- Law and Judicial Duty
- Hardcover November 2008
- The Transatlantic Constitution
- Departing from traditional approaches to colonial legal history, Mary Sarah Bilder argues that American law and legal culture developed within the framework of an evolving, unwritten transatlantic constitution that lawyers, legislators, and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic understood. The central tenet of this constitution--that colonial laws and customs could not be repugnant to the laws of England but could diverge for local circumstances--shaped the legal development of the colonial world.
- Paperback March 2008
- Lincoln and the Court
- In a meticulously researched and engagingly written narrative, McGinty rescues the story of Abraham Lincoln and the Supreme Court from long and undeserved neglect, recounting the compelling history of the Civil War president's relations with the nation's highest tribunal and the role it played in resolving the agonizing issues raised by the conflict.
- Hardcover February 2008
- Possessing the Pacific
- Banner tells the story of colonial settlement in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. Possessing the Pacific is an original and broadly conceived study of how colonial struggles over land still shape the relations between whites and indigenous people throughout much of the world.
- Hardcover November 2007
- Law’s Quandary
- This lively book reassesses a century of jurisprudential thought from a fresh perspective, and points to a malaise that currently afflicts not only legal theory but law in general. Smith argues that our legal vocabulary and methods of reasoning presuppose classical ontological commitments that were explicitly articulated by thinkers from Aquinas to Coke to Blackstone, and even by Joseph Story. But these commitments are out of sync with the world view that prevails today in academic and professional thinking. So our law-talk thus degenerates into "just words"--or a kind of nonsense.
- Paperback September 2007
- Towards Juristocracy
- Drawing upon a comprehensive comparative inquiry into the political origins and legal consequences of the recent constitutional revolutions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa, Hirschl shows that the trend toward constitutionalization is hardly driven by politicians' genuine commitment to democracy, social justice, or universal rights. Rather, it is best understood as the product of a strategic interplay among hegemonic yet threatened economic and political elites, attempting to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics.
- Paperback September 2007
- Her Day in Court
- This book is a study of the historical record of the property rights and equity of Muslim women. Based on Islamic court documents of fifteenth-century Granada--documents that show a high degree of women's involvement--the book examines women's legal entitlements to acquire property, as well as the social and economic significance of these rights to Granada's female population and, by extension, to women in other Islamic societies.
- Hardcover June 2007
- The Constitution's Text in Foreign Affairs
- This book describes the constitutional law of foreign affairs derived from the historical understanding of the Constitution's text. Examining recurring foreign affairs controversies such as the power to enter armed conflict and the power to make and break treaties, and showing how the words, structure, and context of the Constitution can resolve pivotal court cases and modern disputes, the author provides a counterpoint to more conventional discussions that tend to downplay the guiding ability of the Constitution.
- Hardcover June 2007
- The Lost Promise of Civil Rights
- Goluboff offers a provocative new account of the history of American civil rights law long dominated by Brown v. Board of Education. Since 1954, generations have viewed civil rights as a matter of breaking down formal legal barriers to integration, especially in public education. By uncovering the challenges workers and their lawyers launched against Jim Crow in the 1940s, when civil rights were legally, conceptually, and constitutionally up for grabs, Goluboff shows how Brown only partially fulfilled the lost promise of civil rights.
- Hardcover May 2007
See also: All Books in LAW.