Kategoria BISAC: Law >> Legal History

Few episodes in the modern civil rights movement were more galvanizing or more memorialized than the brutal murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney--idealists eager to protect and promote the rights of black Americans, even in the deep and very dangerous South. In films like Mississippi Burning and popular folk songs, these young men have been venerated as martyrs. Even so, the landmark legal dimensions of their murder case have until now remained largely lost.

Howard Ball reminds us just how problematic the prosecution of the murderers--all members of the...

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act may have outlawed sex discrimination, but it did not address the sexual harassment of women in the workplace--behavior that courts did not deem illegal until well into the era of the modern civil rights and women's movements. Mechelle Vinson's lawsuit against her employer, Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986), changed all of that. Adopting the legal theory pioneered by feminist Catharine MacKinnon that sexual harassment was indeed discriminatory, the Supreme Court's opinion, authored by one of the most conservative justices, brought the problem of...

In June 2001, there was a decidedly new look to the graduating class at Virginia Military Institute. For the first time ever, the line of graduates who received their degrees at the "West Point of the South" included women who had spent four years at VMI.

For 150 years, VMI had operated as a revered, state-funded institution--an amalgam of Southern history, military tradition, and male bonding rituals--and throughout that long history, no one had ever questioned the fact that only males were admitted. Then in 1989 a female applicant complained of discrimination to the Justice Department,...

The history of voting rights in America is a checkerboard marked by dogged progress against persistent prejudice toward an expanding inclusiveness. The Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright is a crucial chapter in that broader story and marked a major turning point for the modern civil rights movement. Charles Zelden's concise and thoughtful retelling of this episode reveals why.

Denied membership in the Texas Democratic Party by popular consensus, party rules, and (from 1923 to 1927) state statutes, Texas blacks were routinely turned away from voting in the Democratic primary in...

The history of voting rights in America is a checkerboard marked by dogged progress against persistent prejudice toward an expanding inclusiveness. The Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright is a crucial chapter in that broader story and marked a major turning point for the modern civil rights movement. Charles Zelden's concise and thoughtful retelling of this episode reveals why.

Denied membership in the Texas Democratic Party by popular consensus, party rules, and (from 1923 to 1927) state statutes, Texas blacks were routinely turned away from voting in the Democratic primary in...

In the annals of Civil War history, one overarching dispute remains unsettled: was the United States waging war against another nation or putting down an internal rebellion? In October 1861 three legal battles put this question to the test. As Mark Weitz reveals, these proceedings were instrumental in debating and ultimately shaping the Confederacy's very identity.

Weitz takes readers to courtrooms in Philadelphia and New York, where Confederate sailors caught raiding Union vessels were tried for the capital crime of piracy. Their defense argued that they were not pirates at all but...

The 9/11 attacks were not the first operations by foreign terrorists on American soil. In 1942, during World War II, eight Germans landed on our shores bent on sabotage. Caught before they could carry out their missions, under FDR's presidential proclamation they were hauled before a secret military tribunal and found guilty. After the Supreme Court's emergency session upheld the tribunal's authority, six of the men were executed.

Louis Fisher chronicles the capture, trial, and punishment of the Nazi saboteurs in order to examine the extent to which procedural rights are suspended in time...

Although she came to be known as merely "that girl with the dirty books," Dollree Mapp was a poor but proud black woman who defied a predominantly white police force by challenging the legality of its search-and-seizure methods. Her case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, remains hotly debated and highly controversial today.

In 1957, Cleveland police raided Mapp's home on a tip--from future fight promoter Don "the Kid" King--that they'd find evidence linked to a recent bombing. What they confiscated instead was sexually explicit material that led to Mapp's conviction for...

Although she came to be known as merely "that girl with the dirty books," Dollree Mapp was a poor but proud black woman who defied a predominantly white police force by challenging the legality of its search-and-seizure methods. Her case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, remains hotly debated and highly controversial today.

In 1957, Cleveland police raided Mapp's home on a tip--from future fight promoter Don "the Kid" King--that they'd find evidence linked to a recent bombing. What they confiscated instead was sexually explicit material that led to Mapp's conviction for...

"Poor Joshua " lamented Justice Harry Blackmun in his famous dissent. "Victim of repeated attacks by an irresponsible, bullying, obviously cowardly, and intemperate father, and abandoned by respondents who placed him in a dangerous predicament and who knew or learned what was going on, and yet did essentially nothing. . . ." Even so, the Supreme Court, by a 6-to-3 margin, absolved Wisconsin officials of any negligence in a case that had left a young child profoundly damaged for the rest of his life.

Does the Constitution protect children from violent parents? As Lynne Curry shows, that...

It has become known to many as the moment when the U.S. Supreme Court kicked God out of the public schools, supposedly paving the way for a decline in educational quality and a dramatic rise in delinquency and immorality. The 6-to-1 decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962) not only sparked outrage among a great many religious Americans, it also rallied those who cried out against what they perceived as a dangerously activist Court.

Bruce Dierenfield has written a concise and readable guide to the first--and still most important--case that addressed the constitutionality of prayer in...

Americans were riveted to their television sets in 1957, when a violent mob barred black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School and faced off against paratroopers sent by a reluctant President Eisenhower. That set off a firestorm of protest throughout the nation and ultimately led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Cooper v. Aaron, reaffirming Brown v. Board of Education's mandate for school integration "with all deliberate speed" and underscoring the supremacy of federal and constitutional authority over state law.

Noted scholar Tony Freyer, arguably our...

Americans were riveted to their television sets in 1957, when a violent mob barred black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School and faced off against paratroopers sent by a reluctant President Eisenhower. That set off a firestorm of protest throughout the nation and ultimately led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Cooper v. Aaron, reaffirming Brown v. Board of Education's mandate for school integration "with all deliberate speed" and underscoring the supremacy of federal and constitutional authority over state law.

Noted scholar Tony Freyer, arguably our...

In its controversial Bakke decision of 1978, the Supreme Court upheld racial and ethnic diversity in university admissions--but it was not to be the last word on the matter. When Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter challenged the University of Michigan's admission policies because they were passed over in favor of ostensibly less-qualified minority applicants, the Court was once again compelled to address affirmative action.

Barbara Perry takes readers behind the scenes to tell the riveting story of how the two rejected applicants allied with conservative interest groups in an attempt to...

In its controversial Bakke decision of 1978, the Supreme Court upheld racial and ethnic diversity in university admissions--but it was not to be the last word on the matter. When Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter challenged the University of Michigan's admission policies because they were passed over in favor of ostensibly less-qualified minority applicants, the Court was once again compelled to address affirmative action.

Barbara Perry takes readers behind the scenes to tell the riveting story of how the two rejected applicants allied with conservative interest groups in an attempt to...

On Trial is an exegesis on legal reason, moral judgment, political life, and the events that give them meaning. Beginning with the serpent in the Garden of Eden and ending with O. J. Simpson, esteemed thinker George Anastaplo offers students, scholars, and informed readers an exploration of justice and the rule of law through well-known trials ancient and modern, real and fictional. Anastaplo starts with an interrogation of the good common sense on which most of us draw to make successful judgments. He examines the nurturing of this faculty against rationality, moral obligation, and the...

Beginning with the serpent in the Garden of Eden and ending with O.J. Simpson, author George Anastaplo offers an exploration of justice and the rule of law through well-known trials both ancient and modern, real and fictional. On Trial is a detailed and fascinating discussion of legal reason, moral judgment, political life, and the events that give them meaning.

This book is an interpretation and critique of Habermas's philosophy of law in his Between Facts and Norms. The main point is that, while Habermas is insightful in laying out a new conceptual and methodological foundation for the philosophy of law, the book is flawed by a fundamental contradiction: that between the notion of a democracy ruled by law and capitalism. Because capitalism is essentially undemocratic both in its internal economic workings and its intended, structural effect on culture and politics, it must adversely affect the most important institutions in western democratic...

The second volume in a must-have trilogy of the best closing arguments in American legal history

Every day, Americans enjoy the freedom to decide what we do with our property, our bodies, our speech, and our votes. However, the rights to these freedoms have not always been guaranteed. Our civil rights have been assured by cases that have produced monumental shifts in America's cultural, political, and legal landscapes.

And the Walls Came Tumbling Down showcases eight of the most exciting closing arguments in civil law -- from the Amistad case, in which John Quincy...

This collection of essays considers the work of Professor Sir Thomas Smith QC (1915-1988) and, through that work, the development of Scots law as a mixed legal system. Smith was a leading figure in the revival of Scots law which began in the 1950s. Well-known internationally as a comparatist, he was the pioneer of the idea of a grouping of mixed legal systems. Yet in Scotland he was a controversial figure, whose advocacy of the civil law tradition was challenged and whose legacy is disputed. This volume is the first sustained attempt to assess Smith's career, and his writing, methodology,...