This updated and revised second edition provides a comprehensive scholarly framework for analyzing the theory and history of international law. Featuring an array of legal and interdisciplinary analyses, it focuses on those theories and developments that illuminate the central and timeless basic concepts and categories of the international legal system, highlighting the interdependency of various aspects of theory and history and demonstrating the connections between theory and practice. With contributions from renowned experts, this Research Handbook explores the essence and development of international legal theory, taking account of the key shifts and advances since the era of classical legal scholarship. Contributors examine several major areas of international law in depth, before transferring their focus to the history of international law from the medieval period up to the present day. Coverage has been expanded to include analysis of the origins of and Eurocentric narratives surrounding the present system, and to discuss significant developments of the 21st century. Scholars and students of international law and politics looking for an in-depth understanding of the current international legal system and its history will find this Research Handbook to be crucial reading. Its theoretical approach will also be of interest to legal theorists, as well as researchers in ethics and philosophy.

A long-overdue expose of the astonishing yet shadowy power wielded by the world's largest law firms. Though not a household name, Jones Day is well known in the halls of power, and serves as a powerful encapsulation of the changes that have swept the legal profession in recent decades. Founded in the US in 1893, it has become one of the world's largest law firms, a global juggernaut with deep ties to corporate interests and conservative politics. A key player in the legal battles surrounding the Trump administration, Jones Day has also for decades represented Big Tobacco, defended opioid manufacturers, and worked tirelessly to minimise the sexual-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Like many of its peers, it has fought time and again for those who want nothing more than to act without constraint or scrutiny - including the Russian oligarchs as they have sought to expand internationally. In this gripping and revealing new work of narrative nonfiction, New York Times Business Investigations Editor and bestselling author David Enrich at last tells the story of 'Big Law' and the nearly unchecked influence these firms wield to shield the wealthy and powerful - and bury their secrets.

Allan Beever lays the foundation for a timely philosophical and empirical study of the nature of law with a detailed examination of the structure of evolving law through declaratory speech acts. This engaging book demonstrates both how law itself is achieved and also its ability to generate rights, duties, obligations, permissions and powers. Structured into three distinct parts - the philosophy of law and jurisprudence, the structure of the social word and the ontology of law, and the reconstruction of the philosophy of law - the author provides insight into law as a human institution and reveals that central debates are often based on misunderstandings of interpretation and intentionality. Inspired by the philosophy of John Searle alongside other well-respected legal theorists, the author also analyses both sides of the mainstream jurisprudential divide in its current state, in particular the theory of legal positivism. Examining all aspects of law and answering the important question of 'What is Law?', this book will be an invaluable resource for academics and advanced students in law schools and philosophy departments.

Over the course of its history, the United States Supreme Court has emerged as the most powerful judiciary unit the world has ever seen. Paul D. Moreno's How the Court Became Supreme offers a deep dive into its transformation from an institution paid little notice by the American public to one whose decisions are analyzed and broadcast by major media outlets across the nation. The Court is supreme today not just within the judicial branch of the federal government but also over the legislative and executive branches, effectively possessing the ability to police elections and choose presidents. Before 1987, nearly all nominees to the Court sailed through confirmation hearings, often with little fanfare, but these nominations have now become pivotal moments in the minds of voters. Complaints of judicial primacy range across the modern political spectrum, but little attention is given to what precisely that means or how it happened. What led to the ascendancy of America's highest court? Moreno seeks to answer this question, tracing the long history of the Court's expansion of influence and examining how the Court envisioned by the country's Founders has evolved into an imperial judiciary. The US Constitution contains a multitude of safeguards to prevent judicial overreach, but while those measures remain in place today, most have fallen into disuse. Many observers maintain that the Court exercises legislative or executive power under the guise of judicial review, harming rather than bolstering constitutional democracy. How the Court Became Supreme tells the story of the origin and development of this problem, proposing solutions that might compel the Court to embrace its more traditional role in our constitutional republic.

This illuminating book explores the theme of social constructionism in legal theory. It questions just how much freedom and power social groups really have to construct and reconstruct law. Michael Giudice takes a nuanced approach to analyse what is true and what is false in the view that law is socially constructed. He draws on accounts of European Union law as well as Indigenous legal orders in North America to demonstrate the contingency of particular concepts of law. Utilising evidence from a range of social and natural sciences, he also considers how law may have a naturally necessary core. The book concludes that while law would not exist without beliefs, intentions, and practices, it must always exist as a social rule, declaration, or directive; much, but not all, of law is socially constructed. This book will be a valuable resource for academics and students of law and philosophy as well as researchers interested in the intersections between analytical legal theory, socio-legal studies, and empirical legal studies.

More than the story of one man's case, this book tells the story of entire generations of people marked as "mixed race" in America amid slavery and its aftermath, and being officially denied their multicultural identity and personal rights as a result. Contrary to popular misconceptions, Plessy v. Ferguson was not a simple case of black vs. white separation, but rather a challenging and complex protest for U.S. law to fully accept mixed ancestry and multiculturalism. This book focuses on the long struggle for individual identity and multicultural recognition amid the dehumanizing and depersonalizing forces of American Negro slavery-and the Anglo-American white supremacy that drove it. The book takes students and general readers through the extended gestation period that gave birth to one of the most oft-mentioned but widely misunderstood landmark law will cases in U.S. history. It provides a chronology, brief biographies of key figures, primary documents, an annotated bibliography, and an index all of which provide easy reading and quick reference. Modern readers will find the direct connections between Plessy's story and contemporary racial currents in America intriguing.

In 1992, three hundred innocent Haitian men, women, and children who had qualified for political asylum in the United States were detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- and told they might never be freed. Charismatic democracy activist Yvonne Pascal and her fellow refugees had no contact with the outside world, no lawyers, and no hope . . . until a group of inspired Yale Law School students vowed to free them.

Pitting the students and their untested professor Harold Koh against Kenneth Starr, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, this real-life legal thriller takes the reader from the halls of Yale and the federal courts of New York to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the windswept hills of Guantanamo Bay and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. Written with grace and passion, "Storming the Court" captures the emotional highs and despairing lows of a legal education like no other -- a high-stakes courtroom campaign against the White House in the name of the greatest of American values: freedom.

This innovative book explores forgotten disputes over intellectual property and the ways in which authors, inventors, publishers, courts, and sovereigns have managed these disputes throughout the centuries. With an eye on reform, it chronicles the resilience of legal rules and challenges the methodology behind traditional legal analyses. Disentangling lore from traditions, expert contributors incorporate contextual understandings that are rooted in history, sociology, political science, and literary studies into their analyses. They explore the context of particular cases to reveal the ramifications of specific doctrines for the evolution of intellectual property practices. Chapters illuminate the various facets of intellectual property lore: contract, authorship, common law, and wartime property. Utilising novel methods and previously unpublished materials on copyright, patent, and trademark law, the book examines legal history and developments from multiple perspectives. This rich and accessible book will prove to be a valuable resource for students, academics of intellectual property law, and legal historians. Its use of new materials and exploration of key cases will also be beneficial for intellectual property legal practitioners.

Infamous for authoring two concepts since favored by government powers seeking license for ruthlessness-the utilitarian notion of privileging the greatest happiness for the most people and the panopticon-Jeremy Bentham is not commonly associated with political emancipation. But perhaps he should be. In his private manuscripts, Bentham agonized over the injustice of laws prohibiting sexual nonconformity, questioning state policy that would put someone to death merely for enjoying an uncommon pleasure. He identified sources of hatred for sexual nonconformists in philosophy, law, religion, and literature, arguing that his goal of "the greatest happiness" would be impossible as long as authorities dictate whose pleasures can be tolerated and whose must be forbidden. Ultimately, Bentham came to believe that authorities worked to maximize the suffering of women, colonized and enslaved persons, and sexual nonconformists in order to demoralize disenfranchised people and prevent any challenge to power. In Uncommon Sense, Carrie Shanafelt reads Bentham's sexual nonconformity papers as an argument for the toleration of aesthetic difference as the foundation for egalitarian liberty, shedding new light on eighteenth-century aesthetics and politics. At odds with the common image of Bentham as a dehumanizing calculator or an eccentric projector, this innovative study shows Bentham at his most intimate, outraged by injustice and desperate for the end of sanctioned, discriminatory violence.