This special issue offers an academic analysis of the television series The Americans as a reflection of current social and political trends across the United States. Uncovering the inseparability of the political and the personal through the lives of the central characters, authors consider how their performance challenges our ability to differentiate between the authentic family, the legitimate source of social reproduction, and the counterfeit one that disrupts the social order. Focusing on how television’s shift away from the traditional nuclear family is crucial to understanding the relatively rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage in mainstream politics, authors invite consideration and acceptance of alternative family forms that are often represented within LGBTQ communities. Pairing the series with scholarship on criminal law, contributors also delve into how The Americans provides an opportunity to reconsider the significance of the “pro-family� label to New Right organizing, the importance of mothering to this narrative, and the relationship between this account of mothering and democratic citizenship more broadly. Drawing on the concept of legal consciousness to examine the relationship between identity and hegemony, chapters also consider how the enactment of legal beliefs and values help individuals to form identities, as well as how these are constrained by popular ideology. Interpreting this television series through a socially charged lens, Law, Politics and Family in ‘The Americans’ offers a compelling insight into the legal and cultural undertones of family dynamics, as well as those at the heart of conservative American politics.

The way a society punishes demonstrates its commitment to standards of judgment and justice, its distinctive views of blame and responsibility, and its particular way of responding to evil. Punishment in Popular Culture examines the cultural presuppositions that undergird America’s distinctive approach to punishment and analyzes punishment as a set of images, a spectacle of condemnation. It recognizes that the semiotics of punishment is all around us, not just in the architecture of the prison, or the speech made by a judge as she sends someone to the penal colony, but in both “high� and “popular� culture iconography, in novels, television, and film. This book brings together distinguished scholars of punishment and experts in media studies in an unusual juxtaposition of disciplines and perspectives. Americans continue to lock up more people for longer periods of time than most other nations, to use the death penalty, and to racialize punishment in remarkable ways. How are these facts of American penal life reflected in the portraits of punishment that Americans regularly encounter on television and in film? What are the conventions of genre which help to familiarize those portraits and connect them to broader political and cultural themes? Do television and film help to undermine punishment's moral claims? And how are developments in the boarder political economy reflected in the ways punishment appears in mass culture? Finally, how are images of punishment received by their audiences? It is to these questions that Punishment in Popular Culture is addressed.

This special issue is part two of a two-part edited collection on interrupting the legal person, and what this means. Should we think of the legal person as a technical and grammatical question that varies across different legal traditions and jurisdictions? Does this cut across different ways of living and speaking law? The chapters in this volume interrogate the role of the person and personhood in different contexts, jurisdictions, and legal traditions. This volume is an appealing read for anyone interested in rich contemporary conversations around legal personhood, and in interrupting and interrogating assumptions which we may take for granted.

This special issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society examines the relationship between law and disasters. The papers come from members of the Collaborative Research Network on the Jurisprudence of Disasters within the Law and Society Association. This network was formed in 2012 at a conference held by the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, titled "Workshop on Disasters and Sociolegal Studies." The volume addresses the 'myths' of contemporary disaster law and policy, such as that of society's "invincibility". The papers examine specific cases such as the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, bushfire management in Australia and wildfire prevention in the Mediterranean, as well as providing broader analysis and comment on global disaster law and policy.

Half a century after the beginning of the second wave, feminist legal theorists are still writing about many of the subjects they addressed early on: money, sex, reproduction, and jobs. What has changed is the way that they talk about these subjects. Specifically, these theorists now posit a more complex and nuanced conception of power. Recent scholarship recognizes the complexities of power in contemporary society, the ways in which these complexities entrench sex inequality, and the role that law can play in reducing inequality and increasing agency. The feminist legal theorists in this volume are emblematic of this effort. They carefully examine the relationship between gender, equality, and power across an array of realms: sex, reproduction, pleasure, work, money. In doing so they identify social, political, economic, developmental, and psychological and somatic forces, operating both internally and externally, that complicate the expression and constraint of power. Finally, they give sophisticated thought to the possibilities for legal interventions in light of these more complex notions of power.

Is life without parole the perfect compromise to the death penalty? Or is it as ethically fraught as capital punishment? This comprehensive, interdisciplinary anthology treats life without parole as "the new death penalty." Editors Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and Austin Sarat bring together original work by prominent scholars in an effort to better understand the growth of life without parole and its social, cultural, political, and legal meanings. What justifies the turn to life imprisonment? How should we understand the fact that this penalty is used disproportionately against racial minorities? What are the most promising avenues for limiting, reforming, or eliminating life without parole sentences in the United States? Contributors explore the structure of life without parole sentences and the impact they have on prisoners, where the penalty fits in modern theories of punishment, and prospects for (as well as challenges to) reform.

This special issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society focuses on the issue of copyright. The papers contain critical analysis and investigation into existing copyright law and provide insight for policymakers and commentators. The papers contain a range of analyses on issues of copyright. Highlights of the volume include the an examination of three difference aspects of the 1976 Copyright Act, focusing on fair use, statutory damage and formalities; an interesting analysis of the distinction between authentic and 'inauthentic' drawing on the examples of authenticated artwork and counterfeit luxury goods; and an everyday narrative of copyright by examining the laymen understanding of the term, based on comments sections of websites where users post their reactions to copyright-related stories.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (SLPS) provides a vehicle for the publication of scholarly articles within the broad parameters of interdisciplinary legal scholarship; the articles in this volume cover a diverse range of topics relating to law's relationship with and impact on society. Topics covered include: coverage of capital punishment in the mainstream and radical press; the landmark Roe vs. Wade case and the Republican Party's relationship with abortion law; an exploration of the legal politics of temporality in emergencies; gendered racialization and White supremacy in the US, specifically related to Muslim women; conflict resolution and legal theory; and self-determination for indigenous peoples in the Pacific.

A[a�?The notion . . . that miscarriages of justice are not simply idiosyncratic instances, but are rather part of the ordinary machinery of law, is a crucial insight, one that deserves this kind of book-length treatment.A[a�?
--James MaMartell, author of "Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat"

Since 1989, there have been over 200 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. On the surface, the release of innocent people from prison could be seen as a victory for the criminal justice system: the wrong person went to jail, but the mistake was fixed and the accused set free. A closer look at miscarriages of justice, however, reveals that such errors are not aberrations but deeply revealing, common features of our legal system.

The ten original essays in When Law Fails view wrongful convictions not as random mistakes but as organic outcomes of a misshaped larger system that is rife with faulty eyewitness identifications, false confessions, biased juries, and racial discrimination. Distinguished legal thinkers Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., and Austin Sarat have assembled a stellar group of contributors who try to make sense of justice gone wrong and to answer urgent questions. Are miscarriages of justice systemic or symptomatic, or are they mostly idiosyncratic? What are the broader implications of justice gone awry for the ways we think about law? Are there ways of reconceptualizing legal missteps that are particularly useful or illuminating? These instructive essays both address the questions and point the way toward further discussion.

When Law Fails reveals the dramatic consequences as well as the daily realities of breakdowns in thelawA[a�a[s ability to deliver justice swiftly and fairly, and calls on us to look beyond headline-grabbing exonerations to see how failure is embedded in the legal system itself. Once we are able to recognize miscarriages of justice we will be able to begin to fix our broken legal system.

Contributors: Douglas A. Berman, Markus D. Dubber, Mary L. Dudziak, Patricia Ewick, Daniel Givelber, Linda Ross Meyer, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Austin Sarat, Jonathan Simon, and Robert Weisberg.

This volume of Studies in Law, Politics and Society brings together the work of scholars of several different generations and several different national contexts. The articles published here feature both cutting edge issues of major interest to policy makers and activists as well as those that address venerable issues in the interdisciplinary study of law. They illuminate family law, the way law deals with children, international human rights, and the way law deals with injury and damages claims.

This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" brings together research on law's cultural life and on institutions and actors who translate interests, preferences, and values into legal policy. It offers perspectives from an interdisciplinary and international community and contains contributions from scholars of theology, political science, criminology, bio-ethics, and law in the United States, Israel, and Canada.

"The articles in this volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society cover an exciting and diverse range of topics relating to law's relationship with and impact on society. Two articles cover immigration, but from very different perspectives. One examines the legal-cultural attitude of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel while the other investigates US Immigration Policy and the notion of 'child saving'. Other articles cover the institutional dynamics of same-sex marriage debates in America; the anti-strip mining movement in central Appalachia; an analysis of the death penalty in Maricopa County, Arizona, one of the most active death penalty locales in the contemporary U.S; and affirmative defenses at the International Criminal Court."

In The Beautiful Prison incarcerated Americans and prison critics seek to imagine the prison as something better than a machinery of suffering. From personal testimony to theoretical meditation these writers explore and confront the practical and cultural limits the prison places on its transformation into a socially constructive institution. Long-term prisoner Kenneth E. Hartman engages the reader in his struggle to find beauty inside the increasingly bleak and sterile confines of the California Department of Corrections. Chuck Jackson releases his imagination on Houston's notorious Harris County Jail to envision a jailhouse transformed into a university, community, and arts center. Between the grip of the CDC and utopian vision, Leder, Ginsburg, Pinkert, and Brown report on their practical and theoretical work to understand what the prison has been and might be. The Beautiful Prison suggests that any passage from 'ugly prisons' into institutions serving the greater good will only be possible when the will and intellectual capital of their inhabitants are met by free-world critics ready to challenge assumptions of the prison acting solely as an apparatus of punishment.

Beginning with an overview of the history and philosophy of punishment, these articles explore penal practices in the modern state and the deeper philosophical and social aspects of retributive justice.

Recent controversies surrounding the war on terror and American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought rule of law rhetoric to a fevered pitch. While President Obama has repeatedly emphasized his Administration's commitment to transparency and the rule of law, nowhere has this resolve been so quickly and severely tested than with the issue of the possible prosecution of Bush Administration officials. While some worry that without legal consequences there will be no effective deterrence for the repetition of future transgressions of justice committed at the highest levels of government, others echo Obama's seemingly reluctant stance on launching an investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing by former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and members of the Office of Legal Counsel. Indeed, even some of the Bush Administration's harshest critics suggest that we should avoid such confrontations, that the price of political division is too high. Measured or partisan, scholarly or journalistic, clearly the debate about accountability for the alleged crimes of the Bush Administration will continue for some time.

Using this debate as its jumping off point, When Governments Break the Law takes an interdisciplinary approach to the legal challenges posed by the criminal wrongdoing of governments. But this book is not an indictment of the Bush Administration; rather, the contributors take distinct positions for and against the proposition, offering revealing reasons and illuminating alternatives. The contributors do not ask the substantive question of whether any Bush Administration officials, in fact, violated the law, but rather the procedural, legal, political, and cultural questions of what it would mean either to pursue criminal prosecutions or to refuse to do so. By presuming that officials could be prosecuted, these essays address whether they "should."

When Governments Break the Law provides a valuable and timely commentary on what is likely to be an ongoing process of understanding the relationship between politics and the rule of law in times of crisis.

Contributors: Claire Finkelstein, Lisa Hajjar, Daniel Herwitz, Stephen Holmes, Paul Horwitz, Nasser Hussain, Austin Sarat, and Stephen I. Vladeck.

This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a unique special issue "Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era". This issue brings together the work of leading scholars of Constitutionalism, Constitutional law, and politics in the United States to take stock of the field to chart its progress, and point the way for its future development. Much of the way Americans have thought about Constitutional law has, until recently, been dominated by models developed during the Warren Court Era. Today, however, scholars seek new approaches, approaches that do not take for granted liberal hegemony in the courts. Among these, theories of popular constitutionalism and judicial minimalism appear to be increasingly popular. How should Scholars think about American courts in an era of conservative domination of the judiciary? What should/will constitutional politics in the United States look like over the next decade?

This volume presents articles by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars spanning the social sciences, humanities, and law. It examines new perspectives on political relationships, politics and legal reform, and law and the family.

The purpose of this special issue of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" is to examine the situation of law and literature. Once hailed as a promising new way to think about law and as opening a vital conversation about literature the question today is whether the law and literature enterprise has lived up to its initial promise. Has it succeeded in establishing a new interdiscipinarity or lost energy as law and literature courses become part of the mainstream both in legal and literary studies? Has the study of law and literature given way or been incorporated into boarder interdisciplinary configurations? What, if any, new paradigms of literary study of legal phenomena are on the horizon?This is a contemporary study of law and literature. It includes contributions by an international group of leading scholars.

This special volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" takes up a subject of an enormous import for law and legal scholarship, Guilt. At the center of our belief in law is the hope and expectation that law can differentiate the guilty from the innocent. But as the articles in this volume show law's relationship to guilt is more complex and vexed than that. Law constitutes us as guilty subjects and law itself is a guilty subject. The articles in this volume explore law's guilt about literature, various domains in which bodies of guilt appear, and historical perspectives on the subject of guilt. Taken together they exemplify the way interdisciplinary scholarship opens up new questions and new avenues of inquiry about the social and cultural life of law.

This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a diverse array of articles by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars. Their work spans the social sciences, humanities, and law. It examines new perspectives on political relationships, politics and legal reform, and law and the family. The articles published here exemplify the exciting and innovative work being done in interdisciplinary legal scholarship.

This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a diverse array of articles by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars. Their work spans the social sciences, humanities, and law. Their work examines the complex intersections of sovereignty, legality, and power, the relationship between legal theory and critique, and the way identity politics shapes public policy. The articles published here illuminate some of the exciting and innovative work being done in interdisciplinary legal scholarship.

This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a diverse array of articles by an interdisciplinary group of scholars. Their work spans the social sciences, humanities, and the law. Those scholars examine the nature of family and the intersection of family and law, the way contexts shape legal actors, and the nature of rights and resistance. The articles published here exemplify the exciting and innovative work now being done in interdisciplinary legal scholarship.

This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a unique special issue "Is the Death Penalty Dying?." Drawing together an array of distinguished scholars from political science, criminology, sociology, and law, this volume provides a comprehensive assessment of the status of the death penalty in the United States, its past, and its trajectory for the future. Taken together, the work published in this volume exemplifies the kind exciting and innovative work now being done by legal scholars from different disciplines.This is a special issue examining the death penalty in the US. It draws together an array of distinguished scholars from political science, criminology, sociology, and law.

This volume of Studies in Law, Politics and Society explores issues around hatred and the law. Built on contributions from an interdisciplinary and expert collection of scholars, topics covered in this volume include the patterns of death penalty bill introductions across all active death penalty states in the USA from 1999 to 2018 (the so-called 'era of abolition'); the myriad factors contributing to America's limited police and persecutorial response to bias-motivated hate crimes; the complex ways in which the Batman and Joker graphic novels legitimize and challenge the countersubversive politics of American law and order through their portrayal of vigilante justice; the role of social media companies in the regulation of online hate speech; and a socio-legal analysis of gender-based victimization, misogyny and the 'hate crime paradigm' in England and Wales. Through its valuable contribution to our understanding of the nexus between hatred and the law, this volume is essential reading for legal scholars worldwide.

Large law firms have become a dominant feature of the legal landscape in the United States and elsewhere. This volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society examines the situation of large law firms. The articles collected here address the following questions: How has the large law firm altered, or adapted to, the ideals/ideology of the legal profession? How do law firms function as organizations? What happens to firms when they globalize their practices? What is the situation of scholarship on large law firms? Has the firm been incorporated into boarder interdisciplinary configurations? What, if any, new paradigms of study of firms are on the horizon?