April Acquisitions Highlights
Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law: Legality and Legitimacy
by Lars Vinx
Hans Kelsen is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern legal philosophy. But despite Kelsen's prominence as a legal theorist, his political theory has been mostly overlooked. This book argues that Kelsen's legal theory, the Pure Theory of Law, needs to be read in the context of
Kelsen's political theory. It offers the first comprehensive interpretation of the Pure Theory that makes systematic use of Kelsen's conception of the rule of law, his theory of democracy, his defense of constitutional review, and his views on international law.
Once it is read in the context of Kelsen's political works, Kelsen's analysis of legal normativity provides us with a notion of political legitimacy that is distinct from any comprehensive and contestable theory of justice. It shows how members of pluralist societies can reasonably acknowledge the
binding nature of law, even where its content does not fully accord with their own substantive views of the requirements of justice, provided it is created in accordance with an ideal of fair arbitration amongst social groups.
This result leads to a fundamental re-evaluation of thePure Theory of Law. The theory is best understood as an attempt to find a middle ground between natural law and legal positivism. Later positivist legal theorists inspired by Kelsen's work failed to appreciate the political-theoretical context
of the Pure Theory and turned to a narrow instrumentalism about the functions of law. The perspective on Kelsen offered in this book aims to reconnect positivist legal thought with normative political theory.
The Lawyer Myth
by Rennard Strickland, Frank T. Read
Lawyers and the legal profession have become scapegoats for many of the problems of our age. In The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession, Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read look behind current antilawyer media images to explore the historical role of lawyers as a balancing force in times of social, economic, and political change. One source of this disjunction of perception and reality, they find, is that American society has lost touch with the need for the lawyer’s skill and has come to blame unrelated social problems on the legal profession. This highly personal and impassioned book is their defense of lawyers and the rule of law in the United States.
Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress
by Alice Yang Murray
This book explores how the politics of memory and history affected representations of the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and the passage of redress legislation in 1988.
Scottsboro and Its Legacy: The Cases That Challenged American Legal and Social Justice [Crime, Media, and Popular Culture Series]
by James R. Acker
Nine black teenagers were accused of raping two white women on a train in 1931 in northern Alabama. They were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in the town of Scottsboro in little more than two weeks. The "Scottsboro Boys" case rapidly captured public attention and became a lightning rod for fundamental issues of social justice including racial discrimination, class oppression, and legal fairness. Involving years of appeals, the Scottsboro trials resulted in two landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings and were a vortex for the sometimes-competing interests of the American Communist Party, the NAACP, and the young men themselves. The cases resulted in a damning portrayal of "southern justice" and corresponding social mores in several national and international media outlets, and in a spirited defense of the judicial system and prevailing cultural norms in other news reports, particularly in the South.
Here, Acker details the alleged crimes, their legal aftermath, and their immediate and enduring social significance as evidenced in media portrayals and other forms of popular culture. Using extensive media reports, including contemporaneous newspaper accounts and interpretations of the proceedings, as well as the sallies of champions of various organizations and social causes, the author illustrates the role of the media in the cases and the effect the cases had on society at the time. In addition to tracing the history of the cases and their media portrayal, the book explores the legacy of the Scottsboro trials and appeals. It examines several issues relevant to the cases that, even today, have enduring significance to law and popular perceptions of justice, including capital punishment, racial discrimination, innocence, the composition and functioning of trial juries, the quality of legal counsel for indigents, evidentiary issues in rape cases, and media interactions with the courts. More than a true crime tale, this book takes readers through the crime but also illustrates its enduring legacy.
Medicaid Politics and Policy 1965-2007
by David Smith, Judith D. Moore
Medicaid is a story worth telling, one rooted in American history and shaped by its culture and institutions. It has dramatic interest, heroes and heroines, triumphs and tragedies. The authors make this story come alive for the reader by providing a strong connected narrative, detailed accounts of important policy changes, and extensive use of interviews with individuals close to events. They emphasize politics and policy along with history. History is important because Medicaid has developed incrementally, layer by layer, so that almost any provision or activity needs a historical gloss to understand it. The Medicaid program has been especially subject to outside political and policy influences: the state of the economy, trends in federalism, developments in health or welfare programs, and the electoral cycle. Politics helps us understand policy outcomes. But the two go together: a knowledge of policy helps understand what is at stake, and a knowledge of politics what is po! ssible.
A central theme of the book is that Medicaid is a "weak entitlement," one less established or effectively defended than Medicare or Social Security, but more secure than welfare or food stamps. Medicaid has the flexibility to adapt (or be adapted) as well as a capacity to defend incremental and opportunistic gains. At the same time, the program lacks an effective mechanism for overall reform. It has grown enormously since its inception to become the largest health insurance system in the country, a source of perennial complaint and, most recently, of continuing crisis.
The dual emphasis upon politics and policy is important to make the arcane Medicaid program accessible to the reader, and to distinguish policy grounded in facts and analysis from partisan bombast and ideology. The result is an authoritative account and reference for those seeking to refresh a perspective or to look further.
Reframing Scopes: Journalists, Scientists, and Lost Photographs from the Trial of the Century
by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette
The plight of John T. Scopes dominated headlines for weeks, but behind the scenes of the famous "Monkey Trial" were other dramas hidden from public view. Now a serendipitous discovery has opened a new window on the "Trial of the Century," enabling modern readers to comprehend more completely the tensions that gripped a Tennessee community—and the nation—in 1925.
Historian Marcel LaFollette discovered at the Smithsonian a cache of more than sixty never-before-published photographs taken at the Scopes trial. Her research on these photos sheds new light on the proceedings, as well as on the journalists and scientists who gathered for this epic confrontation between science and tradition.
LaFollette takes readers behind the scenes to witness the trial from the perspective of journalist-photographers Watson Davis and Frank Thone, who had come to cover the trial but became informal liaisons between defense attorneys and the scientific community. They observed visitors and events and even befriended John Scopes in the years following the trial. Their impressions offer new views of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan and reveal the role of fascinating characters like George Washington Rappleyea, the cocky promoter who saw the trial as a way to bring publicity, tourists, and new business to Dayton.
These photos—trial witnesses and visiting celebrities, an outdoor baptism service, defiant ministers assembled in front of a Dayton church—help ground the Scopes trial in southern religion and culture and relate it to a time and place on the cusp of change. The notes of Davis and Thone preserve keen observations of personalities and events, while letters betweenScopes and the two reporters in the years after the trial help illuminate the character of an ordinary young man thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
LaFollette weaves an engaging story of friendship, newly minted coalitions between scientists and journalists, and acts of goodwill in the midst of turmoil. Her book enables us to understand better the passions that swept one small town and came to divide the nation.
Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk
by James Bessen, Michael J. Meurer
In the last several years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today's patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. But like the infamous patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much of the cited evidence about the patent system is pure anecdote--making realistic policy formation difficult. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? Moving beyond rhetoric, Patent Failure provides the first authoritative and comprehensive look at the economic performance of patents in forty years. James Bessen and Michael Meurer ask whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective.
Patent Failure presents a wide range of empirical evidence from history, law, and economics. The book's findings are stark and conclusive. While patents do provide incentives to invest in research, development, and commercialization, for most businesses today, patents fail to provide predictable property rights. Instead, they produce costly disputes and excessive litigation that outweigh positive incentives. Only in some sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, do patents act as advertised, with their benefits outweighing the related costs.
By showing how the patent system has fallen short in providing predictable legal boundaries, Patent Failure serves as a call for change in institutions and laws. There are no simple solutions, but Bessen and Meurer's reform proposals need to be heard. The health and competitiveness of the nation's economy depend on it.
The Constitution of Electoral Speech Law: The U.S. Supreme Court and Freedom of Expression in Campaigns and Elections
by Brian K. Pinaire
This book examines how the United States Supreme Court understands freedom of speech during political campaigns and elections. To address this question, the author considers both the nature of the Court's evaluation (or vision) of political speech in this context and the process by which this understanding is formulated, with a focus on four recent and representative cases.