The idea that taxpayers should pay reparations to African Americans for the damages of slavery and segregation is quickly becoming a central demand of some civil rights leaders. It has the backing of important black politicians like Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), distinguished black intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates and activists like Randall Robinson, who led the successful boycott movement against South Africa a decade ago. The Chicago City Council has overwhelmingly endorsed the concept and municipalities and state governments around the country are considering giving it support. In this well researched and carefully argued book, David Horowitz traces the origins of the reparations movement. He examines the case made by its advocates and concludes that it is "morally questionable and racially incendiary." He notes that only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves; and most Americans living today (white and otherwise) are descended from post-Civil War immigrants who have no lineal connection to slavery at all. More intriguingly, he also points out that the GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African American community the tenth most prosperous "nation" in the world. But this book is more than just an in depth casebook on the hot button issue of reparations. In the hope of initiating a dialogue, Horowitz originally presented a summary of his ideas on this subject in the form of an advertisement that appeared in several college newspapers and was rejected by many more. Editorialists in America's leading papers and several chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union weighed on Horowitz's side. With the assistance of Richard Poe, Horowitz uses the response to the reparations issue to show how the new racial orthodoxy collides with the free speech battle and what its implications are for American education and culture.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history and a landmark in the study of constitutional origins, Leonard Levy’s now-classic study appears for the first time in paperback. Origins probes the intentions of the framers of the Fifth Amendment and emphasizes their belief that in a society based upon respect for the individual, it is more important that the accused not unwillingly contribute to his conviction than that the guilty be punished. "A work of monumental scholarship―broad in scope, thorough, carefully annotated, accurate, and imaginative."―Political Science Quarterly. "Vastly learned...everywhere critical and reflective...written in a style at once lucid and vigorous. All in all, it is quite clearly one of the important contributions to historical literature."―Henry Steele Commager. "A matchless contribution to our understanding of the historical background underlying the adoption of a major provision of the Bill of Rights."―American Political Science Review. "A masterful job."―Oscar Handlin.

The CIA chief, Leon Panetta, calls drones the ‘only game in town’. The figures bear him out. Between 2004 and 2012, the US reportedly conducted over 350 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing between 2,600 and 3,400 people. Drone strikes have killed more than 200 children alone in Pakistan and Yemen. In 2000, the Americans had fewer than fifty aerial drones; ten years later, it had a fleet of nearly 7,500, and the US Air Force now trains more drone ‘pilots’ than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Drones are already a $ 5 billion business in the US alone. American activist Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange, provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who controls these unmanned places, and what are the legal and moral implications of their use. Benjamin also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons.

The 2000 Presidential election ended in a collision of history, law, and the courts. It produced a deadlock that dragged out the result for over a month, and consequences--real and imagined--that promise to drag on for years. In the first in-depth study of the election and its litigious aftermath, Judge Posner surveys the history and theory of American electoral law and practice, analyzes which Presidential candidate ''really'' won the popular vote in Florida, surveys the litigation that ensued, evaluates the courts, the lawyers, and the commentators, and ends with a blueprint for reforming our Presidential electoral practices. The book starts with an overview of the electoral process, including its history and guiding theories. It looks next at the Florida election itself, exploring which candidate ''really'' won and whether this is even a meaningful question. The focus then shifts to the complex litigation, both state and federal, provoked by the photo finish. On the basis of the pragmatic jurisprudence that Judge Posner has articulated and defended in his previous writings, this book offers an alternative justification for the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore while praising the Court for averting the chaotic consequences of an unresolved deadlock. Posner also evaluates the performance of the lawyers who conducted the post-election litigation and of the academics who commented on the unfolding drama. He argues that neither Gore's nor Bush's lawyers blundered seriously, but that the reaction of the legal professoriat to the litigation exposed serious flaws in the academic practice of constitutional law. While rejecting such radical moves as abolishing the Electoral College or creating a national ballot, Posner concludes with a detailed plan of feasible reforms designed to avoid a repetition of the 2000 election fiasco. Lawyers, political scientists, pundits, and politicians are waiting to hear what Judge Posner has to say. But this book is written for and will be welcomed by all who were riveted by the recent crisis of presidential succession.

This is the Large Print Edition of I Dissent in paperback. From Dred Scott to Lawrence v. Texas and more, the most famous Supreme Court dissents, collected in one volume for the first time. For the first time, a collection of dissents from the most famous Supreme Court cases. If American history can truly be traced through the majority decisions in landmark Supreme Court cases, then what about the dissenting opinions? In issues of race, gender, privacy, workers' rights, and more, would advances have been impeded or failures rectified if the dissenting opinions were in fact the majority opinions? In offering thirteen famous dissents-from Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. Board of Education to Griswold v. Connecticut and Lawrence v. Texas, each edited with the judges' eloquence preserved-renowned Supreme Court scholar Mark Tushnet reminds us that court decisions are not pronouncements issued by the utterly objective, they are in fact political statements from highly intelligent but partisan people. Tushnet introduces readers to the very concept of dissent in the courts and then provides useful context for each case, filling in gaps in the Court's history and providing an overview of the issues at stake. After each case, he considers the impact the dissenting opinion would have had, if it had been the majority decision. Lively and accessible, I Dissent offers a radically fresh view of the judiciary in a collection that is essential reading for anyone interested in American history.

From the best-selling author of A Vast Conspiracy and The Run of His Life comes Too Close to Call --the definitive story of the Bush-Gore presidential recount. A political and legal analyst of unparalleled journalistic skill, Jeffrey Toobin is the ideal writer to distill the events of the thirty-six anxiety-filled days that culminated in one of the most stunning Supreme Court decisions in history. Packed with news-making disclosures and written with the drive of a legal thriller, Too Close to Call takes us inside James Baker's private jet, through the locked gates to Al Gore's mansion, behind the covered-up windows of Katherine Harris's office, and even into the secret conference room of the United States Supreme Court. As the scene shifts from Washington to Austin and into the remote corners of the enduringly strange Sunshine State, Toobin's book will transform what you thought you knew about the most extraordinary political drama in American history. The Florida recount unfolded in a kaleidoscopic maze of bizarre concepts (chads, pregnant and otherwise), unfamiliar people in critically important positions (the Florida Supreme Court), and familiar people in surprising new places (the Miami relatives of Elián González, in a previously undisclosed role in this melodrama). With the rich characterization that is his trademark, Toobin portrays the prominent strategists who masterminded the campaigns--the Daleys and the Roves--and also the lesser-known but influential players who pulled the strings, as well as the judges and justices whose decisions determined the final outcome. Toobin gives both camps a treatment they have not yet received--remarkably evenhanded, nonpartisan, and entirely new. The post-election period posed a challenge to even the most zealous news junkie: how to keep up with what was happening and sort out the important from the trivial. Jeffrey Toobin has now done this--and then some. With clarity, insight, humor, and a deep understanding of the law, he deconstructs the events, the players, and the often Byzantine intricacies of our judicial system. A remarkable account of one of the most significant periods in our country's history, Too Close to Call is endlessly surprising, frequently poignant, and wholly addictive.

Americans rank crime among the most urgent of social concerns. Overflowing prisons and public outcry have led many to propose that the criminal justice system could control crime more effectively by focusing on dangerous offenders. Recent social studies have suggested that serious criminality is highly concentrated and that high-rate offenders can be distinguished from others on the basis of prior criminal conduct, drug abuse, and employment record. Such studies urge judges to shift from rehabilitative sentencing to selective incapacitation, with longer prison sentences for convicted criminals who are deemed unusually dangerous. In response to these recommendations, some prosecutors' offices have established career criminal units designed to assure that repeat offenders will be prosecuted to the full measure of the law. Some police departments are experimenting with "perpetrator-oriented patrols" targeted on suspected high-rate offenders. The authors of this major book in criminal jurisprudence describe and analyze the intellectual and social challenge posed to public officials by this new thrust in criminal justice policy. They develop a framework for evaluating policies that focus on dangerous offenders. They first examine the general issues that arise as society considers the benefits and risks of concentrating on a particular category of criminals. They then outline how that approach might work at each stage of the criminal justice system--sentencing, pretrial detention, prosecution, and investigation. This cogently argued book provides much needed guidance on the crucial questions of whether sharpened attention to dangerous offenders is just, whether such a policy can be effective in managing the problem of crime, which applications seem particularly valuable, what the long-term risks to social institutions are, and what uncertainties must be monitored and resolved as the policy evolves.

This monumental resource gives you complete reference on copyrightability and infringement, ownership and transfer of rights, formalities, jurisdictional issues, remedies, and much more. The author's impressive coverage, analysis, and full-text source materials give you these research-- currency -- including new analysis of the distribution right, parallel imports, and recent infringement and fair use decisions-- practical guidance -- insights on all aspects of practice, including workings of the Copyright Office and Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels-- international perspective -- integrated analysis plus a full, separate discussion of vital issues-- circuit-by-circuit coverage -- comprehensive review of infringement cases-- focus on each exclusive right -- separate, complete coverage of each right and its limitations-- historical perspective -- thorough background and legislative history of past and present laws-- exhaustive source materials -- immense appendix volume with text of U.S. and foreign statutes, trade laws and agreements, and much more

As President Trump and Congressional Democrats battle over the findings of the Mueller report, talk of impeachment is in the air. But what are the grounds for impeaching a sitting president? Who is subject to impeachment? Is impeachment effective as a safeguard against presidential misconduct? What challenges does today’s highly partisan political climate pose to the impeachment process, and what, if any, meaningful alternatives are there for handling presidential misconduct? For more than twenty years, The Federal Impeachment Process has served as the most complete analysis of the constitutional and legal issues raised in every impeachment proceeding in American history. Impeachment, Michael J. Gerhardt shows, is an inherently political process designed to expose and remedy political crimes—serious breaches of duty or injuries to the Republic. Subject neither to judicial review nor to presidential veto, it is a unique congressional power that involves both political and constitutional considerations, including the gravity of the offense charged, the harm to the constitutional order, and the link between an official’s misconduct and duties. For this third edition, Gerhardt updates the book to cover cases since President Clinton, as well as recent scholarly debates. He discusses the issues arising from the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, including whether a sitting president may be investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for criminal misconduct or whether impeachment and conviction in Congress is the only way to sanction a sitting president; what the “Emoluments Clause” means and whether it might provide the basis for the removal of the president; whether gross incompetence may serve as the basis for impeachment; and the extent to which federal conflicts of interest laws apply to the president and other high ranking officials. Significantly updated, this book will remain the standard work on the federal impeachment process for years to come.

"Many of the great legislative achievements of the past sixty years stem from FDR's 1944 State of the Union address. This book that argues for a new vision of FDR and of constitutional history"-- Provided by publisher.

From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland--and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser's brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the family's apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery--that his grandfather's cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex--leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance--material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

In this riveting account of the explosive relationship between Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover, renowned journalist and author Burton Hersh sets their highly publicized clashes in the context of Joe Kennedy's ongoing manipulation of Congress and his children's careers, and his lifelong connections to organized crime. Theirs was a unique triumvirate, marked by conflict and betrayal, and culminating in a near-Shakespearean tragedy. Based on compelling new research, and told in gripping anecdotal style, Hersh chronicles the complex relationship between the two antagonists, from their early brushes during the McCarthy years to their controversial deaths.

As Reagan's solicitor general, Fried selected and argued cases involving some of the most important legal battles in our time: abortion, flag burning, civil rights, and capital punishment. In this provocative and lively memoir, he gives an inside look at how these controversial cases were part of the larger Reagan judicial revolution.

“A splendid narrative about political power and mercy.” —David Grann, #1 bestselling author of The Wager The power of the presidential pardon has our national attention now more than ever before. This “thought-provoking and strenuously argued” ( The Washington Post ) book from New York Times bestselling author and CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin provides a timely and compelling narrative of the most controversial presidential pardon in American history—Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, revealing the profound implications for our current political landscape, and how it is already affecting the legacies of both Presidents Biden and Trump. In this deeply reported book, Toobin explores why the Founding Fathers gave the power of pardon to the President and recreates the behind-the-scenes political melodrama during the tumultuous period around Nixon’s resignation. The story features a rich cast of characters, including Alexander Haig, Nixon’s last chief of staff, who pushed for the pardon, and a young Justice Department lawyer named Antonin Scalia, who provided the legal justification. Ford’s shocking decision to pardon Nixon was widely criticized at the time, yet it has since been reevaluated as a healing gesture for a divided country. But Toobin argues that Ford’s pardon was an unwise gift to an undeserving recipient and an unsettling political precedent. The Pardon explores those that followed: Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters, Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, and the extraordinary story of Trump’s unprecedented pardons at the end of his first term. “A master class on a power wielded by presidents for more than 200 years” ( The Guardian ), The Pardon is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the complex dynamics of power within the highest office in the nation, and the implications of presidential mercy.

This book is both a powerful personal memoir and the definitive history of an organization that helped change American society. Jack Greenberg was a key figure at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) for some thirty-five years. Most of the cases we associate from that period--school integration, equal employment, fair housing, voter registration--were LDF cases, either argued by Greenberg himself or litigated under his direction. Greenberg represented Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham and won for him the right to march from Selma to Montgomery. Under Greenberg's leadership, the LDF forced the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith and integrated the University of Alabama when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door. Greenberg won the cases in which the Supreme Court repudiated the "all deliberate speed" doctrine, which had made school desegregation intolerably slow. Through the 1970s and 1980s, LDF tackled most of the important cases that enforced the new civil rights legislation of the 1960s involving public accommodations, employment, education, and health care, and started the campaigns for prisoners' rights and against capital punishment. More than a history of the litigation that made the LDF so important, the book offers unique insights into its strategies, courtroom techniques, values, and personal relationships. Filled with stories only Greenberg could tell of his experiences with Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Lani Guinier, Roy Wilkins, Vernon Jordan, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Lyndon Johnson, and scores of others, Crusaders in the Courts is an epic saga of a critical period in American history as well as the poignant personal story of the evolution of a white Jewish lawyer into a major civil rights advocate.

In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In Doing What Comes Naturally, Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through.

Documents an eight-month serial murder case in late-1970s Georgia during which an African-American serial rapist and murderer killed seven elderly white women, tracing the subsequent eight-year, racially charged trial process that divided the city and introduced the author to an all-white, members-only club and a related 1912 lynching case.

Ever since Colonial times, Americans have been bedeviled by high taxes that seem to return little of material value to citizens. Taking a page from Thomas Paine's "Greedy Hand" manifesto, Amity Shlaes has written a provocative and fascinating book exposing the inequities of our present tax system, and offers concrete, coherent solutions to simplify our lives. Today, taxes make up more than a third of our economy, the highest level in peacetime history. We truly live in the land Paine foresaw when he warned of government "thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry." This book is a cultural examination of the way taxes influence our behavior, and how they force us into an arbitrary system that punishes families and individual enterprise. Shlaes shows how so-called tax breaks do little to help families and how married women are unfairly taxed more. She uncovers the problems that engage and enrage us, proving that Social Security issues and school inadequacies are at heart tax problems. And she charts a course out of the madness of tax oppression, offering a number of solutions that will give each of us a fairer, simpler system. With compassion for Americans and their dreams, Shlaes makes the best case yet for rethinking our tax code.

THE CONTRADICTORY NATURE OF COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT. Written during a tense period of the Cold War, this study observed that Bolshevism was a system that embraces anarchism in theory and totalitarianism in practice. In order to survive the Bolshevist state must obliterate the potentially destabilizing forces inherent in democracy through a party dictatorship that is presented as the political self-determination of a free people. "A deep-cutting analysis of some of the fundamental contradictions in Communist theory and practice, particularly in regard to democracy and the dictatorial function of the state." --Foreign Affairs 27 (1948-49) 679 Possibly the most influential jurisprudent of the twentieth century, Hans Kelsen [1881-1973] was legal adviser to Austria's last emperor and its first republican government, the founder and permanent advisor of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Austria and the author of Austria's Constitution, which was enacted in 1920, abolished during the Anschluss and restored in 1945. He was the author of more than forty books on law and legal philosophy. Active as a teacher in Europe and the United States, he was Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna and taught at the Universities of Cologne and Prague, the Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Harvard, Wellesley, the University of California at Berkeley and the Naval War College.

Howard Engel, an internationally published and award-winning mystery writer, takes dead aim, so to speak, at this fascination we all share, and produces a wonderfully wise and witty social history of the men and women who represent our agents of death, and have done our dirty work over the centuries. 60 photos and line drawings.