The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. 

Much more than an historical examination of liability, criminal law, torts, bail, possession and ownership, and contracts, The Common Law articulates the ideas and judicial theory of one of the greatest justices of the Supreme Court. The John Harvard Library presents a text that is, with occasional corrections of typographical errors, identical to that found in the first and all subsequent printings by Little, Brown.

In a groundbreaking work, Klaus Mühlhahn offers a comprehensive examination of the criminal justice system in modern China, an institution deeply rooted in politics, society, and culture. Based on unprecedented research in Chinese archives and incorporating prisoner testimonies, witness reports, and interviews, this book is essential reading for understanding modern China.

The involvement of health professionals in human rights and humanitarian law violations has again become a live issue as a consequence of the U.S. prosecution of conflicts with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq. In this volume, a wide range of prominent practitioners and scholars explore these issues. Their insights provide significant potential for reforming institutions to assist health professionals maintain their legal and ethical obligations in times of national crisis.

This book offers a groundbreaking account of the surprising interaction between trauma and justice. Moving from texts by Arendt, Benjamin, Freud, Zola, and Tolstoy to the Dreyfus and Nuremberg trials, as well as the trials of O. J. Simpson and Adolf Eichmann, Shoshana Felman argues that the adjudication of collective traumas in the twentieth century transformed both culture and law. This transformation took place through legal cases that put history itself on trial, and that provided a stage for the expression of the persecuted--the historically "expressionless."

Licentious Gotham, set in the streets, news depots, publishing houses, grand jury chambers, and courtrooms of the nation’s great metropolis, delves into the stories of the enterprising men and women who created a thriving transcontinental market for sexually arousing books and pictures. Donna Dennis offers a colorful, groundbreaking account of the birth of an indecent print trade and the origins of obscenity regulation in the United States. 

Richard Posner discusses the structure and behavior of the legal profession; constitutional theory; interdisciplinary approaches to law; the nature of legal reasoning; and legal pragmatism. Although written by a sitting judge, the book does not avoid controversy, and contains frank appraisals of feminist and critical race theories, the behavior of the German and British judiciaries in wartime, and the excesses of social constructionist theories of sexual behavior.

Throughout, the book is unified by Posner's distinctive stance, which is pragmatist in philosophy, economic in methodology, and liberal (in the sense of John Stuart Mill's liberalism) in politics. Brilliantly written, eschewing jargon and technicalities, it makes a major contribution to the debate about the role of law in our society.

This book presents a diverse collection of perspectives on prosecutions in South Africa, including a foreword by playwright and actor John Kani. Throughout, it highlights the important themes related to any post-conflict prosecution scheme including rule-of-law concerns, questions of evenhandedness and moral relativism, competing priorities and resource allocation, the limits of a court-centered approach to justice, and the potential transformative power of prosecutions.

In this engaging—and disturbing—book, a leading historian of the Court reveals the close fit between its decisions and the nation’s politics. Drawing on more than four decades of thinking about the Supreme Court and its role in the American political system, this book offers a new, clear, and troubling perspective on American jurisprudence, politics, and history.

This primer on legal reasoning is aimed at law students and upper-level undergraduates. But it is also an original exposition of basic legal concepts that scholars and lawyers will find stimulating. Schauer’s analysis of what makes legal reasoning special will be a valuable guide for students while also presenting a challenge to a wide range of current academic theories.

During his career at Harvard, Morton Horwitz changed the questions legal historians ask. In this book, Horwitz’s students re-examine legal history from America’s colonial era to the late twentieth century. The essays are, like Horwitz, provocative and original as they continue his transformation of American legal history.