"Ambitious in scope, yet full of detailed and incisive criticisms of specific cases and theological principles, "Getting Over Equality" is an uncommon work of truly interdisciplinary scholarship. The provocative legal and theological theses make it a welcome addition to contemporary scholarship in both fields and a recommended text from any course that considers law and religion in the American context."--"The Journal of Religion"

Questions of religious freedom continue to excite passionate public debate. Proposals involving school prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools and courtrooms perennially spur controversy. But there is also a sense that the prevailing discourse is exhausted, that no one seems to know how to think about religious freedom in a way that moves beyond our stale, counterproductive thinking on this issue.

In Getting over Equality, Steven D. Smith, one of the most important voices now writing about religious liberty, provocatively contends that we must get over our presumptionmistakenly believed to be rooted in the Constitutionthat all religions are equally true and virtuous and "authentically American." Smith puts forth an alternative view, that the courts should promote an ideal of tolerance rather than equality and neutrality. Examining such controversial examples as the animal sacrifice case, the peyote case, and the problem of aid to parochial schools, Smith delineates a way for us to tolerate and respect contrary creeds without sacrificing or diluting our own beliefsand without pretending to believe in a spurious "equality" among the variety of diverse faiths.

Like systems and procedures in most areas of modern society, the functioning of courts throughout the world has been enormously affected by information and communication technologies (ICT). It has become crucial for lawyers to keep pace with technical changes in judicial systems, especially in international cases where an understanding of procedural variations from one system to another could spell the difference between success and failure. This text has been written by experts who have been engaged in the planning and implementation of ICT in the courts of their respective countries. To ensure information that is as homogeneous as possible, and to facilitate cross-border comparisons, the authors have followed a common and detailed "blueprint" which includes a brief description of the judicial system under discussion. Specific areas of court technology covered include case management systems, electronic filing, and electronic data interchange. Although the emphasis is on EU Member States, a general overview of ICT applications in some Latin American judiciaries is also provided.

The fact that domestic violence is a serious and ongoing social problem has been well recognized since the women's movement made the hitherto private experience of violence against women in the home into a political issue in the 1960s and 1970s. In Australia, a major national prevalence study of violence against women conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1996 found that 23% of women who had ever been married or in a de facto relationship-1.1 million women-had experienced violence from their partner at some stage during the relationship. Feminist legal scholarship, however, has highlighted the many failures of criminal law to respond adequately to women's experiences of domestic violence. Civil remedies for violence and abuse seem to offer better possibilities: there is a lower standard of proof, and the woman is the subject of her own action rather than merely being the object of proceedings. The availability of civil remedies has, in many cases, resulted from feminist campaigns to fill the gaps in protection left by the criminal law. It has also been argued that civil actions provide scope to change public discourses and legal understandings of violence against women. Listening to women's stories might force a revision of traditional conceptions and myths about what constitutes violence, its causes and effects, and "appropriate" reactions to it. This study investigates the ways in which women's experiences of domestic violence are heard and understood in civil court settings, and examines women's experiences of telling their stories (or at least attempting to do so) in those settings. The two areas on which the study focuses are intervention order proceedings in State Magistrates' Courts, and residence, contact, and property matters in the federal Family Court in Australia. The relevant legislation in the two jurisdictions is either partly or wholly a product of feminist legal activism. The study, therefore, seeks to determine whether the feminist claim that the criminal law silences women also pertains in the context of new civil claims specifically designed to respond to women's experiences. The general history and theory of law reform suggests that reforms often strike problems in the process of implementation. But because law does not operate monolithically, the exact nature of those problems is not necessarily predictable. In the context of this study, implementation problems may arise from social and legal discourses about domestic violence and about victims of violence which tend to operate constantly across the legal system, and/or they may arise from the particular rules and structures found in each institutional setting. There is thus a need for detailed examination and analysis of how these various elements operate and interact in different court settings. In undertaking this task, the study has two objectives. First, it draws conclusions about the nature of implementation problems in the two jurisdictions in order to inform future feminist activism around violence against women. Secondly, it makes a more general point about the importance of procedure in feminist legal theory and praxis. In Australia in particular, feminist legal scholars and advocates have placed a heavy emphasis on doctrinal revision and have largely ignored issues of implementation. The study argues that procedure (conceived broadly to encompass the what, where, how, and who of legal proceedings) crucially shapes women's experience of the legal process, and is neglected by feminists at their peril. This book will be of interest to feminist jurisprudence and law and society scholars and researchers, and to activists and advocates in the field of domestic violence.

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.

This edited book aims to address challenges facing the deployment of autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles were predicted to hit the road by 2017. Even though a high degree of automation may have been achieved, vehicles that can drive autonomously under all circumstances are not yet commercially available, and the predictions have been adjusted. Now, experts even say that we are still decades away from fully autonomous vehicles. In this volume, the authors form a multidisciplinary team of experts to discuss some of the reasons behind this delay. The focus is on three areas: business, technology, and law. The authors discuss how the traditional car manufacturers have to devote numerous resources to the development of a new business model, in which the sole manufacturing of vehicles may no longer be sufficient. In addition, the book seeks to introduce how technological challenges are creating a shift toward connected autonomous vehicles. Further, it provides insight into how regulators are responding to the insufficiently tested technology and how lawyers try to answer the liability question for accidents with these autonomous vehicles.

The History of Corporate Law by the Foremost Legal Historian, James Willard HurstThis study, which is based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia Law School, explores the development of corporate law from the 1780s, a time when the special charter was the only form of incorporation, to the 1960s, a time when corporations were established exclusively through general incorporation statutes. More than a chronicle, Hurst emphasizes how legal institutions actively shaped the central traits of American capitalism. CONTENTSAnalytical Table of ContentsIntroduction: Time, Place and SubjectI.From Special Privilege to General Utility, 1780-1890II.Legitimacy: Utility and Responsibility, 1890-1970III.Institutional Contributions to PolicyConclusion: The Social Impact of Corporation LawBibliographyIndexJames Willard Hurst 1910-1997] revitalized the field of American legal history with The Growth of American Law (1950) and helped establish the study of law and American society in Law and Social Process in United States History (1960). He had a particular interest in the ways society and law influenced one another. He was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Legal Do's and Don'ts in Venture Capital Transactions goes a long way to fulfilling the need of practitioners and entrepreneurs to structure cross-border venture capital transactions that are not only initially successful but enjoy continued profitability with the strength to overcome inevitable obstacles. It will be warmly welcomed by the venture capital and private equity community throughout the world.

Justice Marshall once remarked that if people knew what he knew about the death penalty, they would reject it overwhelmingly. Foley elucidates Marshall's claim that fundamental flaws exist in the implementation of the death penalty. He guides us through the history of the Supreme Court's death penalty decisions, revealing a constitutional quagmire the Court must navigate to avoid violating the fundamental tenant of equal justice for all. History amply demonstrates, argues Foley, that capital punishment cannot be fairly and equally implemented, and that it violates the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Nearly 100 influential Supreme Court capital punishment-related cases from 1878-2002 are examined, beginning with Wilkerson v. Utah, which question not the legitimacy of capital punishment, but the methods of execution. Over time, focus shifted from the constitutionality of certain methods to the fairness of who was being sentenced for capital crimes--and why. The watershed 1972 ruling Furman v. Georgia reversed the Court's stand on capital punishment, holding that the arbitrary and capricious imposition of the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional. Furman clarified that any new death penalty legislation must contain sentencing procedures that avoid the arbitrary infliction of a life-ending verdict, which led to the current complex tangle of issues surrounding the death penalty and its constitutional viability.

This book is the first in the world to provide a cross-national, comparative exploration of omnibus legislation. It contributes to the global debate over omnibus legislation and offers comprehensive, thorough and multifaceted coverage that concerns the fields of legislation and legisprudence, comparative law, political science, public policy and economics. Beyond its relevance for these fields, the book will support practitioners in parliaments, governments and courts, thereby impacting the actual use of omnibus legislation. A new, major and controversial reform is enacted in the middle of the night. It is buried in a massive omnibus bill hundreds of pages in length, which is rammed through the legislative process at breakneck speed. The legislators receive the final version of the bill in the very last minute, and protest that they've had no opportunity to read it in detail and know what they're voting upon. The majority party's legislative leaders, however, are unimpressed, and the law is eventually passed on the basis of strict party discipline. Though it may sound far-fetched, this scenario is all too familiar in many legislatures around the world. The legislative practice of combining numerous unrelated measures in one long bill, which is often passed via a highly expedited process, has become a matter of intense debate and criticism in many countries.

Constitutionalists have not been eager to deal with the legal structures and problems of the European integration process from the viewpoint of the nation-state and have often surrendered the treatment of these issues to Community law experts. This text offers a presentation of different nation-state constitutional approaches to the problems of European integration. It covers a number of diverse nation-state constitutional approaches to the phenomenon of integration and various integration processes in the contemporary world. Topics of particular focus include: the formation of supranational and federal structures; the relationship and differences between these two kinds of structures and a possible conflict between them; and the problems of European integration. The International Association of Constitutional Law organized a Round Table Conference in Turku, Finland in May 1997 on the theme of this book. The contributions comprise the updated papers delivered at the Turku Round Table.

This book, based on empirical and quantitative research, assesses the development of openness in government affairs in China. The content is divided into five parts, namely a general report, special reports, assessment reports on government transparency, reports on the openness of government in specific fields and how openness in government affairs is locally practiced. Covering the country as a whole, the general report summarizes significant aspects of openness in government affairs at all levels regarding, e.g. decision-making, law enforcement, management, service, policy interpretation and responding to public concerns. In addition, the general report reveals some current problems and provides an outline of openness in government affairs for the future. Focusing on decision-making, social assistance, environmental protection, transport, education and other fields closely related to public interest and social attention, the book subsequently summarizes a number of special works concerning openness in government affairs. Furthermore, it conducts a special study on the standardized work of openness in government affairs, which has been actively pursued by departments of the State Council and local governments. In order to provide representative coverage on openness in government affairs, the book combines innovative measures, experiences and problems, while also sharing an in-depth analysis of the difficulties involved in openness for local governments, including examples from several provinces and cities.

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

This much revised and expanded edition guides researchers to sources that provide information about the general and specific subjects which form the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government. A tool that correlates legal authorities, principal offices, and financial resources and clarifies their patterns of interaction, the book points out the most appropriate methods and authors for accessing all fields of federal data. Students, teachers, public administrators, policy analysts and citizen activists will find that this easy-to-use guide reliably maps out the jurisdictions of government business and policymaking. This much revised and expanded edition guides researchers to sources that provide information about the general and specific subjects which form the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government. A tool that correlates legal authorities, principal offices, and financial resources and clarifies their patterns of interaction, the book points out the most appropriate methods and authors for accessing all fields of federal data. This research aid translates the universe of public responsibilities into topical categories that chart the structure and functions of the policymaking branches and their various subunits. By helping students, teachers, public administrators, policy analysts, and citizen activists to understand the role of jurisdiction in the business of government, it enables them to develop their own best research strategies.

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.

"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.

Contemporary scholarly and popular debate over the legacy of racial integration in the United States rests between two positions that are typically seen as irreconcilable. On one side are those who argue that we must pursue racial integration because it is an essential component of racial justice. On the other are those who question the ideal of integration and suggest that its pursuit may damage the very population it was originally intended to liberate. In An Impossible Dream? Sharon A. Stanley shows that much of this apparent disagreement stems from different understandings of the very meaning of integration. In response, she offers a new model of racial integration in the United States that takes seriously the concerns of longstanding skeptics, including black power activists and black nationalists. Stanley reformulates integration to de-emphasize spatial mixing for its own sake and calls instead for an internal, psychic transformation on the part of white Americans and a radical redistribution of power. The goal of her vision is not simply to mix black and white bodies in the same spaces and institutions, but to dismantle white supremacy and create a genuine multiracial democracy. At the same time, however, she argues that achieving this model of integration in the contemporary United States would be extraordinarily challenging, due to the poisonous legacy of Jim Crow and the hidden, self-reinforcing nature of white privilege today. Pursuing integration against a background of persistent racial injustice might well exacerbate black suffering without any guarantee of achieving racial justice or a worthwhile form of integration. Given this challenge, pessimism toward integration is a defensible position. But while the future of integration remains uncertain, its pursuit can neither be prescribed as a moral obligation nor rejected as intrinsically indefensible. In An Impossible Dream? Stanley dissects this vexing moral and political quandary.