New Books In Law

Anthony Maniscalco is the author of Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution: Shopping Malls and the First Amendment (SUNY Press, 2015). Maniscalco is the director of the Edward T. Rogowsky Internship Program in Government and Public Affairs at the City University of New York. What can you say in a shopping mall? Maniscalco finds not that much, or at least not as much as you were in the past. Public Spaces traces the legal history of how the courts have interpreted balanced the property rights of shopping place owners with the first amendment rights of patrons. The book offers a new vision for how public spaces might be reimagined to re-emphasize public debate and discussion in shopping malls and places of commerce.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her shining new book Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Hina Azam, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas-Austin, explores the diversity and complexity of pre-modern Muslim legal discourses on rape and sexual violation. The reader of this book is treated to a thorough and delightful analysis of the range of attitudes, assumptions, and hermeneutical operations that mark the Muslim legal tradition on the question of sexual violation. Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of this book is the way it showcases the staggering range and diversity of approaches to defining and adjudicating rape that populate the Muslim legal tradition. Focusing primarily on the Maliki and Hanafi schools of law, Azam convincingly demonstrates that Muslim legal discourses on rape were animated and informed by competing ways of imagining broader categories such as sovereignty, agency, property, and rights. In our conversation, we talke

Historic Preservation in a Nutshell (West Academic Publishing, 2014), co-authored by Sara Bronin and Ryan Rowberry provides the first-ever in-depth summary of historic preservation law within its local, state, tribal, federal, and international contexts. Historic Preservation is a burgeoning area of law that includes aspects of property, land use, environmental, constitutional, cultural resources, international, and Native American law. This book covers the primary federal statutes, and many facets of state statutes, dealing with the protection and preservation of historic resources. It also includes key topics like the designation process, federal agency obligations, local regulation, takings and other constitutional concerns, and real estate development issues. Some of the topics we cover are: * How the most enduring historic preservation laws manage to achieve protective aims while balancing a range of other values * The four primary methods of advancing the goals of the preservation movement. * The c

How can a perspective on Islamic law and jurisprudence be constructed responding to the lives and practices of diasporic Muslims while remaining deeply grounded in the foundational texts of the religion? In The Islamic Worldview: Islamic Jurisprudence–An American Muslim Perspective, Volume One, feminist philosopher and legal scholar Azizah al-Hibri (Univ. of Richmond Law School) engages in precisely this task. Providing an overview of the central sources and methods of law and jurisprudence in the Islamic tradition, al-Hibri elaborates what she calls the “Islamic worldview,” based in principles of harmony, equality, and justice. This guides her work to engage in sustained textual analysis of passages from the Qu’ran and hadith and to think through questions of gender, the family, and politics in Islam.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kerry Eleveld is the author of Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency (Basic Books, 2015). Eleveld is a writer for DailyKos and a former reporter for The Advocate. We have all begun to write the histories of the Obama presidency, noting various accomplishments and failures. One of the most remarkable areas of accomplishment and change was the President’s transformation on gay rights. From a campaign that stumbled on the issue to a much bolder stance on don’t-ask-don’t-tell, DOMA, and other policies, the Obama White House was changed by gay rights and, in turn, changed America. According to Kerry Eleveld, he didn’t do this on his own. An assortment of advocates, activists, and bloggers pressured the White House to move gay rights issues from the edge his agenda. In Don’t Tell Me To Wait, Eleveld recounts this transformation as one of the reporters covering the President up-close.Learn more about your ad ch

Ruben Flores is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. His book Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the winner of the 2015 book award of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Flores recast the long U.S. civil rights movement by framing it within the exchange of ideas between Mexican and U.S. pragmatists. In a thoroughly research transnational history he demonstrates how post-revolutionary Mexican reformers adopted John Dewey’s pragmatism and Franz Boas’s cultural relativism in fostering assimilation of diverse native people into a pan-ethnic republic. Mexican educators Moises Saenzand Rafael Ramirez both studied under Dewey at Columbia University and were eager to apply his philosophy at home. In turn, U.S. reformers looked to Mexico’s scientific state as a living laboratory and a model for assimilating native people and Hispanics of the southwest, and blacks

In the first legal history course I took as an undergraduate, I read Lawrence M. Friedman‘s A History of American Law and American Law in the 20th Century and have been fascinated with the subject ever since. His most recent work, The Big Trial: Law as Public Spectacle (University Press of Kansas, 2015) combines the scintillating narrative style that he employs as the author of several mystery novels with the keen insights about law and society that he has revealed time and again in his numerous cornerstone works of legal scholarship. Per the book jacket, “The trial of O. J. Simpson was a sensation, avidly followed by millions of people, but it was also, in a sense, nothing new. One hundred years earlier the Lizzie Borden trial had held the nation in thrall. The names (and the crimes) may change, but the appeal is enduring–and why this is, how it works, and what it means are what Lawrence Friedman investigates in The Big Trial. What is it about these cases that captures the public imaginatio

There has been a lot of talk in the United States recently about same-sex marriage. One obvious question is sociological: What are the implications of marriage equality for the longstanding social institution of marriage? But there are philosophical questions as well. What is the purpose of marriage? What are the goods that marriage helps individuals realize? Once marriage is no longer understood to be restricted to heterosexual couples, must we then question whether it should be restricted to couples? Why not recognize plural marital arrangements? Why should there be a civil institution of marriage at all? In Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage (Princeton University Press, 2015), Stephen Macedo explores a range of philosophical, moral, and legal issues pertaining to marriage. He argues that, as a matter of justice, marriage rights must be extended to same-sex couples. But he also argues that marriage as an institution should be restricted to monogamous couples. Along the way,

Valuation is a central question in contemporary social science. Indeed the question of value has a range of academic projects associated with it, whether in terms of specific questions or in terms of emerging fora for academic publications. In Value Practices in the Life Sciences and Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2015), Isabelle Dussauge, Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, and Francis Lee bring together a range of authors to outline a new research programme. Alongside individual essays that range from the allocation of transplant organs, questions of plagiarism in science, the ownership of generically modified organisms though to desire and neuroscience, the book points to a new way to think through questions of valuation. As a result its importance moves beyond an STS audience to establish value practices as a vital framework for understanding contemporary life.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge UP, 2015) is a new contribution to the study of Islam and more specifically to the history of Islamic Law and its development. Guy Burak, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies librarian at New York University, explores the Ottomans’ adoption of one branch of the Hanafi legal tradition as the official school (madhhab) of the dynasty. The period of time in which this process occurred was during the 15th to 18th centuries, and Burak focuses on the lands of Greater Syria. What Burak seeks to illustrate is that through the adoption of an official school of law, the Ottoman hierarchy played a significant role in how the school of law was shaped. Examples Burak provides to demonstrate this phenomenon are the institutionalization of the position of mufti, the formalization of genealogical literature (tabaqat), and the canonization process of books essential to the school. In addition to examining the propagators of

“America is a nation of immigrants.” Either this common refrain, or its cousin the “melting pot” metaphor is repeated daily in conversations at various levels of U.S. society. Be it in the private or public realm, these notions promote a compelling image of national inclusivity that appears not to be limited to particular notions of race, religious affiliation, gender, or national origin. Indeed, generations of American writers–like J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Israel Zangwill, Emma Lazarus, and Oscar Handlin–have embedded America’s immigrant past into the collective psyche of its people and the epic telling of its history. Yet, as scholars of U.S. immigration history have asserted over the past few decades, the “nation of immigrants” narrative is blinded by both its singular focus on trans-Atlantic European migration and the presumption of immigrant assimilation and incorporation to Anglo American institutions and cultural norms. In

Christine Desan, teaches about the international monetary system, the constitutional law of money, constitutional history, political economy, and legal theory at Harvard Law School. In this podcast we discuss her new book, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2015). Per the books jacket, “Money travels the modern world in disguise. It looks like a convention of human exchange – a commodity like gold or a medium like language. But its history reveals that money is a very different matter. It is an institution engineered by political communities to mark and mobilize resources. As societies change the way they create money, they change the market itself – along with the rules that structure it, the politics and ideas that shape it, and the benefits that flow from it. One particularly dramatic transformation in money’s design brought capitalism to England. For centuries, the English government monopolized money’s creation. The Crown sol

When we study the history of a famous scientific figure – especially one that has gone on to become a cultural icon – we are dealing not just with a person, but also with an identity or series of identities that have been constructed over time. Eva Hemmungs Wirten‘s new book looks carefully at the work that has gone into the making of Marie Curie (1867-1934) as an individual, a celebrity, an icon, and ultimately a brand. Three motifs that thread through the narrative of Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and they each form the basis for one of its chapters: the impact of intellectual property on science and research; the role of celebrity culture in shaping the image of the scientist; and the “question of how to organize scientific information as part of the modern infrastructure of knowledge.” It’s a compellingly argued book that’s also a pleasure to read. For videos of two of

Barak Kushner‘s new book considers what happened in the wake of Japan’s surrender, looking closely at diplomatic and military efforts to bring “Japanese imperial behavior” to justice. Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (Harvard University Press, 2015) focuses on the aftermath of the Japanese war crimes, asking a number of important questions: “How did the Chinese legally deal with Japanese war crimes?” and “What were the Japanese responses, and [how] did these processes shape early Cold War Sino-Japanese relations?” Two ways of reconsidering history shape the study. First, Kushner reframes Japan as a decolonizing empire, not just a defeated country. At the same time, he looks at the “shifting landscape of the concept of law in East Asia” and its impact on relations in the region during this period, especially in terms of international law and associated notions of accountability. These two broad historiographical re

In this podcast I talk with Laura F. Edwards, Peabody Family Professor of History at Duke University about her book, A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (Cambridge University Press 2015). Per the book’s introduction, “[a]lthough hundreds of thousands of people died fighting in the Civil War, perhaps the war’s biggest casualty was the nation’s legal order. A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction explores the implications of this major change by bringing legal history into dialogue with the scholarship of other historical fields. Federal policy on slavery and race, particularly the three Reconstruction Amendments, are the best-known legal innovations of the era. Change, however, permeated all levels of the legal system, altering American’s relationship to the law and allowing them to move popular conceptions of justice into the ambit of government policy. The results linked Americans to the nation through individual rights, which were

David George Surdham is the author of The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989 (University of Illinois Press, 2015). Surdham is Associate Professor of Economics at Northern Iowa University. Just back from the Major League Baseball All-Star break, Surdham has written a book for sports lovers. Why do major league sports receive such preferential treatment from Congress? And what does this have to do with labor and economic development policy? Surdham examines Congressional hearings held over decades to figure out how Washington’s role in professional sports has changed over since the 1950s.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As patterns of religiosity have changed in the United States, chaplains have come to occupy an increasingly important place in the nation’s public institutions, especially its prisons, hospitals and military. In her newest book, A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care and the Law (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Winnifred F. Sullivan offers a comprehensive study of contemporary chaplaincy, paying particular attention to how it sits at the intersection of law, government regulation, and spiritual care. She shows how much this ubiquitous but often invisible institution can tell us about religion in the US today, and moreover the role that law plays in structuring American ideas about, and experience of, religion. Winnifred F. Sullivan is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and Affiliate Professor in the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University Bloomington.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clare Virginia Eby is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut. In Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Eby examines the origins of how we think of marriage through the theoretical and experimental reform of the institution in...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the early twentieth century, Yemeni Jews operated within a legal structure that defined them as dhimmi, that is, non-Muslims living as a protected population under the sovereignty of an Islamic state. In exchange for the payment of a poll tax, the jizya, and the acknowledged of supremacy of Islam, their lives and property were to be inviolable. Although this framework burdened Jews with some legal disadvantages, for example a Muslim’s witness testimony was worth double that of a Jew’s in court, it allowed for the integration of Jews into Yemen’s complex hierarchical social structure, and not always at the bottom of that structure. Mark S. Wagner’s book Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen (Indiana University Press, 2015) examines how Jews negotiated this Islamic legal system, both in shariah courts and in extralegal settings. Wagner employs numerous Arabic and Hebrew sources, particularly the memoirs of prominent Yemeni Jews such as Salim Said al-Jamal, Salih al-Zahi

In this podcast I discuss Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780-1940 (Yale University Press, 2013) with author Nicholas R. Parrillo, professor of law at Yale University. Parrillo’s book was winner of the 2014 Law and Society Association James Willard Hurst Book Prize and the 2014 Annual Scholarship Award from the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law. Per the book jacket, “in America today, a public official’s lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently provided for officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a percentage of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. Numerous other officers were likewise paid for ‘performance.’ This book is the first to document the American government’s for-profit past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officialdom’srelationship t