Law and War explores the cultural, historical, spatial, and theoretical dimensions of the relationship between law and war--a connection that has long vexed the jurisprudential imagination. Historically the term "war crime" struck some as redundant and others as oxymoronic: redundant because war itself is criminal; oxymoronic because war submits to no law. More recently, the remarkable trend toward the juridification of warfare has emerged, as law has sought to stretch its dominion over every aspect of the waging of armed struggle. No longer simply a tool for judging battlefield...

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.

Rather than abstract philosophical discussion or yet another analysis of legal doctrine, Speech and Silence in American Law seeks to situate speech and silence, locating them in particular circumstances and contexts and asking how context matters in facilitating speech or demanding silence. To understand speech and silence we have to inquire into their social life and examine the occasions and practices that call them forth and that give them meaning. Among the questions addressed in this book are: who is authorized to speak? And what are the conditions that should be attached to the speaking...

Is the Death Penalty Dying? provides a careful analysis of the historical and political conditions that shaped death penalty practice on both sides of the Atlantic from the end of World War II to the twenty-first century. This book examines and assesses what the United States can learn from the European experience with capital punishment, especially the trajectory of abolition in different European nations. As a comparative sociology and history of the present, the book seeks to illuminate the way death penalty systems and their dissolution work, by means of eleven chapters written by an...

Civil Rights in the American Story charts the ambiguous and contested meanings of civil rights in law and culture and confronts a variety of important questions about race in contemporary America. How important is civil rights in America's story of possibility and change? How has it transformed the very meaning of citizenship and identity in American culture? Why does the subject of race continue to haunt the American imagination and continue to play such a large role in political and legal debates? Do affirmative action and multiculturalism promise a way out of racial polarization, or do...

There is an enormous scholarly literature on law's treatment of religion. Most scholars now recognize that although the U.S. Supreme Court has not offered a consistent interpretation of what non-establishment or religious freedom means, as a general matter it can be said that the First Amendment requires that government not give preference to one religion over another or, although this is more controversial, to religion over non-belief. But these rules raise questions that will be addressed in Legal Responses to Religious Practices in the United States: Namely, what practices constitute a...

Law and the Utopian Imagination seeks to explore and resuscitate the notion of utopianism within current legal discourse. The idea of utopia has fascinated the imaginations of important thinkers for ages. And yet--who writes seriously on the idea of utopia today? The mid-century critique appears to have carried the day, and a belief in the very possibility of utopian achievements appears to have flagged in the face of a world marked by political instability, social upheaval, and dreary market realities. Instead of mapping out the contours of a familiar terrain, this book seeks to...

This special issue of Studies in Law, Politics and Society focuses on law and the liberal state; presenting an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to analysis of law and liberty. The first chapters focus on law's direct relationship with the American liberal state. John P. Anderson defends John Rawl's pragmatism; Adelaide Villmoare and Peter Stillman consider the 'Janus faces of law', a double vision of law where both sides of the face adhere to one another through neoliberalism; and Timothy Delaune examines jury nullification. The remaining chapters then go on to consider specific...

Law and the Humanities: An Introduction brings together a distinguished group of scholars from law schools and an array of the disciplines in the humanities. Contributors come from the United States and abroad in recognition of the global reach of this field. This book is, at one and the same time, a stock taking both of different national traditions and of the various modes and subjects of law and humanities scholarship. It is also an effort to chart future directions for the field. By reviewing and analyzing existing scholarship and providing thematic content and distinctive arguments, it...