American Bar Foundation Book Notes Source: Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 2007), pp. 869-878 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Bar Foundation Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20108728 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 15:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Wiley and American Bar Foundation are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Law &Social Inquiry. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.78.108.107 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:40:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Transcript
American Bar Foundation
Book NotesSource: Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 2007), pp. 869-878Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Bar FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20108728 .
Accessed: 17/06/2014 15:40
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Wiley and American Bar Foundation are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toLaw &Social Inquiry.
http://www.jstor.org
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Perry, Michael J. Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii + 253. $70.00.
This book seeks to develop a theory of human rights that applies to both the study of human rights and constitutional theory. Perry divides the book into three interrelated
sections. The first asks whether there is a nonreligious basis for the morality of human
rights. The second discusses the relationship between the morality of human rights and the law of human rights, using the current controversial issues of capital punishment,
abortion, and same-sex unions to examine possible connections. The final section analyzes the role o? courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, in protecting what he assesses
are constitutionally entrenched human rights.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Armstrong, Sarah, and Lesley McAra. Perspectives on Punishment: The Contours of Control.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvii + 276. $35.00.
This volume is a collection of contemporary research on crime control and punishment in the wake of 9/11. The contributors, which include a dozen scholars from the United
States and Europe, employ diverse epistemological and methodological frameworks to
analyze a range of issues including terrorism and the politics of fear, criminality in
societies in transition, penal policy and the construction of political identity, the emergent
hegemony of information and surveillance systems, and the evolving politics of victimhood.
Armstrong and McAra assert that taken together, this work draws connections between
local problems of crime control, transnational forms of governance, and the ways in
which certain political and jurisprudential discourses have come to dominate policy and practice in Western penal systems.
Harcourt, Bernard E. Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial
Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. viii + 336. $25.00.
This book examines the use of actuarial methods to determine whom law enforcement
officials target and punish. Harcourt argues that the goal and justification of current
policies that use profiling and other prediction tools is to cost-effectively fight crime but
that these practices can in fact actually increase crime. He cites examples of targeted
populations that respond negatively to intensified policing and to the increased difficulty of certain groups, such as the recently paroled, to find jobs or pursue education and
concludes that actuarial methods are socially dangerous, pervert our understanding of
justice, and stigmatize entire classes of people as undesirable.
Kupchik, Aaron. Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts.
New York: New York University Press, 2006. Pp. x + 211. $70.00 cloth; $22.00 paper. This book is a comparative analysis of the processes and outcomes of adolescents prosecuted and punished in juvenile courts and adult criminal courts in the United States. Kupchik
argues that prosecuting adolescents in adult criminal court does not fit with the country's dominant cultural understandings of youthfulness, and as a result adolescents who are
transferred to criminal adult courts are still judged as juveniles. Through an analysis of the legal treatment of juveniles involved in incidents of violence, including the
Columbine shootings, the Washington sniper shootings, and certain gang-related acts
of violence, he assesses that justice would be better served if adolescents were handled
by the juvenile courts.
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Leap, Terry L. Dishonest Dollars: The Dynamics of White-Collar Crime. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2007. Pp. x + 243. $29.95.
This book integrates the work of academicians and investigative journalists to create
a dynamic model of white-collar crime in the United States. Using specific examples and cases, Leap examines the conditions underlying white-collar crime, the range of
crimes, the risk assessment strategies and psychological ploys of the perpetrators, and
the aftermath and social response to these crimes, all of which are components of his
model. He argues that although the model does not provide a means of predicting individual criminal behavior, it does identify points of attack that can be used to combat
white-collar crime and corruption.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Streib, Victor L. The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio. Athens: Ohio University
Press, 2006. Pp. xii + 198. $44.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. This book explores Ohio's experience with the death penalty as related to women and its
implications for women throughout the United States. Streib analyzes two centuries of
Ohio's death penalty legislation and adjudication with detailed descriptions of the cases of
the four women executed in the state since its founding and the eleven women sentenced
to death between 1973 and 2005. He argues that this history and these particular stories
provide a unique understanding of women's crimes and the American death penalty system.
PUBLIC REGULATION
Sideri, Katerina. Law's Practical Wisdom: The Theory and Practice of Law Making in New
Governance Structures in the European Union. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.,
2007. Pp. xii + 146. $99.95. This book examines the process of lawmaking and the social function of law in new
governance structures in the European Union. Focusing on the regulation of technology, Sideri examines the government's role in the management of the Internet, patents of
high technology, filters used on the Internet to block harmful material, trademark law,
and domain name dispute resolution by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). She also studies the dynamics of constructing a legal argument
inside the European Commission and its role in the process of coordinating the creation
of networks, securing enforcement in self-regulatory regimes, and steering activity on
the part of autonomous groups of actors.
COURTS AND JUDGES
Manley II, Walter W, and Canter Brown Jr. The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. xii + 428. $59.95.
This book is a study of the Florida Supreme Court, its justices, its major cases, and
its national influence. Through an examination of court decisions and oral interviews,
Manley and Brown examine the controversies within the court and the associations,
interests, and actions of individual tribunal members in a context of two world wars, issues
of desegregation, court scandals, growth management, the emergence of drug trafficking in South Florida, and the controversial 2000 presidential election.
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Baird, Vanessa A. Answering the Call of the Court: How Justices and Litigants Set the Supreme
Court Agenda. Charlottes ville: University Press of Virginia, 2007. Pp. xii + 225. $45.00
cloth.
This book reports a study of the agenda-setting processes and the aggregate policy outputs
of the U.S. Supreme Court. Focusing primarily on the late twentieth century, Baird
argues that when Supreme Court justices desire to influence policy in a certain area,
they engage in activities that influence attorneys to submit cases in that area. These
activities include issuing a high rate of reversals of lower court decisions, making dec
larations of unconstitutionality, and issuing formal alterations of precedent. She argues
that the incentive to support litigation in particular policy areas varies over time in
accordance with litigants' changing perceptions of Supreme Court justices' policy priorities.
Parry-Giles, Trevor. The Character of Justice: Rhetoric, Law, and Politics in the Supreme
Court Confirmation Process. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2006. Pp. x
+ 267. $64.95. This book examines the confirmation process of seven U.S. Supreme Court nominations
from 1916 to 1987. Parry-Giles analyzes the rhetoric used in the debates over the
nominations that occurred in committees, the Senate, and in the news media. He
suggests that these debates are not solely partisan struggles or divergences between
judicial philosophies, but are moments of constitutive formation for American con
ceptions of law, justice, and democracy. He argues specifically that the Supreme Court
confirmation process rhetorically manifests and enacts the shift of the adherence to
civil and human rights in twentieth-century American law while simultaneously per
sonalizing American conceptions of justice with particular nominees to the high court.
Scheiber, Harry N., ed. Earl Warren and the Warren Court: The Legacy in American and
Foreign Law. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Pp. xii + 368. $30.00.
This collection of essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines examines the Warren
Court's contributions to U.S. law and its influence on legal systems in Europe, Latin
America, Canada, and East Asia. Some essays also explore the personal role of Earl Warren
in shaping the law and the ways in which his character and background influenced
his role as chief justice. Scheiber argues that as a whole, the book analyzes how inno
vations in American law generated by the Warren Court led to a reconsideration of
law and the judicial role, and in many areas of the world, to transformations in judicial
procedure and the advancement of substantive human rights.
Staab, James B. The Political Thought of Justice Antonin Scalia: A Hamiltonian on the Supreme Court. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. Pp. xxxvi + 369. $85.00
cloth; $34.95 paper. This book compares U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence to
the political and constitutional thought of Alexander Hamilton. Through an examination
of Scalia's political philosophy, Staab argues that there is substantial agreement between
these two men in the areas of constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of
powers, executive and judicial power, and that the two men have similar temperaments:
bold, decisive, and principled. He also compares Scalia to the other conservative
members of the Court?the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra
Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas?and concludes that there
are important differences between Justice Scalia's jurisprudence and that of his
contemporaries.
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associated values. The authors offer an alternative approach to postconflict reconstruc
tion?a holistic strategy that includes not only law but also other postconflict priorities, such as reestablishing security.
TRANSFORMATION OF LEGAL SYSTEMS
Dawson, N. M., ed. Reflections on Law and History: Irish Legal History Society Discourses
and Other Papers, 2000-2005. Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 2006. Pp. xxii + 329. $55.00.
This book is a collection of fourteen papers on the history of Irish law, most of which
were originally delivered as lectures under the auspices of the Irish Legal History Society. The papers, which cover issues from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, are
arranged in three groups, dealing with personalities in the law, crime and punishment, and the making of law. Dawson summarizes each paper in a preface and offers that
the aim of the volume is to advance the knowledge of Irish law and stimulate further
research.
LEGAL CULTURE
Tamanaha, Brian Z. Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii + 254. $75.00.
Using historical analysis, Tamanaha examines the instrumental view of law?the idea
that law is purely a means to an end?over the past two centuries. He argues that
this view of law is pervasive in contemporary legal culture and describes how various
groups are attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agendas. He ends with illustrations of situations in which the instru
mental view of law is threatening to corrode the rule of law.
West, Mark D. Secrets, Sex, and Spectacle: The Rules of Scandal in Japan and the United
States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. ix + 404. $45.00.
In a comparative study of Japan and the United States, this book explores the treatment
of scandal in the context of law and society. West uses a vast array of behaviors, including
corporate fraud, baseball cheaters, political corruption, and celebrity sexcapades, to
examine what legal and organizational rules exist in each country regarding these activities
and how they are used to determine whether behavior is scandalous. He argues that
the national differences in those rules, which include disparate definitions about what
is public or private, what is injurious to dignity and honor, and what is acceptable sexual activity, help explain why there are sometimes differences in the way scandal
and its actors are treated in each country.
LAW AND LANGUAGE
Mertz, Elizabeth. The Language of Law School: Learning to uThink Like a Lawyer. "
New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xvii + 308. $35.00.
This linguistic study examines the language used in first-year contracts courses at eight different law schools to understand the complex way students learn to think and talk
like a lawyer. Mertz argues that professors used variations of the Socratic method and
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other legal pedagogies to shift students away from moral and emotional frames for thinking
about conflict, toward frameworks of legal authority that underlie both legal education
and the general U.S. legal system. She argues that the transformation law students
undergo is as much a shift in how they approach language?how they talk and read
and write?as in how they think.
LAW AND ART
Ladenson, Elisabeth. Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. xxiv + 272. $29.95.
This book recounts and analyzes modern obscenity trials that involved books labeled
as scandalous and their authors. Ladenson argues that from the mid-nineteenth century
to the mid-twentieth century two ideas?that a work of art exists in a realm independent
of conventional morality and that even unpleasant art represents reality?transformed
from avant-garde heresy to accepted truisms and grounds for legal defense. Hoping to
inform ongoing debates about free speech, she advocates the notion that even a sordid
work of art may legitimately include true representations of life.
LAW AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
Wilson, Robin Fretwell, ed. Reconceiving the Family: Critique on the American Law Institutes
Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Pp. xviii + 542. $95.00 cloth; $29.99 paper. This volume is a collection of essays that critically examine the American Law Institute's
(ALI) proposal for family law reform in the United States. Scholars from the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia as well as U.S. judges and legislators,
explore fundamental questions about the nature of family and parenthood through a
variety of analytical tools. Specifically, the contributors examine issues of fault, custody,
child support, property division, spousal support, and domestic partnerships. In his intro
duction, Wilson explains that the book is intended to both better inform policymakers
and to generate a debate on the ALI's recommendations and the choices embedded
within them.
LAW AND GENDER
Mossman, Mary Jane. The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law
and the Legal Professions. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2006. Pp. xi + 329. $45.00. This comparative study explores the lives of some of the first women to challenge male
exclusivity in the legal professions in the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand,
Australia, India, and Western Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Mossman situates these women in a context she describes as a time of con
siderable optimism about progressive and societal change, including new and expanding
opportunities for women and new proposals for reforming law, legal education, and
standards for legal professionalism. Through these women's experiences, she examines
the intersection of historical ideas about gender and legal professionalism and argues that
the women adopted different legal arguments than their male counterparts in litigated cases
and devised particular strategies to overcome gendered barriers to professional work.
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Brophy, Alfred L. Reparations Pro & Con. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Pp. xviii + 287. $29.95.
This book offers a historical examination of the debate over reparations?whether African
Americans should be compensated for past racial subjugation?from the 1700s to the
present. Brophy ties the origins of the black reparations movement to Thaddeus Stevens
and traces it through Jim Crow and the Harlem Renaissance to late twentieth-century critical race theory and then relates it to other movements for racial justice. He exam
ines the way that litigation, legislation, and private actions have been used to secure
reparations to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Native Americans, and for Japanese Americans detained during World War II and compares these actions with the African
American movement.
LAW AND POVERTY
Handler, Joel F, and Yeheskel Hasenfeld. Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii + 401. $80.00 cloth; $29.99 paper. This book examines the effects of the 1996 welfare reform in the United States, assesses
that it failed, and offers an alternative approach. Handler and Hasenfeld argue that
the welfare bureaucracy distinguishes between deserving and undeserving poor and
emphasizes a set of family values that continue to demonize poor single-mother families; as a result, it diverts attention from the economic hardships low-income families face
and thus perpetuates poverty and inequality. They propose an alternative plan to reduce
poverty and inequality that includes a children's allowance, basic income support, pro
motion of job opportunities, and universal childcare.
LAW IN THE BUSINESS CONTEXT
Kreitner, Roy. Calculating Promises: The Emergence of Modern American Contract Doctrine.
Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. Pp. xii + 242. $55.00.
By juxtaposing scholarly accounts of contract with case law, this book examines the
history of American contract law around the turn of the twentieth century. Kreitner
details what he identifies as shifts in the American conception of contract and conflicts
in the cases. He argues that the twentieth-century conception of contract was not an
outgrowth of gradual refinements in a centuries-old idea; rather it was shaped by a
revolution in private law undertaken toward the end of the nineteenth century. Focusing on issues, such as the enforceability of promises to make gifts, the relationship of con
tracts to speculation and gambling, and the problem of incomplete contracts, he
attempts to illustrate that calculating promises emerged during this period as the heart
of a new notion of contract.
LAW AND PROPERTY
Hamilton, Daniel W The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Con
federacy During the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 220. $39.00.
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Schr?m, Sanford E, and Brian Caterino, eds. Making Political Science Matter: Debating
Knowledge, Research, and Method. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Pp. vii
+ 304. $70.00 cloth; $24.00 paper. This volume is a compilation of a number of scholars' discussions of the state of the
field of political science and its connection to present-day political struggles. Contributors
consider a range of issues, including the usefulness of rational choice theory, the ethical
limits of pluralism, the use and misuse of empirical research in political science, the
present-day divorce between political theory and empirical science, the connection
between political science scholarship and political struggles, and the future of the dis
cipline. Schr?m and Caterino intend the volume to build on the debate in the discipline over the significance of the work of Bent Flyvberg and the Perestroika Movement,
the split between quantitative researchers supporting the use of mathematical tech
niques and qualitative researchers emphasizing history and culture through case studies.
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