Former slaves, with no prior experience in electoral politics and with few economic resources or little significant social standing, created a sweeping political movement that transformed the South after the Civil War. Within a few short years after emancipation, not only were black men voting but they had elected thousands of ex-slaves to political offices. Historians have long noted the role of African American slaves in the fight for their emancipation and their many efforts to secure their freedom and citizenship, yet they have given surprisingly little attention to the system of governance that freedpeople helped to fashion. Justin Behrend argues that freed-people created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy.
"Reconstructing Democracy" tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people who lived in the Natchez District, a region of the Deep South where black political mobilization was very successful. Behrend shows how freedpeople set up a political system rooted in egalitarian values wherein local communities rather than powerful individuals held power and ordinary people exercised unprecedented influence in governance. In so doing, he invites us to reconsider not only our understanding of Reconstruction but also the nature and origins of democracy more broadly.

"This is the first book to offer a systematic analysis of human rights in the 21st century. The chapters, written from diverse methodological perspectives, provide rich and varied insights on vital questions concerning the resiliency, weaknesses, and prospects of human rights today"--Provided by publisher.

This book explores in what ways both sides involved in the so-called war on terror are using schoolchildren as propaganda tools while putting the children's security at grave risk. The book explores how terrorists use attacks on education to attempt to destabilize the government while the government and the international aid community use increases in school attendance as an ostensible index of largely illusory progress in the overall security situation and in development. The book challenges the notion that unoccupied civilian schools are not entitled under the law of armed conflict to a high standard of protection which prohibits their use for military purposes. Also examined are the potential violations of international law that can occur when government and education aid workers encourage and facilitate school attendance, as they do, in areas within conflict-affected states such as Afghanistan where security for education is inadequate and the risk of terror attacks on education high.

Immigration and refugee policies have traditionally been based on two assumptions: first, that national sovereignty implies absolute control of a country's borders and, second, that outsiders are to be admitted only when it serves the national interest. Moral or ethical concerns have not played a central role in policy formation anywhere in the world. This collection of essays challenges the traditional politically oriented position, analyzes the moral issues involved, and develops models for morally responsible immigration and refugee policies in a contemporary political setting. The editor's introduction reviews the history of U.S. immigration policy and provides a framework for considering immigration control issues. Written by leading authorities on immigration and refugee policy, this provocative volume offers an honest, sensitive exploration of some of the most difficult questions facing contemporary society. It will be of interest for studies in ethics, human rights, public policy, and political economy, as well as to general readers concerned with immigration and refugee issues.

Human rights are intertwined with large processes of globalisation. One of these processes is the rapid world-wide growth of multinational business enterprises. This volume argues that normative and legal developments to regulate and govern the behaviour of transnational businesses represent a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. This frontier has borne witness to many victims, but there are also glimpses of hope and opportunities for expanding the respect and protection of human rights in the corporate sector at local, national, and global levelsThe volume presents essays discussing current international challenges and efforts to advance human rights duties of transnational businesses. An introductory essay provides an overview of the debate and the individual chapters discuss legal, institutional, political, and social dimensions and obstacles to advancing business enterprises social and legal commitment to human rights norms.The book is aimed at legal and development scholars, public servants, and civil society practitioners with an interest in human rights commitments of transnational businesses. It is also of use for teachers and students in human rights law, corporate social responsibility courses, and courses in global development in degree programmes, and professional training programmes.

This book demonstrates the importance of a duty-based approach to morality. The dominance of what has been labeled "rights talk" leads to the neglect of duties without corresponding rights (e.g., duties of virtue) and stimulates the proliferation of questionable human rights. Therefore, this book argues for a duty-based perspective on morality in order to, first, salvage duties of virtue, and, second, counter the trend of rights-proliferation by providing some conceptual clarity concerning rights and duties that will enable us to differentiate between genuine and spurious rights-claims. The argument for this duty-based perspective is made by examining two particularly contentious duties: duties to aid the global poor and civic duties. These two duties serve as case studies and are explored from the perspectives of political theory, jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The argument is made that both these duties can only be adequately defined and allocated if we adopt the perspective of duties, as the predominant perspective of rights either does not recognize them to be duties at all or else leaves their content and allocation indefinite. This renewed focus on duties does not wish to diminish the importance of rights. Rather, the duty-based perspective on morality will strengthen human rights discourse by distinguishing more strictly between genuine and inauthentic rights. Furthermore, a duty-based approach enriches our moral landscape by recognizing both duties of justice and duties of virtue. The latter duties are not less important or supererogatory, but function as indispensable complements to the duties prescribed by justice. In this perceptive and exceptionally lucid book, Eric Boot argues that a duty-focused approach to morality will remedy the shortcomings he finds in the standard accounts of human rights. The study tackles staple philosophical topics such as the contrasts between duties of virtue and duties of justice and imperfect and perfect obligations. But more importantly perhaps, it also confronts the practical question of what our human rights duties are and how we ought to act on them. Boot's book is a splendid example of how philosophy can engage and clarify real world problems. Kok-Chor Tan, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania A lively and enjoyable defence of the importance of our having duties to fellow human beings in severe poverty. At a time when global justice has never been more urgent, this new book sheds much needed light. Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government and Head of Durham Law School, Durham University

Thirty years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a fateful decision: to allow newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations to compete in the marketplace instead of being financed exclusively by the government. The political and social implications of that decision are still unfolding as the Chinese government, media, and public adapt to the new information environment.
Edited by Susan Shirk, one of America's leading experts on contemporary China, this collection of essays brings together a who's who of experts--Chinese and American--writing about all aspects of the changing media landscape in China. In detailed case studies, the authors describe how the media is reshaping itself from a propaganda mouthpiece into an agent of watchdog journalism, how politicians are reacting to increased scrutiny from the media, and how television, newspapers, magazines, and Web-based news sites navigate the cross-currents between the open marketplace and the CCP censors. China has over 360 million Internet users, more than any other country, and an astounding 162 million bloggers. The growth of Internet access has dramatically increased the information available, the variety and timeliness of the news, and its national and international reach. But China is still far from having a free press. As of 2008, the international NGO Freedom House ranked China 181 worst out of 195 countries in terms of press restrictions, and Chinese journalists have been aptly described as "dancing in shackles." The recent controversy over China's censorship of Google highlights the CCP's deep ambivalence toward information freedom.
Covering everything from the rise of business media and online public opinion polling to environmental journalism and the effect of media on foreign policy, Changing Media, Changing China reveals how the most populous nation on the planet is reacting to demands for real news.

This book examines the attainment of complete free movement of civil judgments across EU member states from the perspective of its conformity with the fundamental right to a fair trial. In the integrated legal order of the European Union, it is essential that litigants can rely on a judgment no matter where in the EU it was delivered. Effective mechanisms for cross-border recognition and the enforcement of judgments provide both debtors and creditors with the security that their rights, including their right to a fair trial, will be protected. In recent years the attainment of complete free movement of civil judgments, through simplification or abolition of these mechanisms, has become a priority for the European legislator. The text uniquely combines a thorough discussion of EU legislation with an in-depth and critical examination of its interplay with fundamental rights. It contains an over-view and comparison of both ECtHR and CJEU case law on the right to a fair trial, and provides a great number of specific recommendations for current and future legislation. With its critical discussion of EU Regulations from both a practical and a theoretical standpoint, this book is particularly relevant to legislators and policymakers working in this field. Because of the extensive overview of the functioning of the EU's mechanisms and of relevant case law it provides, the book is also highly relevant to academics and practitioners. Monique Hazelhorst is Judicial Assistant at the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. She studied Law and Legal Research at Utrecht University and holds a Ph.D. in Law from the Erasmus School of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

This edited work collates novel contributions on contemporary topics that are related to human rights. The essays address analytic-descriptive questions, such as what legal personality actually means, and normative questions, such as who or what should be recognised as a legal person. As is well-known among jurists, the law has a special conception of personhood: corporations are persons, whereas slaves have traditionally been considered property rather than persons. This odd state of affairs has not garnered the interest of legal theorists for a while and the theory of legal personhood has been a relatively peripheral topic in jurisprudence for at least 50 years. As readers will see, there have recently been many developments and debates that justify a theoretical investigation of this topic. Animal rights activists have been demanding that some animals be recognized as legal persons. The field of robotics has prompted questions about driverless cars: should they be granted a limited legal personality, so that the car itself would be responsible for damages? This book explores such concepts and touches on matters of bioethics, animal law and medical law. It includes matters of legal history and appeals to both legal scholars and philosophers, especially those with an interest in theories of law and the philosophy of law.

Professors Grear and Kotze have masterfully fashioned a landmark work on human rights and the natural environment. This Research Handbook is more than just a library of current ideas about this important topic; it is an intellectual tour de force that stimulates new thinking on the place of social justice and moral responsibility in the Anthropocene.' - Benjamin J. Richardson, University of Tasmania, Australia'As the connections between human rights and the environment become deeper and broader, this Handbook offers an indispensable point of reference. A seriously impressive group of scholars addresses a seriously interesting range of themes that inform and challenge the totality of our understanding.' - Philippe Sands, University College London, UK Bringing together leading international scholars in the field, this authoritative Handbook combines critical and doctrinal scholarship to illuminate some of the challenging tensions in the legal relationships between humans and the environment, and human rights and environment law. The accomplished contributors provide researchers and students with a rich source of reflection and engagement with the topic. Split into five parts, the book covers epistemologies, core values and closures, constitutionalisms, universalisms and regionalisms, with a final concluding section exploring major challenges and alternative futures. An essential resource for students and scholars of human rights law, the volume will also be of significant interest to those in the fields of environmental and constitutional law. Contributors: S. Adelman, U. Beyerlin, K. Bosselmann, D.R Boyd, P.D. Burdon, L. Code, L. Collins, S. Coyle, C.G Gonzalez, E. Grant, A. Grear, E. Hey, C.J. Iorns Magallanes, B. Jessup, A. Jones, A. A. Khavari, L.J. Kotze, R. Lyster, K. Morrow, A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, W. Scholtz, P. Simons, S. Theriault, F. Venter

This book explores the alleged uniqueness of the European experience, and investigates its ties to a long history of LGBT and queer movements in the region. These movements, the book argues, were inspired by specific ideas about Europe, which they sought to realize on the ground through activism.

Mississippi is a unique case study as a result of its long-standing defiance of federal civil rights legislation and the fact that nearly half its population was black and relegated to second-class citizenship. According to the vast majority of Mississippi daily press editorials examined between 1948 and 1968, the notion that blacks and whites were equal as races of people was a concept that remained unacceptable and inconceivable. While the daily press certainly did not advocate desegregation, in contrast to what many media critics have reported about the Southern press promoting violence to suppress civil rights activity, Mississippi daily newspapers never encouraged or condoned violence during the time periods under evaluation. Weill places coverage of these important events within a historical context, shedding new light on media opinion in the state most resistant to the precepts of the civil rights movement. This is the first comprehensive examination of civil rights coverage and white supremacist rhetoric in the Mississippi daily press during five key events: the 1948 Dixiecrat protest of the national Democratic platform; the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools in 1954; the court-ordered desegregation of Ole Miss in 1962; Freedom Summer in 1964; and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. From nearly 5,000 issues of Mississippi daily newspapers, more than 1,000 editorials and 7,000 news articles are documented in this volume.

Winner of the 2013 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize presented by the American Society of Church History Mississippi Praying examines the faith communities at ground-zero of the racial revolution that rocked America. This religious history of white Mississippians in the civil rights era shows how Mississippians' intense religious commitments played critical, rather than incidental, roles in their response to the movement for black equality. During the civil rights movement and since, it has perplexed many Americans that unabashedly Christian Mississippi could also unapologetically oppress its black population. Yet, as Carolyn Renee Dupont richly details, white southerners' evangelical religion gave them no conceptual tools for understanding segregation as a moral evil, and many believed that God had ordained the racial hierarchy. Challenging previous scholarship that depicts southern religious support for segregation as weak, Dupont shows how people of faith in Mississippi rejected the religious argument for black equality and actively supported the effort to thwart the civil rights movement. At the same time, faith motivated a small number of white Mississippians to challenge the methods and tactics of do-or-die segregationists. Racial turmoil profoundly destabilized Mississippi's religious communities and turned them into battlegrounds over the issue of black equality. Though Mississippi's evangelicals lost the battle to preserve segregation, they won important struggles to preserve the theology that had sustained the racial hierarchy. Ultimately, this history sheds light on the eventual rise of the religious right by elaborating the connections between the pre- and post-civil rights South.

Science fairs, clubs, and talent searches are familiar fixtures in American education, yet little is known about why they began and grew in popularity. In Science Education and Citizenship, Sevan G. Terzian traces the civic purposes of these extracurricular programs for youth over four decades in the early to mid-twentieth century. He argues that Americans' mobilization for World War Two reoriented these educational activities from scientific literacy to national defense -- a shift that persisted in the ensuing atomic age and has left a lasting legacy in American science education.

At 7:30 a.m. on June 16, 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr. was escorted by four guards to the death chamber. Wearing socks but no shoes, the 14-year-old Black boy walked with his Bible tucked under his arm. The guards strapped his slight, five-foot-one-inch frame into the electric chair. His small size made it difficult to affix the electrode to his right leg and the face mask, which was clearly too large, fell to the floor when the executioner flipped the switch. That day, George Stinney became, and today remains, the youngest person executed in the United States during the twentieth century.How was it possible, even in Jim Crow South Carolina, for a child to be convicted, sentenced to death, and executed based on circumstantial evidence in a trial that lasted only a few hours? Through extensive archival research and interviews with Stinney's contemporaries-men and women alive today who still carry distinctive memories of the events that rocked the small town of Alcolu and the entire state-Eli Faber pieces together the chain of events that led to this tragic injustice. The first book to fully explore the events leading to Stinney's death, The Child in the Electric Chair offers a compelling narrative with a meticulously researched analysis of the world in which Stinney lived-the era of lynching, segregation, and racist assumptions about Black Americans. Faber explains how a systemically racist system, paired with the personal ambitions of powerful individuals, turned a blind eye to human decency and one of the basic tenets of the American legal system that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. As society continues to grapple with the legacies of racial injustice, the story of George Stinney remains one that can teach us lessons about our collective past and present. By ably placing the Stinney case into a larger context, Faber reveals how this case is not just a travesty of justice locked in the era of the Jim Crow South but rather one that continues to resonate in our own time. A foreword is provided by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History Emerita at Baruch College at the City University of New York and author of several books including Civil War Wives: The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant.

While bus boycotts, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience were the engine of the civil rights movement, the law was a primary context. Lawyers played a key role during the profound social upheavals, and the twenty-six contributors to this volume reveal what it was like to be a southern civil rights lawyer in this era. These eyewitness accounts provide unique windows onto the most dramatic moments in civil rights history, illuminating the legal fights that heralded the 1965 Selma March, the first civil judgment against the Ku Klux Klan, the creation of ballot access for blacks in Alabama, and the 1968 Democratic Convention. White and black, male and female, Northern- and Southern-born, these lawyers discuss both the abuses they endured and the barriers they broke as they helped shape a critical chapter of American history.

"A thoughtful book that offers significant insights on the potential perils of imposing restraints in the traditional First Amendment rights."
--A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

"A powerful collection of essays challenging the advocates of curbing speech in order to promote equality. Most impressively, these writers make their case not through name-calling, but by taking them seriously, and dissecting, opposing arguments and acknowledging complexities, and by invoking informed common sense in bracing prose."
--Gerald Gunther, author of "The Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge,"

At the University of Pennsylvania, a student is reprimanded for calling a group of African-American students water buffalo. Several prominent American law schools now request that professors abstain from discussing the legal aspects of rape for fear of offending students. As debates over multiculturalism and political correctness crisscross the land, no single issue has been more of a flash point in the ongoing culture wars than hate speech codes, which seek to restrict bigoted or offensive speech and punish those who engage in it. In this provocative anthology, a range of prominent voices argue that hate speech restrictions are not only dangerous, but counterproductive. The lessons of history indicate that speech regulation designed to protect minorities is destined to be used against them. Acknowledging the legitimacy of the concerns that prompt speech codes and combining support for civil liberties with an acute concern for civil tights issues, "Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex" demonstrates that it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw the line between unprotected insults and protected ideas.Decrying such speech regulation as overly concerned with the symbols of racism rather than its realities, Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex offers a balanced and well-reasoned perspective on one of the most controversial issues of our time.

Citizenship is a phenomenon that encompasses the relationships between the state and individuals, rights and responsibilities and identity and nationhood. Yet the relationship between citizenship and childhood has gone relatively unexplored. This book examines this relationship by situating it within the historical development of modern forms of citizenship that have formed contemporary Western notions of childhood and citizenship. The book also engages with recent political and social theory to rethink our current view of citizenship and develops an understanding that emphasises social interdependence and calls for a concomitant re-evaluation of our public spaces that facilitates the recognition of children as participating agents within society.

Does an offender have the "right" to be punished? "The right to be punished" may sound like an oxymoron, but it is not necessarily so. With the emergence of modern criminal law, the offender gained the "right" to be punished by rational criminal law rather than being lynched by an angry mob. The present-day offender may have the "right" to be punished by doctrinal sentencing rather than being subjected to verdicts based on vague, unclear, and uncertain principles. In modern criminal law, the imposition of criminal liability follows accurate and strict rules, whereas there are no similar rules for the imposition of punishment. The process of sentencing is vague and obscure, as are the considerations used for the imposition of punishments. The objective of the present book is to propose a comprehensive, general, and legally sophisticated theory of modern doctrinal sentencing. The challenges of such a legal theory are plenty and complex. In addition to increasing clarity and certainty, modern doctrinal sentencing must deal with modern types of delinquency (e.g. organized crime, recidivism, corporate offenders, high-tech offenses, etc.) and modern principles of criminal law. Modern doctrinal sentencing must serve to ensure optimal sentencing.

Read the Introduction. Read the Table of Contents

"This collection of essays could not be timelier...scholars pondering the implications of recent immigration for ethnic and racial politics would do well to look at this collection of essays."--"American Political Science Review"

America is currently in the midst of a major racial and ethnic demographic shift. By the twenty-first century, the population of Hispanics and Asians will increase significantly, while the black population is expected to remain relatively stable. Non-Hispanic Whites will decrease to just over half of the nation's population. How will the changing ethnic and racial composition of American society affect the long struggle for black political power and inclusion? To what extent will these racial and ethnic shifts affect the already tenuous nature of racial politics in American society?

Using the literature on black politics as an analytical springboard, Black and Multiracial Politics in America brings together a broad demography of scholars from various racial and ethnic groups to assess how urban political institutions, political coalitions, group identity, media portrayal of minorities, racial consciousness, support for affirmative action policy, political behavior, partisanship, and other crucial issues are impacted by America's multiracial landscape.

Contributors include Dianne Pinderhughes, M. Margaret Conway, Pei-te Lein, Susan Howell, Mack Jones, Brigitte L. Nacos, Natasha Hritzuk, Marion Orr, Michael Jones-Correa, A.B. Assensoh, Joseph McCormick, Sekou Franklin, Jose Cruz, Erroll Henderson, Mamie Locke, Reuel Rogers, James Endersby, Charles Menifield and Lawrence J. Hanks.

The book questions the classic idea of self-determination - the right to self-determination is a right of peoples, not of minorities - by examining the content of the right to self-determination and the content of minority rights. Self-determination has four dimensions: the political, the economic, the social and the cultural dimensions. Minorities have minority rights that touch on most aspects of life as a member of a minority. If there is an overlap between minority rights and the different dimensions of self-determination, the concept that the right to self-determination is only applicable to peoples loses credibility. No global and general conclusion is envisaged; there are restrictions in place. The work is limited to the European framework and is further restricted to classic minorities. The argument is based on a legitimacy and justice approach. The analysis in this book shows that some minority rights overlap with the different dimensions of internal self-determination. In short, classic minorities in Europe have a right to internal self-determination.

Global mobility refers to movements of people across international borders for any length of time or purpose. In addition to the world's 214 million migrants, there are more than two billion annual border crossings of tourists, students, business people and commuters who travel internationally for stays of less than a year. This volume considers "global mobility" as an alternative concept to "international migration" in order to gain insights into international cooperation on movements of people across international borders; examines a set of interacting global mobility regimes: the established international refugee regime, a latent but strengthening international travel regime and a non-existent but potential international labor migration regime; and explores the possibilities of increasing international cooperation, especially through linkages among these three issue areas.

In the second half of the 1980s Japan has emerged as one of the new major destination countries for migrants from Asia. The migrant labour pool was then joined by Japanese descendants from South American countries in the 1990s. Japan's policy of keeping the labour market closed to foreign unskilled workers has remained unchanged despite the 1990 immigration policy reform, which met the growing need for unskilled labour not by opening the 'front-door' to unskilled workers but by letting them in through intentionally-provided 'side-doors'. This book throws light on various aspects of migration flows to Japan and the present status of migrant workers as conditioned by Japan's immigration control system. The analysis aims to explore how the massive arrival of migrants affected Japan's immigration policy and how the policy segmented the foreign labour market in Japan.

This title uses oral history methodology to record stories of people who experienced the brunt of racist forced removals in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. Through life stories and community case studies, it traces the human impact of this disruptive, often violent feature of apartheid's social engineering.