Since the Constitution's ratification, members of Congress, following Article V, have proposed approximately twelve thousand amendments, and states have filed several hundred petitions with Congress for the convening of a constitutional convention. Only twenty-seven amendments have been approved in 225 years. Why do members of Congress continue to introduce amendments at a pace of almost two hundred a year? This book is a demonstration of how social reformers and politicians have used the amendment process to achieve favorable political results even as their proposed amendments have failed to be adopted. For example, the ERA ""failed"" in the sense that it was never ratified, but the mobilization to ratify the ERA helped build the feminist movement (and also sparked a countermobilization). Similarly, the Supreme Court's ban on compulsory school prayer led to a barrage of proposed amendments to reverse the Court. They failed to achieve the requisite two-thirds support from Congress, but nevertheless had an impact on the political landscape. The definition of the relationship between Congress and the President in the conduct of foreign policy can also be traced directly to failed efforts to amend the Constitution during the Cold War. Roger Hartley examines familiar examples like the ERA, balanced budget amendment proposals, and pro-life attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade, but also takes the reader on a three-century tour of lesser-known amendments. He explains how often the mere threat of calling a constitutional convention (at which anything could happen) effected political change.

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.

In order to be effective, federal ethics law must address sources of systematic corruption rather than simply address motives that individual government employees might have to betray the public trust (such as personal financial holdings or family relationships). Getting the GovernmentAmerica Deserves articulates a general approach to combating systemic corruption as well as some specific proposals for doing so. Federal ethics law is relatively unknown in legal academia and elsewhere outside of Washington, D.C., but it is binding on over one million federal employees. Lobbyists, federal contractors, lawyers and others who interact with the federal government are also deeply interested in federal ethics law and represent a surprisingly large market for a little-studied area of the law.
Getting the Government America Deserves analyzes government ethics law from the perspective of an academic critic and that of a lawyer who was the chief White House ethics lawyer for two and a half years. Richard Painter argues that the existing ethics regime is in need of substantial reform since federal ethics laws fail to curtail conduct that undermines the integrity of government, such as political activity by federal employees and their interaction with lobbyists and interest groups. He also contends that in some other areas, such as personal financial conflicts of interest, there is too much complexity in regulatory and reporting requirements, and rules need to be simplified. Painter's solution includes strengthening the enforcement of ethics rules, reforming the lobbying industry, and changing a system of campaign finance that impedes meaningful government ethics reform.

"A stimulating debate of a great case."
--Library Journal

"Balkan offers his own assessment in a critical introduction and the iconic impact of "Brown,""
--"Black Issues Book Review"

"Balkin persuasively argues that the courts play a vital role in tempering the nation's political and legal mechanisms."
--"Journal of the West"

"Passionate, intelligent, accessible, and eloquent. If only the real court would follow suit."
--Kirkus, Starred Review

"A remarkable collection of writings. The eminent scholars it features articulate with insight and passion a wide range of views. No other book better relates the Supreme Court's landmark decision of 1954 to the debates and anxieties of our own time."
--Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School

"A critical introduction to the original ruling."
-- "Reference & Research Book News"

"Brown v. Board of Education," the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision ordering the desegregation of America's public schools, is perhaps the most famous case in American constitutional law. Criticized and even openly defied when first handed down, in half a century Brown has become a venerated symbol of equality and civil rights.

Its meaning, however, remains as contested as the case is celebrated. In the decades since the original decision, constitutional interpreters of all stripes have found within it different meanings. Both supporters and opponents of affirmative action have claimed the mantle of Brown, criticizing the other side for betraying its spirit. Meanwhile, the opinion itself has often been criticized as bland and uninspiring, carefully written to avoid controversy and maintain unanimity among the Justices.

As the50th anniversary of Brown approaches, America's schools are increasingly divided by race and class. Liberals and conservatives alike harbor profound regrets about the development of race relations since Brown, while disagreeing heatedly about the proper role of the courts in promoting civil equality and civil rights.

In this volume, nine of America's top constitutional and civil rights experts have been challenged to rewrite the Brown decision as they would like it to have been written, incorporating what they now know about the subsequent history of the United States but making use of only those sources available at the time of the original decision. In addition, Jack Balkin gives a detailed introduction to the case, chronicling the history of the litigation in Brown, and explaining the current debates over its legacy.

Contributors include: Bruce Ackerman, Jack M Balkin, Derrick A. Bell, Drew S. Days, John Hart Ely, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Michael W. McConnell, Frank I Michelman, and Cass R. Sunstein.

For all the attention paid to the Founder Fathers in contemporary American debates, it has almost been wholly forgotten how deeply they embraced an ambitious and intellectually profound valuation of foreign legal experience. Jedidiah Kroncke uses the Founders' serious engagement with, and often admiration for, Chinese law in the Revolutionary era to begin his history of how America lost this Founding commitment to legal cosmopolitanism and developed a contemporary legal culture both parochial in its resistance to engaging foreign legal experience and universalist in its messianic desire to export American law abroad. Kroncke reveals how the under-appreciated, but central role of Sino-American relations in this decline over two centuries, significantly reshaped in the early 20th century as American lawyer-missionaries helped inspire the first modern projects of American humanitarian internationalism through legal development. Often forgotten today after the rise of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the Sino-American relationship in the early 20th century was a key crucible for articulating this vision as Americans first imagined waves of Americanization abroad in the wake of China's 1911 Republican revolution. Drawing in historical threads from religious, legal and foreign policy work, the book demonstrates how American comparative law ultimately became a marginalized practice in this process. The marginalization belies its central place in earlier eras of American political and legal reform. In doing so, the book reveals how the cosmopolitan dynamism so prevalent at the Founding is a lost virtue that today comprises a serious challenge to American legal culture and its capacity for legal innovation in the face of an increasingly competitive and multi-polar 21st century. Once again, America's relationship with China presents a critical opportunity to recapture this lost virtue and stimulate the searching cosmopolitanism that helped forge the original foundations of American democracy.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"A very valuable work. In a highly accessible way, Harold Krent surveys a wide array of topics involving the authority of the modern presidency, drawing on examples from the earliest days of our Republic to the present. He takes often difficult and complex issues and makes them easily comprehensible so that his book should be of great use to both scholars and newcomers to this field. Having been personally involved in several of the litigation matters Krent uses as examples to illustrate his points, I can attest to the breadth of his knowledge and the quality of his analysis. Put simply, this book is thoughtful, lucid, and well written."
--Douglas Letter, United States Department of Justice

"Krent has written an outstanding book that is sure to become the foundation work for understanding the scope of presidential power, and its ambiguous and important cognate 'executive' power. He is careful to nest his discussion in a broad context that includes other important actors - public and private - that, through their own interaction and with the president and executive branch, affect and indeed on occasion dictate what the president may or may not do. A must read for anyone interested in how our repudiation of a monarchy was and remains balanced against the need for a strong executive."
--Nicholas Zeppos, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University

"Krent's mastery of both the history and the law surrounding presidential power assures that the book will be a significant and unique contribution to its field."
--William Marshall, University of North Carolina School ofLaw

"Informative and helpful for clarifying (one's) thinking about executive power issues. It is well structured and well documented."
--"Law and Politics Book Review"

Framed in Article II of the Constitution, presidential powers are dictated today by judicial as well as historical precedent. To understand the ways the president wields power as well as how this power is kept in check by other branches of government, Harold J. Krent presents three overlapping determinants of the president's role under the Constitution-the need for presidential initiative in administering the law and providing foreign policy leadership, the importance of maintaining congressional control over policymaking, and the imperative to ensure that the president be accountable to the public.

Krent's examination is sweeping, ranging from the president's ability to appoint and remove executive branch officials, to the president's role in proposing and implementing treaties and the power to conduct war, to the extent the president can refuse to turn over information in response to congressional and judicial requests. Finally, Krent addresses the history and purposes of presidential pardons.

By drawing on historic and contemporary presidential actions to illustrate his points, Krent reminds us that the president is both an exalted leader with the regalia of power and an American who is and should be accountable to fellow citizens-important considerations as we elect and assess our presidents.

The First English-Language Treatise on Consular Law. Warden's was the first English-language treatise on consular law and one of the earliest workson the subject. Both a descriptive and prescriptive work, it outlines the ideal qualities of a consul, his role in diplomatic relations and legal status and a review of consular treaties in force at the time. Highly regarded in its day, it was translated into French, the language of nineteenth-century diplomacy, and circulated widely among diplomatic circles. A scarce work today, our edition is enhanced by Professor Butler's extensive introduction, which examines the historical context of this book and the life of its author. David Bailie Warden 1772-1845], an Irish-born American diplomat, was distinguished for his scientific attainments and varied learning. A member of the French Academy and other prestigious learned societies, he was secretary of the United States Legation to France, agent of prize causes, and for many years the United States consul in Paris. "Consular law, it is widely believed, is among the most venerable of the institutes of the law of nations and an early example, in State practice and doctrinal form, of the comparative investigation and analysis of State practice in the form of treaties, national legislation, and judicial application."--William E. Butler, iv

aIt is worth noting that one of the many positive things that this book has to recommend for itself is a very clear writing style that makes complex legal and social science concepts accessible to a wide array of audiences.a
--The Law and Politics Book Review

"It's law-focused and part of an academic series, but its style and subject matter make it relevant to a broad audience."
--"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

"A must read for students of bias, racism, discrimination, and privilege. Lu-in Wang employs readable prose and compelling examples to elucidate these complex issues. Her cutting-edge exposition, especially in the context of health care, offers the reader a deeper understanding of the unseen forces that govern daily life."
--Stephanie M. Wildman, professor of law and director, Santa Clara University School of Law Center for Social Justice

"Does a powerful job of explaining why and how discrimination still plays such a strong role in our society. Like all of the best legal scholarship, this insightful book uses an unexpected, fresh conception to explore an age-old, stubborn problem. The result is a new understanding of both our legal structure and the society in which we live. A strong, helpful contribution to the debate on discrimination, its causes, and the damage it does."--David A. Harris, E.N. Balk Professor of Law and Values, University of Toledo College of Law

"(The book is) law-focused and part of an academic series, but its style and subject matter make it relevant to a broad audience."
--"Emporia Gazette"

a It very effectively manages to put the somtimes-abstract principles of social psychology into real world contexts.a
--PsycCRITQUES

Much as we "select" computer settings by default--reflexively, without thinking, and sometimes without realizing there are other options--we often discriminate by default as well. And just as default computer settings tend to become locked in or entrenched as the standard, discrimination by default creates a situation in which disparate outcomes are expected, accepted, and taken for granted. The killing of Amadou Diallo, racial disparities in medical care, the dominance of Whites and men in certain professions, and even the uneven media attention paid to crimes depending on their victims' race and class, all might be cases of discrimination by, or as, default.

Wang contends that, today, most discrimination occurs by default and not design, making legal prohibitions that focus on those who discriminate out of ill will inadequate to redress the largest share of modern discrimination. She draws on social psychology to detail three ways in which unconscious assumptions can lead to discrimination, showing how they play out in a range of everyday settings. Wang then demonstrates how these dynamics interact in medical care to produce an invisible, self-fulfilling, and self-perpetuating prophecy of racial disparity. She goes on to suggest ways in which institutions and individuals might recognize, interrupt, and override the discriminatory default.

This book provides a detailed examination of the issue of conformity of goods and documents under the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods 1980 (CISG). This issue lies at the heart of sales law and is one of the most frequently litigated. The book explores: the Convention's requirements as to quality, quantity, description and packaging of the goods (conformity); the requirements flowing from the need for the goods to be free from rights or claims of third parties; and the questions of what documents the seller must deliver to the buyer and what constitutes a 'good' document under the CISG. The book engages extensively with a substantial body of cases decided under the CISG and academic commentary. It systematises the Convention's experience to date with a view to turning it into an integrated, comprehensive and distinctive CISG legal regime on conformity of goods and documents. The analysis is comparative and draws on the experience of some major domestic legal systems, such as English and US law. The focus is both analytical and practical. The book will be of interest to legal practitioners, academic lawyers and students with an interest in international and comparative sales, commercial and contract law.

The traditional theory of urban finance argues against local redistribution of wealth on the assumption that such action is likely to chase away the relatively wealthy, leaving only the impoverished behind. Nevertheless, Clayton P. Gillette observes, local governments engage in substantial redistribution, both to the wealthy and to the poor.

In this thoughtful book, Gillette examines whether recent campaigns to enact "living wage" ordinances and other local redistributive programs represent gaps in the traditional theory or political opportunism. He then investigates the role of the courts in distinguishing between these explanations. The author argues that courts have greater capacity to review local programs than is typically assumed. He concludes that when a single interest group dominates the political process, judicial intervention to determine a program's legal validity may be appropriate. But if the political contest involves competing groups, courts should defer to local political judgments.

The Declaration of Independence stated that all men are created equal, yet the long and continuing struggle for civil rights in the United States seems to indicate otherwise. This reference guide details the most critical civil rights laws in U.S. history, moving from the period of slavery, to the Civil War, to the Reconstruction, to the civil rights era of the mid- to late-20th century. An overview essay introduces each period, and 36 individual laws are examined in essays placing the bills in their historical contexts. Each law is then presented in an edited and, when appropriate, annotated form, so students can read and understand the actual words of the law.

Many of the notable and notorious laws in U.S. legislative history have come in the area of civil rights. Among these are the Fugitive Slave Act, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965. This uncommonly helpful guide to U.S. civil rights legislation also includes timelines, a bibliography, and an index.

This book is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of constitutional politics and constitution-making in the Middle East. The historical background and setting are fully explored in two substantial essays by Linda Darling and Said Amir Arjomand, placing the contemporary experience in the contexts, respectively, of the ancient Middle Eastern legal and political tradition and of the nineteenth and twentieth century legal codification and political modernization. These are followed by Ann Mayer's general analysis of the treatment of human rights in relation to Islam in Middle Eastern constitutions, and Nathan Brown's comparative scrutiny of the process of constitution-making in Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq with reference to the available constitutional theories which are shown to throw little or no light on it. The remaining essays are country by country case studies of Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq, the case of Iran having been covered by Arjomand as the special point of reference. Mehmet Fevzi Bilgin examines the making and subsequent transformation of the Turkish Constitution of 1982 against current theories of constitutional and deliberative democracy, while Hootan Shambayati examines the institutional mechanism for protecting the ideological foundations of the Turkish Republic, most notably the Turkish Constitutional Court which offers a surprising parallel to the Iranian Council of Guardians. Arjomand's introduction brings together the bumpy experience of the Middle East along the long road to political reconstruction through constitution-making and constitutional reform, drawing some general analytical lessons from it and showing the consequences of the origins of the constitutions of Turkey and Iran in revolutions, and of Afghanistan and Iraq in war and foreign invasion.

Reflexive governance offers a theoretical framework for understanding modern patterns of governance in the European Union (EU) institutions and elsewhere. It offers a learning-based approach to governance, but one which can better respond to concerns about the democratic deficit and to the fulfillment of the public interest than the currently dominant neo-institutionalist approaches. The book is composed of one general introduction and eight chapters. Chapter one introduces the concept of reflexive governance and describes the overall framework. The following chapters of the book then summarise the implications of reflexive governance in major areas of domestic, EU and global policy-making. They address in turn: Services of General Interest, Corporate Governance, Institutional Frames for Markets, Regulatory Governance, Fundamental Social Rights, Healthcare Services, Global Public Services and Common Goods. While the themes are diverse, the chapters are unified by their attempt to get to the heart of which concepts of governance are dominant in each field, and what their successes and failures have been: reflexive governance then emerges as one possible response to the failures of other governance models currently being relied upon by policy-makers.

A Jurisprudence of Power concerns the brutal suppression under martial law of the Jamaica uprising of 1865, and the explosive debate and litigation these events spawned in England. The book explores the centrality of legal ideas and institutions in English politics, and of political ideas that give rise to great questions of English law. It documents how the world's most powerful and articulate political elite struggled with fundamental questions about law, morality, and power. Can a constitutional state rule a sprawling empire without breaking faith with the rule of law? Can it contend with the violent resistance of subjugated peoples without corrupting the integrity of its legal and political ideals? The book addresses these questions as it reconstructs the most prolonged and important conflict over martial law and the rule of law in the history of England in the nineteenth century.

The rule of law paradigm has long operated on the premise that independent judges disregard extralegal influences and impartially uphold the law. A political transformation several generations in the making, however, has imperiled this premise. Social science learning, the lessons of which have been widely internalized by court critics and the general public, has shown that judicial decision-making is subject to ideological and other extralegal influences. In recent decades, challenges to the assumptions underlying the rule of law paradigm have proliferated across a growing array of venues, as critics agitate for greater political control of judges and courts. With the future of the rule of law paradigm in jeopardy, this book proposes a new way of looking at how the role of the American judiciary should be conceptualized and regulated. This new, "legal culture paradigm" defends the need for an independent judiciary that is acculturated to take law seriously but is subject to political and other extralegal influences. The book argues that these extralegal influences cannot be eliminated but can be managed, by balancing the needs for judicial independence and accountability across competing perspectives, to the end of enabling judges to follow the "law" (less rigidly conceived), respect established legal process, and administer justice.

The reform of the European Constitution continues to dominate news headlines and has provoked a massive debate, unprecedented in the history of EU law. Against this backdrop Monica Claes' book offers a "bottom up" view of how the Constitution might work, taking the viewpoint of the national courts as her starting point, and at the same time returning to fundamental principles in order to interrogate the myths of Community law. Adopting a broad, comparative approach, she analyses the basic doctrines of Community law from both national constitutional perspectives as well as the more usual European perspective. It is only by combining the perspectives of the EU and national constitutions, she argues, that a complete picture can be obtained, and a solid theoretical base (constitutional pluralism) developed. Her comparative analysis encompasses the law in France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom and in the course of her inquiry discusses a wide variety of prominent problems. The book is structured around three main themes, coinciding with three periods in the development of the judicial dialogue between the ECJ and the national courts. The first focuses on the ordinary non-constitutional national courts and how they have successfully adapted to the mandates developed by the ECJ in Simmenthal and Francovich. The second examines the constitutional and other review courts and discusses the gradual transformation of the ECJ into a constitutional court, and its relationship to the national constitutional courts. The contrast is marked; these courts are not specifically empowered by the case law of the ECJ and have reacted quite differently to the message from Luxembourg, leaving them apparently on collision course with the ECJ in the areas of judicial Kompetenz Kompetenz and fundamental rights. The third theme reprises the first two and places them in the context of the current debate on the Constitution for Europe and the Convention, taking the perspective of the national courts as the starting point for a wide-ranging examination of EU's constitutional fundamentals. In so doing it argues that the new Constitution must accommodate the national perspective if it is to prove effective.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Prologue. Tunnell has written an insightful volume that is clearly written, well organized, informative, and interesting.--Choice Pissing on Demand presents a wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion of the contemporary erosion of civil liberties. No one can read this fine book without being infuriated and alarmed, challenged and--ultimately--enlightened. A real contribution to democratic discourse. --Philip Jenkins, author of href=http: //www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?cPath=&products_id=2533>Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet Offers a critical view of both the detox titans, who Tunnell sees as snake-oil purveyors, and the drug testers themselves. --The Chronicle Drug testing has become the norm in many workplaces. In order to get a job, potential employees are required to provide their urine for testing. Pissing on Demand examines this phenomenon along with the resulting rise of the anti-drug testing movement, or the detox industry, that works to beat these tests. Strategies include over-the-counter products like body flushers that sound innocent but are really designed to mask the presence of illegal drugs to kits advertised in pro-drug publications like High Times that make no bones about their real purpose. The first expose of the detox industry in all its manifestations, this book is required reading for anyone concerned with social control, privacy, and workers' rights.

This volume, an updated collection of essays presented by leading scholars at a Hofstra University conference on group defamation, provides a cross-disciplinary examination of hate speech. Beginning with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the volume analyzes the problem from historical, anthropological, comparative-legal, and American constitutional law perspectives. Among the topics examined are the role of hate speech in the persecutions of Jews and Asians during World War II, in the subordination of Blacks, Native Americans, and women, and the pros and cons of the legal controls on hate speech adopted in such countries as Australia, Canada, and Israel. The section on American constitutional law features several proposed statutes outlawing hate speech, along with model court opinions supporting and attacking their constitutionality. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and students in the areas of intergroup relations and constitutional law as well as policy makers.