The Dred Scott suit for freedom, argues Kelly M. Kennington, was merely the most famous example of a phenomenon that was more widespread in antebellum American jurisprudence than is generally recognized. The author draws on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the local legal arena of St. Louis. Her findings open new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits. As a gateway to the American West, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and a focal point in the rancorous national debate over slavery's expansion, St. Louis was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships, and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and public at titudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Kennington also surveys more than eight hundred state supreme court freedom suits from around the United States to situate the St. Louis example in a broader context. Although white enslavers dominated the antebellum legal system in St. Louis and throughout the slaveholding states, that fact did not mean that the system ignored the concerns of the subordinated groups who made up the bulk of the American population. By looking at a particular example of one group's encounters with the law and placing these suits into conversation with similar en counters that arose in appellate cases nationwide Kennington sheds light on the ways in which the law responded to the demands of a variety of actors.

In Scandinavia the study of disputes is still a relatively new topic: The papers offered here discuss how conflicts were handled in Scandinavian societies in the Middle Ages before the emergence of strong centralized states. What strategies did people use to contest power, property, rights, honour, and other kinds of material or symbolic assets? Seven essays by Scandinavian scholars are supplemented by contributions from Stephen White, John Hudson and Gerd Althoff, to provide a new baseline for discussing both the strategies pursued in the political game and those used to settle local disputes. Using practice and process as key analytical concepts, these authors explore formal law and litigation in conjunction with non-formal legal proceedings such as out-of-court mediation, rituals, emotional posturing, and feuding. Their insights place the Northern medieval world in a European context of dispute studies. With introductory sections on social structure, sources materials, and the historiography of Scandinavian dispute studies. Contributors are Gerd Althoff, Catharina Andersson, Kim Esmark, Lars Ivar Hansen, Lars Hermanson, John Hudson, Audur G. Magnusdottir, Hans Jacob Orning, Helle Vogt and Stephen D. White.

Winner of the 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award In Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity, Valeria Vegh Weis rehabilitates the contributions and the methodology of Marx and Engels to analyze crime and punishment through the historical development of capitalism (15th Century to the present) in Europe and in the United States. The author puts forward the concepts of over-criminalization and under-criminalization to show that the criminal justice system has always been selective. Criminal injustice, the book argues, has been an inherent element of the founding and reproduction of a capitalist society. At a time when racial profiling, prosecutorial discretion, and mass incarceration continue to defy easy answers, Vegh Weis invites us to revisit Marx and Engels' contributions to identify socio-economic and historic patterns of crime and punishment in order to foster transformative changes to criminal justice. The book includes a Foreword by Professor Roger Matthews of Kent University, and an Afterword written by Professor Jonathan Simon of the University of California, Berkeley.

As American Indian tribes seek to overcome centuries of political and social marginalization, they face daunting obstacles. The successes of some tribal casinos have lured many outside observers into thinking that gambling revenue alone can somehow mend the devastation of culture, community, natural resources, and sacred spaces. The reality is quite different. Most tribal officials operate with meager resources and serve impoverished communities with stark political disadvantages. Yet we find examples of Indian tribes persuading states, localities, and the federal government to pursue policy change that addresses important tribal concerns. How is it that Indian tribes sometimes succeed against very dim prospects?
In Power from Powerlessness, Laura Evans looks at the successful policy interventions by a range of American Indian tribal governments and explains how disadvantaged groups can exploit niches in the institutional framework of American federalism to obtain unlikely victories. Tribes have also been adept at building productive relationships with governmental authorities at all levels. Admittedly, many of the tribes' victories are small when viewed on their own: reaching cooperative agreements on trash collection with municipalities and successfully challenging other localities for more control over fisheries and waterway management. However, Evans shows that in combination, their victories are impressive-particularly when considering that the poverty rate among American Indians on reservations is 39 percent. Not simply a book about American Indian politics, Power from Powerlessness forces scholars of institutions and inequality to reconsider the commonly held view that the less powerful are in fact powerless.