A senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee recounts how anonymous donors seized control of the U.S. Judiciary, including the Supreme Court "An absolute must-read." -Congressman Ro Khanna (CA-17) Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the courts, and how it influenced the Trump administration's appointment of over 230 "business-friendly" judges, including the last three justices of the United States Supreme Court. Whitehouse traces the motive to control the court system back to Lewis Powell's notorious memo, which gave a road map for corporate influence to target the judiciary, and chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups and helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The scheme utilized the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, spent secret millions to support the nominees, orchestrated an "amicus brief" signaling apparatus, and propped up front-group litigants to "fast-lane" strategic test cases to the friendly justices. Whitehouse finds the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations running operations that he likens to "covert ops," ultimately enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance the anti- government agenda of a small number of corporate oligarchs. The world got a glimpse of this story when the Senator's presentation at the Amy Coney Barrett hearing went viral. Now, full of unique insights and inside stories, The Scheme pulls back the curtain on a powerful and hidden apparatus that has spent years trying to corrupt our politics, control our courts, and degrade our democracy.

This volume presents an anthropological perspective on the hidden continuities between corruption and law. The authors argue that the two opposites, corruption and law, are inextricably linked - with the possibility of the former already inscribed into the latter. Taking a critical stance towards the normative good governance agenda spearheaded by institutions such as Transparency International and the World Bank, this volume argues that by uncritically depicting corruption as an absolute evil, these anti-corruption programs disregard the close relationship that exists between corruption and state power. Addressing various aspects of a complex and ambivalent phenomenon, Corruption and the Secret of Law draws on studies from different parts of the world including Burundi, China, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico and the USA and provides a valuable resource for students, researchers and policy-makers working in this area.

Across the world, most people are well aware of ordinary criminal harms to person and property. Often committed by the powerless and poor, these individualized crimes are catalogued in the statistics collected annually by the FBI and by similar agencies in other developed nations. In contrast, the more harmful and systemic forms of injury to person and property committed by powerful and wealthy individuals, groups, and national states are neither calculated by governmental agencies nor annually reported by the mass media. As a result, most citizens of the world are unaware of the routinized "crimes of the powerful", even though they are more likely to experience harms and injuries from these types of organized offenses than they are from the atomized offenses of the powerless. Research on the crimes of the powerful brings together several areas of criminological focus, involving organizational and institutional networks of powerful people that commit crimes against workers, marketplaces, taxpayers and political systems, as well as acts of torture, terrorism, and genocide. This international handbook offers a comprehensive, authoritative and structural synthesis of these interrelated topics of criminological concern. It also explains why the crimes of the powerful are so difficult to control. Edited by internationally acclaimed criminologist Gregg Barak, this book reflects the state of the art of scholarly research, covering all the key areas including corporate, global, environmental, and state crimes. The handbook is a perfect resource for students and researchers engaged with explaining and controlling the crimes of the powerful, domestically and internationally.

This volume presents the latest scholarly research on the practice of public corruption. The authors explore the causes and methods of fraud-related crime, as well as how it can be detected. The book also investigates the best strategies to prevent corruption, as well as convention punishments for those convicted. Intended for criminal justice students and practitioners, Public Corruption: Regional and National Perspectives on Procurement Fraud is a valuable resource for all stages of fraud investigation.

"Maybe the question isn't what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it's what happened to everyone else."--Politico In Defending the Constitution, Alan Dershowitz--New York Times bestselling author and one of America's most respected legal scholars--makes an impassioned constitutional argument against the impeachment of President Donald Trump, just as he delivered it to the United States Senate. Alan Dershowitz has been called "one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America" by Politico and "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights" by Newsweek. Yet he has come under intense criticism fire for applying those same principles, and his famed "shoe-on-the-other-foot test," to Donald Trump, especially after arguing on the president's behalf before the U.S. Senate as it deliberated impeachment. Defending the Constitution seeks to refocus the debate over impeachment to the same standard that Dershowitz has upheld for decades: the law of the United States of America, as established by the Constitution. Citing legal examples from a long lineage of distinguished judges and attorneys, and examining the impeachment language in the Constitution itself, Dershowitz proves--first to the U.S. Senate, and now to readers everywhere--that President Trump should not have been impeached, and certainly should not be removed, for causes that do not meet the standards laid out by the founding fathers. This book is Alan Dershowitz's argument for a return to nonpartisan judgment based on the Constitution, for a preservation of the separation of powers and the checks and balances that make American government great. It is essential reading for anyone interested in or concerned about the impeachment of President Trump, and for everyone who cares about the future of U.S. government and society.

Despite much recent interest in the area of urban governance, little work has been done on the changing ethical standards of urban leaderships, 'governing' institutions or the policing of public life. Yet the issue of ethical standards in public life has become a central concern in contemporary public discourse; with issues of public probity, moral order and personal standards re-emerging as central features of political debate. This volume places these debates into their historical perspective by examining the linkages between processes of 'modernisation', urbanisation and the ethical standards of governance and public life. It considers how ethical debates arise as a result of differential access to positions of authority and from competition for public resources. The contributions are drawn from a wide range of scholarly and disciplinary backgrounds and provide a broad analysis of the phenomenon of corruption, assessing how debates about corruption arose, the narratives used to criticise established modes of public conduct and their consequences for urban leadership.

Corruption in Africa makes a significant contribution to the study of the impacts and eradication of corruption in African societies. John Mukum Mbaku offers a comprehensive analysis of the causes of public malfeasance in African countries and provides a number of practical and effective policy options for change. This book demonstrates the destructive relationship between corruption and the abrogation of economic freedoms and entrepreneurship, a system that has clearly left Africa as one of the most deprived regions in the world. Utilizing the tools of public choice theory, Mbaku emphasizes the important role that institutions have in corruption control and he recommends reconstructive democratic constitutions as the most effective means of development. Until African states provide their people with institutional arrangements that adequately constrain the state and enhance wealth production, the living standards in the continent will continue to deteriorate. Corruption in Africa is a fascinating and informative text that will appeal to those interested in African studies and developmental policies.

While the 1950s in Canada were years of social conformity, it was also a time of political, economic, and technological change. Against a background of growing prosperity, federal and provincial politics became increasingly competitive, intergovernmental relations became more contentious, and Canada's presence in the world expanded. The life expectancy of Canadians increased as the social pathologies of poverty, crime, and racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination were in retreat. 1950s Canada illuminates the fault lines around which Canadian politics and public affairs have revolved. Chronicling the themes and events of Canadian politics and public affairs during the 1950s, Nelson Wiseman reviews social, economic, and cultural developments during each year of the decade, focusing on developments in federal politics, intergovernmental relations, provincial affairs, and Canada's role in the world. The book examines Canada's subordinate relationship first with Britain and then the United States, the interplay between Quebec's distinct society and the rest of Canada, and the regional tensions between the inner Canada of Ontario and Quebec and the outer Canada of the Atlantic and western provinces. Through this record of major events in the politics of the decade, 1950s Canada sheds light on the rapid altering of the fabric of Canadian life.

Corruption in politics and business is, after war, perhaps the greatest threat to democracy. Academic studies of corruption tend to come from the field of International Relations, analysing systems of formal rules and institutions. This book offers a radically different perspective - it shows how anthropology can throw light on aspects of corruption that remain unexamined in international relations. The contributors reveal how corruption operates through informal rules, personal connections and the wider social contexts that govern everyday practices. They argue that patterns of corruption are part of the fabric of everyday life - wherever we live - and subsequently they are often endemic in our key institutions. The book examines corruption across a range of different contexts from transitional societies such as post-Soviet Russia and Romania, to efforts to reform or regulate institutions that are perceived to be potentially corrupt, such as the European Commission. The book also covers the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the mafia in Sicily and the USA, and the world of anti-corruption as represented by NGOs like Transparency International.

Corruption in politics and business is, after war, perhaps the greatest threat to democracy. Academic studies of corruption tend to come from the field of International Relations, analysing systems of formal rules and institutions. This book offers a radically different perspective - it shows how anthropology can throw light on aspects of corruption that remain unexamined in international relations. The contributors reveal how corruption operates through informal rules, personal connections and the wider social contexts that govern everyday practices. They argue that patterns of corruption are part of the fabric of everyday life - wherever we live - and subsequently they are often endemic in our key institutions. The book examines corruption across a range of different contexts from transitional societies such as post-Soviet Russia and Romania, to efforts to reform or regulate institutions that are perceived to be potentially corrupt, such as the European Commission. The book also covers the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the mafia in Sicily and the USA, and the world of anti-corruption as represented by NGOs like Transparency International.

More often than not, the distribution of socioeconomic resources and political power in Ethiopia has been perceived in favor of the Amhara ethnic group. As a result, efforts to help the minority ethnic groups were supported by the invocation of subjective cultural attributes and sometimes, the manufacture of common historical experiences. After the collapse of the military regime, the present regime's misguided and divisive strategies sought to rectify what it believed to be a historically distorted distribution of resources and power in Ethiopia. This strategy led to the division of the country into "ethnic Bantustans" and hindered any real move towards development, democracy, and conflict resolution in Ethiopia. In this new work, author Kasahun Woldemariam argues that the Amhara were as excluded economically and politically as any other ethnic group in Ethiopia, and that the concept of Amhara domination is a myth. Working from an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approach, this book includes over twenty figures and tables on the regional distribution of revenue and expenditure, health and education, manufacturing industries, and parliamentary elections. It is an important resource for scholars and students of African politics and ethnic conflict analysis and resolution as well as policymakers worldwide and Ethiopians in Ethiopia and the Diaspora.

Past modernization literature has assumed that corruption and clientelism reflect a pre-modern social structure and could be referred to as a pathologic phenomenon of the political system. Very few have considered corruption and clientelism as structural products of an interwoven connection between capital accumulation, bureaucratic rationalization, interest intermediation and political participation from below. This volume analyzes key aspects of the debate such as: Should corruption and clientelism be evaluated as a 'lubricant' in terms of administrative efficiency - legitimate demands from the margins of society to redress social and economic inequality or to readdress economic development? What would be the effect of strengthening policing to control political corruption? Could electoral reform or a decentralization of government power be a cure for all? These questions among others are answered in this comprehensive volume.

Geoff Shepard's shocking expose of corrupt collusion between prosecutors, judges, and congressional staff to void Nixon's 1972 landslide reelection. Their success changed the course of American history. Geoff Shepard had a ringside seat to the unfolding Watergate debacle. As the youngest lawyer on Richard Nixon's staff, he personally transcribed the Oval Office tape in which Nixon appeared to authorize getting the CIA to interfere with the ongoing FBI investigation, and even coined the phrase "the smoking gun." Like many others, the idealistic Shepard was deeply disappointed in the president. But as time went on, the meticulous lawyer was nagged by the persistent sense that something wasn't right with the case against Nixon. The Nixon Conspiracy is a detailed and definitive account of the Watergate prosecutors' internal documents uncovered after years of painstaking research in previously sealed archives. Shepard reveals the untold story of how a flawed but honorable president was needlessly brought down by a corrupt, deep state, big media alliance-a circumstance that looks all too familiar today. In this hard-hitting expose, Shepard reveals the real smoking gun: the prosecutors' secret, but erroneous, "Road Map" which caused grand jurors to name Nixon a co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up and the House Judiciary Committee to adopt its primary Article of Impeachment. Shepard's startling conclusion is that Nixon didn't actually have to resign. The proof of his good faith is right there on the tapes. Instead, he should have taken his case to a Senate impeachment trial-where, if everything we know now had come out-he would easily have won.

With the advance of an increasingly globalized market, the opportunities for, and scale of, corruption is growing. The size of corporations and their wealth relative to nations provides the resources for corrupt practices. The liberalization of international financial markets makes transferring and hiding the proceeds of corruption easier. Moves towards privatization in East and West are providing once-only incentives for corruption on an unprecedented scale, as officials not only deal with the income of the state, but with its assets as well. In this book, Transparency International's (TI) world-renowned 'Corruption Perception Index' (CPI) and 'Bribery Perception Index' (BPI) are explained and examined by a group of experts. They set out to establish to what extent they are reliable measures of corruption and whether a series of surveys can measure changes in corruption and the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies. The book contains a variety of expert contributions which deal with the complexity, difficulty and potential for measuring corruption as the key to developing effective strategies for combating it.

*A Telegraph Book of the Year* *Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards* An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War – and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime – and Russia itself – at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as well as his own family ties to Russia and Ukraine, journalist Owen Matthews takes us through the poisoned historical roots of the conflict, into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of paranoia about Western threats, and finally into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky. Using the accounts of current and former insiders from the Kremlin and its propaganda machine, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded. With its panoramic view, Overreach is an authoritative, unmissable record of a conflict that shocked Europe to its core.

Strong civil societies play a major role in controlling corruption in many societies, and reformers agree that citizens, both individual and organized, should be involved in reform. But accomplishing that goal has proven difficult. Some civil societies are weak, divided, and impoverished. In others, undemocratic regimes dominate through intimidation. And in still others, development difficulties, international debt, and misguided aid efforts stop reform before it can begin. Too often, anti-corruption campaigns do not engage social values or attack corruption as people experience it every day. This volume, based on a yearlong series of events sponsored by Colgate University's Center for Ethics and World Societies, analyzes civil society and corruption from several perspectives and in several parts of the world. One section considers corruption as a fact of everyday life, a second analyzes techniques and incentives involved in mobilizing civil society, and a third provides a unique guide to information resources on corruption and reform.

Strike up a conversation with a citizen from the post-communist region and invariably the talk will turn to the topic of corruption - the misuse of public power for private gain. People are sure that corruption is widespread, whether from their own experiences or stories they have heard from others. They feel frustrated that there seems to be nothing they can do about it, that they are helpless, and that they are being played for fools. And many are cynical: they feel that they, too, have to play the game because "the system" compels them to do so. But what system exactly? What are the structures and mechanisms of corruption in post-communist societies? "The System Made Me Do It" is the first comprehensive study of the origin, nature, and consequences of corruption in post-communist societies. While international actors decry corruption as a major impediment to democracy building and economic development, the problem is not well understood. This book fills that gap, and suggests innovative and practical institutional strategies for containing corruption. It achieves a rare and perfect balance of disciplined analysis, practicality, and passion.

Strike up a conversation with a citizen from the post-communist region and invariably the talk will turn to the topic of corruption - the misuse of public power for private gain. People are sure that corruption is widespread, whether from their own experiences or stories they have heard from others. They feel frustrated that there seems to be nothing they can do about it, that they are helpless, and that they are being played for fools. And many are cynical: they feel that they, too, have to play the game because "the system" compels them to do so. But what system exactly? What are the structures and mechanisms of corruption in post-communist societies? "The System Made Me Do It" is the first comprehensive study of the origin, nature, and consequences of corruption in post-communist societies. While international actors decry corruption as a major impediment to democracy building and economic development, the problem is not well understood. This book fills that gap, and suggests innovative and practical institutional strategies for containing corruption. It achieves a rare and perfect balance of disciplined analysis, practicality, and passion.

Strong civil societies play a major role in controlling corruption in many societies, and reformers agree that citizens, both individual and organized, should be involved in reform. But accomplishing that goal has proven difficult. Some civil societies are weak, divided, and impoverished. In others, undemocratic regimes dominate through intimidation. And in still others, development difficulties, international debt, and misguided aid efforts stop reform before it can begin. Too often, anti-corruption campaigns do not engage social values or attack corruption as people experience it every day. This volume, based on a yearlong series of events sponsored by Colgate University's Center for Ethics and World Societies, analyzes civil society and corruption from several perspectives and in several parts of the world. One section considers corruption as a fact of everyday life, a second analyzes techniques and incentives involved in mobilizing civil society, and a third provides a unique guide to information resources on corruption and reform.

Corruption in politics and public administration is pervasive and difficult to eliminate. It has a strong effect on public attitudes toward government and is at the same time badly understood. A clear, comprehensive understanding of corruption is critical to the goal of ethical government that is trusted by the public. In this short and accessible text, Staffan Andersson and Frank Anechiarico demonstrate how the dynamics of life in organizations both generate corruption and make it difficult to prevent without undermining the effectiveness of government. They argue that how we define corruption, how we measure it, and how we try to combat it are strongly interrelated and should not be seen as separate issues. The authors demonstrate how this integrated approach, together with a focus on the damage caused by corruption to civic inclusivity and participation, can serve as an entry point for understanding the quality of democracy and the challenge of good governance. Using examples from mainly the United States and Sweden, Andersson and Anechiarico establish that recent anti-corruption reforms in public administration have often been narrowly focused on bribery (exchange corruption) and law enforcement approaches, while doing too little to other problems and forms of corruption, such as interest conflict. Corruption and Corruption Control: Democracy in the Balance will be of great interest to all students of politics, public administration and management, and ethics.

THE NO. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A blockbuster . . . Essential reading' GUARDIAN 'Packed with hair-raising revelations' OBSERVER The definitive behind-the-scenes story of Trump's final year in office, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters and authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller, A Very Stable Genius The true story of what took place in Donald Trump's White House during a disastrous 2020 has never before been told in full. Focused on Trump and the key players around him, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig provide a forensic account of the most devastating year in a presidency like no other. With unparalleled access, they reveal exactly who enabled and who foiled Trump as he sought desperately to cling to power.

Regardless of which political party Americans identify with, the sentiment that those who work in Washington are corrupt transcends partisanship. Since the breaking of the Watergate scandal, trust in the government has decreased significantly. While Congress did not engage in the Watergate break-in, the institution has still suffered the consequences, seeing citizens' distrust of politicians grow. However, Congress is not blameless, as it has had its share of scandal and corruption over the years. Scandal and Corruption in Congress guides readers through the history of corruption in Congress. Specifically, readers explore policies outlawing corruption, how Congress has attempted to hide unethical behaviour, getting caught, the repercussions of getting caught, and how corruption in the U.S. compares to corruption in other nations. Finally, to enlighten readers about the recent actions by Congress, several chapters address the impact of Citizens United and the #MeToo movement.

This book tackles the challenging topic of corruption. It explores the evolution of a global prohibition regime against corrupt activity (the global anti-corruption regime). It analyses the structure of the transnational legal framework against corruption, evaluating the impact of global anti-corruption efforts at a national level. The book focuses on the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) as the primary tool of the global anti-corruption regime. It provides new and engaging material gathered in the field, including first-hand accounts from actors at international, regional, and domestic levels. By documenting the experiences of diverse actors, the book makes a substantial contribution to literature on corruption and anti-corruption efforts. Synthesising empirical research with an exploration of theoretical literature on corruption and regime evolution results in novel suggestions for improvement of the global anti-corruption regime and its legal tools. The Global Anti-Corruption Regime is a well-rounded text with a wealth of new information that will be valuable to both academic and policy audiences. It clarifies the factors that prevent current anti-corruption efforts from successfully eliminating corrupt activity and applies the five-stage model of global prohibition regime evolution to the global anti-corruption regime. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students interested in anti-corruption law, comparative law, transnational criminal law, international law, international relations, politics, economics, and trade.