Books & eBooks
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The Disappearing First Amendment
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ISBN: 9781108481540Publication Date: 2019The standard account of the First Amendment presupposes that the Supreme Court has consistently expanded the scope of free speech rights over time. This account holds true in some areas, but not in others. In this illuminating work, Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr acknowledges that the contemporary Supreme Court rigorously enforces the rules against content and viewpoint discrimination for those who possess the wherewithal to speak but when citizens need the government's assistance to speak - for example, access to public property for protest - free speech rights have declined. Instead of using open-ended balancing tests, the Roberts and Rehnquist Courts have opted for bright line, categorical rules that minimize judicial discretion. Opportunities for democratic engagement could be enhanced, however, if the federal courts returned to the Warren Court's balancing approach and vested federal judges with discretionary authority to require government to assist would-be speakers. This book should be read by anyone concerned with free speech and its place in democratic self-government. -
Thin Blue Lie
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ISBN: 9781250108296Publication Date: 2019A wide-ranging investigation of how supposedly transformative technologies adopted by law enforcement have actually made policingworse--lazier, more reckless, and more discriminatory American law enforcement is a system in crisis. After explosive protests responding to police brutality and discrimination in Baltimore, Ferguson, and a long list of other cities, the vexing question of how to reform the police and curb misconduct stokes tempers and fears on both the right and left. In the midst of this fierce debate, however, most of us have taken for granted that innovative new technologies can only help. During the early 90s, in the wake of the infamous Rodney King beating, police leaders began looking to corporations and new technologies for help. In the decades since, these technologies have--in theory--given police powerful, previously unthinkable faculties: the ability to incapacitate a suspect without firing a bullet (Tasers); the capacity to more efficiently assign officers to high-crime areas using computers (Compstat); and, with body cameras, a means of defending against accusationsof misconduct. But in this vivid, deeply-reported book, Matt Stroud shows that these tools are overhyped and, in many cases, ineffective. Instead of wrestling with tough fundamental questions about their work, police leaders have looked to technology as a silver bullet and stood by as corporate interests have insinuated themselves ever deeper into the public institution of law enforcement. With a sweeping history of these changes,Thin Blue Lieis a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how policing became what it is today.
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The Concept of Constitution in the History of Political Thought
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ISBN: 9783110581928Publication Date: 2018The aim of the present volume is to discuss the notion of constitution from the perspectives of history of political thought. Its scholarly intention is to go beyond the approach concentrating on the formal understanding of constitution and bring forward more complex historical and philosophic-political interpretations. Our point of departure was the need to revive the somehow neglected distinction between the idea of constitution as an act of conscious law-giving activity and the notion of constitution conceived as the set of fundamental political rules derived from the very nature of political regime and its historical development. -
A Primer on Legal Reasoning
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ISBN: 9781501728594Publication Date: 2018After years of teaching law courses to undergraduate, graduate, and law students, Michael Evan Gold has come to believe that the traditional way of teaching ? analysis, explanation, and example ? is superior to the Socratic Method for students at the outset of their studies. In courses taught Socratically, even the most gifted students can struggle, and many others are lost in a fog for months. Gold offers a meta approach to teaching legal reasoning, bringing the process of argumentation to the fore. Using examples both from the law and from daily life, Gold's book will help undergraduates and first-year law students to understand legal discourse. The book analyzes and illustrates the principles of legal reasoning, such as logical deduction, analogies and distinctions, and application of law to fact, and even solves the mystery of how to spot an issue. In Gold's experience, students who understand the principles of analytical thinking are able to understand arguments, to evaluate and reply to them, and ultimately to construct sound arguments of their own.
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Judges and Adjudication in Constitutional Democracies: a View from Legal Realism
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ISBN: 9783030581855Publication Date: 2020The book offers contributions to a philosophical and realistic approach to the place of adjudication in contemporary constitutional democracies. Bringing together scholars from different legal and philosophical backgrounds, the book purports to cast light on the role(s) of judges and the function of judicial interpretation inside of constitutional states, from the standpoint of legal realism as a revisited and sophisticated jurisprudential outlook. In so doing, the book also copes with a few major jurisprudential issues, like, e.g., determining the ideas that make up the core of legal realism, exploring the relation between legal realism and legal positivism, identifying the boundaries of judicial interpretation as they appear from a realist standpoint, as well as considering some skeptical outlooks on the very claims of contemporary legal realism. -
The Coddling of the American Mind
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ISBN: 9780735224896Publication Date: 2018New York Times Bestseller * Finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction * A New York Times Notable Book * Bloomberg Best Book of 2018 "Their distinctive contribution to the higher-education debate is to meet safetyism on its own, psychological turf . . . Lukianoff and Haidt tell us that safetyism undermines the freedom of inquiry and speech that are indispensable to universities." --Jonathan Marks, Commentary "The remedies the book outlines should be considered on college campuses, among parents of current and future students, and by anyone longing for a more sane society." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.
