
now written the story behind their success so that other attorneys
can learn from their methods and grow their own successful
practices. Drawing on the authors'? own experiences and lessons
with illustrative examples and real-life applications, the book
teaches how they used a novel strategy of business niche
specialization to quickly grow their law practice amidst a rapidly
changing global economy. The book illustrates why business niche
specialization worked for the authors, the characteristics of a
business niche that make it right for a law practice, and how the
authors adopted specific business tactics that aligned with their
strategy and maximized their chances for success. Its innovative,
tried and true methods have been broken down into applicable steps
so that a strategy can be developed and executed in a way that
works for the reader and their specific skill set. From new lawyers
who are looking to jumpstart their legal career to established
attorneys who need to revitalize their practice and boost their
marketability, this book presents an opportunity to anyone who is
struggling to succeed in the legal marketplace.
In 1966, a group of UCLA law school professors sparked the era of
affirmative action by creating one of the earliest and most
expansive race-conscious admissions programs in higher education.
The Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP) served to integrate
the legal profession by admitting large cohorts of minority
students under non-traditional standards, and sending them into the
world as emissaries of integration upon graduation. Together, these
students bent the arc of educational equality, and the LEOP served
as a model for similar programs around the country. Drawing upon
rich historical archives and interviews with dozens of students and
professors who helped integrate UCLA, this book argues that such
programs should be reinstituted- and with haste- because
affirmative action worked.
In My Own Liberator, Dikgang Moseneke pays homage to the many
people and places that have helped to define and shape him. In
tracing his ancestry, the influence on both his maternal and
paternal sides is evident in the values they imbued in their
children - the importance of family, the value of hard work and
education, an uncompromising moral code, compassion for those less
fortunate and unflinching refusal to accept an unjust political
regime or acknowledge its oppressive laws. As a young activist in
the Pan-Africanist Congress, at the tender age of fifteen, Moseneke
was arrested, detained and, in 1963, sentenced to ten years on
Robben Island for participating in anti-apartheid activities.
Physical incarceration, harsh conditions and inhumane treatment
could not imprison the political prisoners' minds, however, and for
many the Island became a school not only in politics but an
opportunity for dedicated study, formal and informal. It set the
young Moseneke on a path towards a law degree that would provide
the bedrock for a long and fruitful legal career and see him serve
his country in the highest court. My Own Liberator charts
Moseneke's rise as one of the country's top legal minds, who not
only helped to draft the interim constitution, but for fifteen
years acted as a guardian of that constitution for all South
Africans, helping to make it a living document for the country and
its people.
'David Howarth's Law as Engineering is a profound contribution to
the law. Evoking the level of originality associated with
pioneering contributions to law and economics half a century ago,
Howarth's book aligns law, not on economics, but on engineering
styles of thought and problem solving. His analysis sheds deep
light on a 21st century world where the work of transactional and
legislative lawyers, who design and build social structures and
devices much as engineers do physical ones, is becoming ever more
important and complex, with far-reaching implications for both
legal ethics and legal education.' - Scott Boorman, Professor, Yale
University, US 'This is a brilliant, highly original analysis of
what lawyers actually do and what they ought to do in order to
protect their clients and the public. It will rescue lawyers from
the kinds of behaviour that contributed to the financial crash. It
also points legal education and research in important new
directions.' - Sir Bob Hepple, Professor, QC FBA 'This book brings
an important new perspective to a consideration of what lawyers do,
and of what they are for. The implications explored in the book are
an immensely valuable contribution to thinking on the future
development of legal education and training. It should be read by
everyone responsible for recruiting or training others for the law,
whether in the public or the private sector.' - Sir Stephen Laws
KCB, QC(Hon), LLD(Hon), First Parliamentary Counsel Law as
Engineering proposes a radically new way of thinking about law, as
a profession and discipline concerned with design rather than with
litigation, and having much in common with engineering in the way
it produces devices useful for its clients. It uses that comparison
to propose ways of improving legal design, to advocate a
transformation of legal ethics so that the profession learns from
its role in the crash of 2008, and to reform legal education and
research. Offering a totally new perspective, this book will be a
fascinating read for law students and prospective law students,
legal academics across all sub-fields, lawyers in government,
especially those engaged in drafting legislation, and policymakers.
Contents: Preface 1. Introduction 2. What do Lawyers do? 3. Law as
Engineering 4. Implications (1) - Professional Ethics 5.
Implications (2) - Legal Research and Teaching 6. Conclusion
Bibliography Index
Bulelwa Mabasa was born into a ‘matchbox’ family home in Meadowlands, Soweto, at the height of apartheid. In My Land Obsession, she shares her colourful Christian upbringing, framed by the lived experiences of her grandparents, who endured land dispossession in the form of the Group Areas Act and the migrant labour system.
Bulelwa’s world was irrevocably altered when she encountered the disparities of life in a white-dominated school. Her ongoing interest in land justice informed her choice to study law at Wits, with the land question becoming central in her postgraduate studies. When Bulelwa joined the practice of law in the early 2000s as an attorney, she felt a strong need to build on her curiosity around land reform, moving on to
form and lead a practice centred on land reform at Werksmans Attorneys. She describes the role played by her mentors and the professional and personal challenges she faced.
My Land Obsession sets out notable legal cases Bulelwa has led and lessons that may be drawn from them, as well as detailing her contributions to national policy on land reform and her views on how the land question must be inhabited and owned by all South Africans.
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