Kategoria BISAC: Law >> Civil Procedure

This first critical examination of informal dispute processing links the institutionalization of alternatives to the court process and the ideology of informalism with the evolution of the American court system. The author connects dispute processing reform to the broader social and political context in which it developed, including the rise of judicial management in the Progressive period and the reconstruction of court unification in the 1970s. Harrington defines legal resources and their distribution in alternative dispute resolution policy before focusing on the institutionalization of...

Henderson has written a most readable book about the development of US federal criminal law between 1801 and 1829. He raises several challenging questions: How well did the criminal justice] system protect society? Did the system evolve in relation to social and economic change? What was the role of politics in this evolution? Did oppression occur?' "Choice"

Donna Price Cofer addresses the tensions between the administrative law judges (ALJ) of the Social Security Administration and their management and examines a common dilemma in the distribution of public social benefits: the desire to meet the needs of eligible claimants and the reality of a diminishing trust fund. She begins with a definition of disability and an outline of the stages of how a claimant is processed. The hearing process is investigated in depth with emphasis placed upon the rules of evidence, claimants' right to counsel, and the impartiality of the decisionmaker. The crux...

This is a thought-provoking exploration of the development of civil law in California from 1850 to 1890. Focusing upon contract, landlord and tenant, mortgage, tort, and admiralty law, Bakken argues that the formulation of the law generally responded to socioeconomic forces. He also asserts that on the operational level, the law's reach was limited by ambiguities, judicial inexactitude, and mistakes made by the bar. Essentially, the broad policy goals of frontier law worked to stimulate marketplace forces by facilitating certain transactions. Entrepreneurs often received the aid of the...

These studies are designed to clarify a field of legal study and professional practice that has begun to emerge only in recent times. The choice of sanction is frequently carried out in improvised, confused, and even contradictory fashion. The main questions that the authors try to answer are: Why bother to extend the meaning of the term sanction to include so much? What do we expect to see accomplished? Arens and Lasswell show that many sanctioning arrangements now current in the U.S. are on their face inconsistent with the articulated goals of the American system of public order, and...

Miller proposes that we focus our energies on the question of how the Constitution is to function in an era of rapid and fundamental social change. He introduces this provocative collection of essays with the observation that American constitutional theory has arrived at a dead-end, largely because it has been perceived as constitutional law rather than a form of political theory. He puts this view into sharp perspective by looking at what are in effect, three constitutions--the political, the economic, and the emergent corporate instrument. He analyzes important issues that confront the...

Nearly 200 interviews with legal services lawyers and administrators, bar association officers, judges, and political officials form the basis for this book on the delivery of civil legal services to the poor. Beginning with a brief history of legal assistance programs, Kessler examines the operation of five local programs funded by the national Legal Services Corporation. The activities of poverty lawyers in urban, rural, and suburban settings are described and analyzed and the author offers an explanation for variables in service based on the constraints imposed by the...

The principle revealed in "Death by Installments" is that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment does not guarantee protection to black men who kill whites. Reading the carefully researched and well-told story of Willie Francis offers a four-decade-old view of both the society's commitment to this principle, and the Supreme Court's unwillingness then and now to challenge it.

"Derrick Bell, Harvard Law School"

...not just a good' but a splendidly written, expertly researched, grippingly told, and passionately presented tome that can proudly take its...

The right to keep and bear arms was considered a fundamental, individual right in the original 14 states (the 13 colonies and Vermont) from the pre-Revolutionary period through the adoption of the federal Bill of Rights in 1791. "A Right to Bear Arms" is the first book to demonstrate the deprivation of this right as a causal factor to the American Revolution. The book also examines the significance of the right to bear arms in each of the first states and the state influences on the adoption of the Second Amendment to the federal Constitution.

This is the first book ever published on...

Alfredo Garcia, who has been both a prosecuting and a defense attorney in criminal processes, reviews the United States Supreme Court's interpretations of the Sixth Amendment--the right to a fair trial--as they have evolved since the 1960s. He determines that the Court, with a few notable exceptions, has demonstrated doctrinal inconsistency and has failed to adhere to the core values embedded in the amendment. Garcia argues that the functional and symbolic roles of the Sixth Amendment have been eroded, and that this is particularly evident in the three clauses that provide defendants the...

Although it is generally assumed that there have always been limits to what soldiers are permitted to do in war, it was not until 1863, in the heat of the Civil War, that the United States issued its first Army manual. Subsequently, manuals of land warfare were issued in 1914, 1934, 1940, 1944, 1956, and 1976 by the American military.

In this volume, Wells provides a systematic examination of the evolution of American rules of warfare. In addition to providing the texts of key elements of the manuals and analyzing them, Wells relates the manuals to international attempts to set limits...

An updated and expanded revision of a popular book published in 1981, American Political Trials examines the role of politicized criminal trials and impeachments in U.S. history from the early colonial era to the late 20th century. Each chapter focuses on a trial representative of a particular era in the American past. The emphasis is on cases that resulted from political persecution, but the book also shows how defendants have exploited the judicial process to advance their political objectives. All of the chapters appearing in the earlier book have been updated. In addition, the volume...

Over much of the past century, the law governing third-party importation of non-counterfeit, genuine goods has been obscured by conceptual uncertainty. In recent years, the debate over the gray market has centered on the fundamental reasons for trademark protection, and has raised the possibility of conflict between the two traditionally recognized purposes of trademark law--protecting consumers from deception and protecting trademark owners from lost sales.

Hiebert discusses the evolution of the universality and territoriality principles of trademark law, and develops a new...

This book describes the historical and legal experiences of Americans of Asian ancestry who began to come to the United States in the mid-19th century. Like all immigrants in America, they arrived with hopes of making a better life and home in a free country. Instead, Asian-Americans have been mistreated and discriminated against by their fellow Americans--even by Congress and the Supreme Court, which should have made and judged laws without prejudice. This study examines the way immigration and naturalization laws were unfairly administered against Asian immigrants and throws light on a...

This volume, an updated collection of essays presented by leading scholars at a Hofstra University conference on group defamation, provides a cross-disciplinary examination of hate speech. Beginning with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the volume analyzes the problem from historical, anthropological, comparative-legal, and American constitutional law perspectives.

Among the topics examined are the role of hate speech in the persecutions of Jews and Asians during World War II, in the subordination of Blacks, Native Americans, and women, and the...

Based on data from Nigeria's Igbo, this book examines the roles of the native and the foreign, English-style justice systems in the administration of law and justice in Nigeria. Okereafoezeke looks at the nature of colonially imposed justice in Nigeria and the relationship between informal and formal justice in the country through the use of case studies. He concludes that the imposed English-style justice system is incapable of dealing with Nigeria's social control problems because it does not anticipate and manage the wide range of issues that the native systems do. Thus, the focus of...

This study analyzes the process of constitutional interpretation, that is, the methodology by which the Supreme Court goes about interpreting the Constitution, and offers a comprehensive view of constitutional law through the lens of history, political science, and jurisprudence. Shaman examines the practice of creating meaning for the Constitution, the dichotomy of legal formalism and realism, the levels of judicial scrutiny, the perception of reality, and the puzzle of legislative motive. While the book traces the historical development of constitutional law, its main focus is on modern...

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