Recent Acquisitions Highlights
The Vanishing American Lawyer
by Thomas D. Morgan
Over 4,000 lawyers lost their positions at major American law firms in 2008 and 2009. In The Vanishing American Lawyer, Professor Thomas Morgan discusses the legal profession and the need for both law students and lawyers to adapt to the needs and expectations of clients in the future. The world needs people who understand institutions that create laws and how to access those institutions' works, but lawyers are no longer part of a profession that is uniquely qualified to advise on a broad range of distinctly legal questions. Clients will need advisors who are more specialized than many lawyers are today and who have more expertise in non-legal issues. Many of today's lawyers do not have a special ability to provide such services.
While American lawyers have been hesitant to change the ways they can improve upon meeting client needs, lawyers in other countries, notably Great Britain and Australia, have been better at adapting. Law schools must also recognize the world their students will face and prepare them to operate successfully within it. Professor Morgan warns that lawyers must adapt to new client needs and expectations. The term "professional" should be applied to individuals who deserve praise for skilled and selfless efforts, but this term may lead to occupational suicide if it becomes a justification for not seeing and adapting to the world ahead.
Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War
by Stephen C. Neff
Stephen Neff offers the first comprehensive study of the wide range of legal issues arising from the American Civil War, many of which resonate in debates to this day.
Neff examines the lawfulness of secession, executive and legislative governmental powers, and laws governing the conduct of war. Whether the United States acted as a sovereign or a belligerent had legal consequences, including treating Confederates as rebellious citizens or foreign nationals in war. Property questions played a key role, especially when it came to the process of emancipation. Executive detentions and trials by military commissions tested civil liberties, and the end of the war produced a raft of issues on the status of the Southern states, the legality of Confederate acts, clemency, and compensation. A compelling aspect of the book is the inclusion of international law, as Neff situates the conflict within the general laws of war and details neutrality issues, where the Civil War broke important new legal ground.
This book not only provides an accessible and informative legal portrait of this critical period but also illuminates how legal issues arise in a time of crisis, what impact they have, and how courts attempt to resolve them.
Breaking the Logjam: Environmental Protection That Will Work
by Professor David Schoenbrod, Richard B. Stewart, Katrina M. Wyman, and Deborah Paulus-Jagric (Illustrator)
After several decades of significant but incomplete successes, environmental protection in the United States is stuck. Administrations under presidents of both parties have fallen well short of the goals of their environmental statutes. Schoenbrod, Stewart, and Wyman, distinguished scholars in the field of environmental law, identify the core problems with existing environmental statutes and programs and explain how Congress can fix them. Based on a project the authors led that incorporated the work of more than fifty leading environmental experts, this book is a call to action through public understanding based on a nonpartisan argument for smarter, more flexible regulatory programs to stimulate the economy and encourage green technology.
Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture
by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone
Red Families v. Blue Families identifies a new family model geared for the post-industrial economy. Rooted in the urban middle class, the coasts and the "blue states" in the last three presidential elections, the Blue Family Paradigm emphasizes the importance of women's as well as men's workforce participation, egalitarian gender roles, and the delay of family formation until both parents are emotionally and financially ready. By contrast, the Red Family Paradigm—associated with the Bible Belt, the mountain west, and rural America—rejects these new family norms, viewing the change in moral and sexual values as a crisis. In this world, the prospect of teen childbirth is the necessary deterrent to premarital sex, marriage is a sacred undertaking between a man and a woman, and divorce is society's greatest moral challenge. Yet, the changing economy is rapidly eliminating the stable, blue collar jobs that have historically supported young families, and early marriage and childbearing derail the education needed to prosper. The result is that the areas of the country most committed to traditional values have the highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates, fueling greater calls to reinstill traditional values.
Featuring the groundbreaking research first hailed in The New Yorker, this penetrating book will transform our understanding of contemporary American culture and law. The authors show how the Red-Blue divide goes much deeper than this value system conflict—the Red States have increasingly said "no" to Blue State legal norms, and, as a result, family law has been rent in two. The authors close with a consideration of where these different family systems stilloverlap, and suggest solutions that permit rebuilding support for both types of families in changing economic circumstances.
Incorporating results from the 2008 election, Red Families v. Blue Families will reshape the debate surrounding the culture wars and the emergence of red and blue America.
Fighting Words: Individuals, Communities, and Liberties of Speech
by Kent Greenawalt
"Fighting Words is an outstanding book. It deserves not only all the accolades it undoubtedly will receive, but also the widest possible readership."--Lee C. Bollinger, Provost, Dartmouth College"At last we have a cogent comparison of the treatment of free speech questions in the United States and Canada. With his demonstrated gift for clarity, Greenawalt provides a detailed account of the contrasting approaches to hate speech, obscenity, workplace harassment, and campaign spending in two liberal democracies. This work will enlighten even those who disagree with the positions it takes on the issue. It will be of use to experts, students, and general readers."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School"This is an exceptionally thoughtful and readable study of the most urgent free speech controversies of our time. By linking the analysis to the conflicting demands of justice toward individuals and communities, and doing so with scrupulous fairness, Greenawalt will lead many readers to rethink their vision of the good society."--Norman Dorsen, Stokes Professor of Law, New York University School of Law"A lucid and subtle discussion. Greenawalt shows keen understanding of the temptations to regulate speech while defending its freedom resourcefully and generously."--George Kateb, Princeton University"All of Kent Greenawalt's work is characterized by meticulous care and scrupulous fairness in argument. These talents of admirable balance and professional craft are especially apparent in this book, and their application to some of the most controversial free speech issues of our times is a needed addition to the literature."--Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, HarvardUniversity"By comparing American and Canadian perspectives, Greenawalt sheds light on how different constitutional cultures can reach different results on the same fundamental questions. This is a valuable work for anyone seeking to understand the most pressing free speech issues of our time."--Geoffrey R. Stone, Provost, University of Chicago"Kent Greenawalt's important, insightful book provides thoughtful, lucid, well-balanced analyses of the most challenging contemporary free speech controversies. He carefully and sensitively examines and answers arguments, from across the political spectrum, for restricting allegedly harmful expression."--Nadine Strossen, President, American Civil Liberties Union
"They Say / I Say": The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing
by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
As employers, politicians, parents, and other citizens lament the decline of writing skills among Americans, this little book comes to the rescue. An instant bestseller when it first appeared as a college textbook, "They Say / I Say" gives writers precisely what they need to know in the all-important domain of persuasive writing. Cutting through the clutter of educational diagnoses and nostrums, it goes right to the heart of what writers most need to do, and that is to listen to what others are saying (they say), summarize it, and then offer their own argument (I say) as a response. Offering user-friendly templates to help writers make these key moves in their own writing, "They Say / I Say" is already being called the Strunk & White of persuasive writing.
The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation's Last Stand at the University of Alabama
by E. Culpepper Clark
E. Culpepper Clark's book is a well-researched and crisply written narrative that draws its energy from the drama of the desegregation crisis in the postwar South...The first part of the story, covering the period 1943-57, centers on the admission to and expulsion from the University of Alabama of Autherine Lucy in 1956. In retrospect this appears as an opportunity for peaceful change that was tragically lost by inept university administrators and trustees, who stalled until Alabama's populist New Deal politics shifted sharply toward segregationist defiance following the bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955-56. The second part centers on the events culminating in Wallace's spectacular stand at Foster Auditorium in June 1963. The flagship at Tuscaloosa, threatened by the research pace of the branch campuses at Birmingham and Huntsville, unable to keep or recruit superior faculty during the post-Sputnik boom years, weakly led by strong politicians like John Patterson and Wallace, emerged from the drama as a badly mauled institution, notable chiefly for its football team and Coach Paul 'Bear' Bryant.
And Justice for All: The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Continuing Struggle for Freedom in America
by Mary Frances Berry
This is the story of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, through its extraordinary fifty years at the heart of the civil rights movement and the struggle for justice in America.
Mary Frances Berry, the commission’s chairperson for more than a decade, author of My Face Is Black Is True (“An essential chapter in American history from a distinguished historian”—Nell Painter), tells of the commission’s founding in 1957 by President Eisenhower, in response to burgeoning civil rights protests; how it was designed to be an independent bipartisan Federal agency—made up of six members, with no more than three from one political party, free of interference from Congress and presidents—beholden to no government body, with full subpoena power, and free to decide what it would investigate and report on.
Berry writes that the commission, rather than producing reports that would gather dust on the shelves, began to hold hearings even as it was under attack from Southern segregationists. She writes how the commission’s hearings and reports helped the nonviolent protest movement prick the conscience of the nation then on the road to dismantling segregation, beginning with the battles in Montgomery and Little Rock, the sit-ins and freedom rides, the March on Washington.
We see how reluctant government witnesses and local citizens overcame their fear of reprisal and courageously came forward to testify before the commission; how the commission was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; how Congress soon added to the commission’s jurisdiction the overseeing of discriminating practices—with regard to sex, age, and disability—which helped in the enactment of the Age Discrimination Act of 1978 and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
Berry writes about how the commission’s monitoring of police community relations and affirmative action was fought by various U.S. presidents, chief among them Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, each of whom fired commissioners who disagreed with their policies, among them Dr. Berry, replacing them with commissioners who supported their ideological objectives; and how these commissioners began to downplay the need to remedy discrimination, ignoring reports of unequal access to health care and employment opportunities.
Finally, Dr. Berry’s book makes clear what is needed for the future: a reconfigured commission, fully independent, with an expanded mandate to help oversee all human rights and to make good the promise of democracy—equal protection under the law regardless of race, color, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or national origin.