Showing titles in History

For two centuries, the Framers' ideas about political corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. In the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.

The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.

This Very Short Introduction is a clear and concise guide to administrative law that explains its key features in an accessible and practical way for students, journalists, government officials, and everyday listeners.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) is generally considered one of the two greatest justices of the United States Supreme Court. In more than 2000 opinions, he delineated an impressive legal philosophy that profoundly influenced American jurisprudence, particularly in the area of civil liberties and judicial restraint. In The Common Law, derived from a series of lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Holmes systematized his legal doctrines.

On May 3, 1946, in St. Martinsville, Louisiana, a 17-year-old Black boy was scheduled for execution by electric chair. Willie Francis had been charged with murder; his trial had been brief; his death sentence never in doubt. When the executioners flipped the switch, Willie screamed and writhed as electricity coursed through his body. But Willie Francis did not die. Having miraculously survived, Willie was informed that the state would attempt to execute him a second time within a week.

For many years, Britain tried to impose its own laws on the peoples it conquered, and English common law usually followed the Union Jack. But the common law became less common after Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War as the world's most powerful empire. At that point, imperial policymakers adopted a strategy of legal pluralism: some colonies remained under English law, while others retained much of their previous legal regimes.

Silas John Edwards—a charismatic Apache medicine man—was known as a controversial figure on Apache reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, where white authorities were determined to maintain control over reservation life. When his wife, Margaret, was brutally murdered in 1933, Silas John was tried and convicted, receiving a sentence of life in prison. The key piece of evidence against Silas John was a rock found near Margaret's body, scratched with his initials, “S. J. E."

Decrees were legislative acts of the highest Soviet institutions, primarily of the Council of People's Commissars (the highest executive body — Sovnarkom) and of VTsIK (the highest legislative body between sessions of the Congress of Soviets). The Bolshevik Initial Decrees were announced as soon as the Bolsheviks declared their success in the October Revolution (October 26, 1917). The Decrees seemed to conform to the popular Bolshevik slogan "Peace, Land and Bread". The slogan succinctly articulated the grievances of the Russian peasantry, armed forces and proletariat.

Guaranteed to give the listener a deeper understanding of America’s most powerful judicial body, John Yoo, professor of law at UC Berkeley, and Robert Delahunty, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas, detail in sprightly, slightly irreverent manner how the black-robed judges who make up the U.S. Supreme Court have swung like a pendulum from saviors of the Republic to super-legislators who usurp the roll of Congress and dictate law from the bench, back to defenders of the Constitution again—or at least for the moment.

Today's copyright wars can seem unprecedented. Sparked by the digital revolution that has made copyright - and its violation - a part of everyday life, fights over intellectual property have pitted creators, Hollywood, and governments against consumers, pirates, Silicon Valley, and open-access advocates. But while the digital generation can be forgiven for thinking the dispute between, for example, the publishing industry and Google is completely new, the copyright wars in fact stretch back three centuries - and their history is essential to understanding today's battles.

This riveting biography from the American Bar Association visits the spectacular life of Edwin Land, breakthrough inventor. At the time of his death, he stood third on the list of our most prolific inventors, behind only Thomas Edison and one of Edison's colleagues. Land's most famous achievement was the creation of a revolutionary film-and-camera system that could produce a photographic print moments after the picture was taken.

Have you ever heard a bizarre law and thought, that can’t possibly be true? Is it genuine? Was it ever in existence or just an urban myth that became so embellished over time? There are surprisingly, a great many laws still in existence on the statute books today that would make your jaw drop. Whilst bizarre as these laws may now seem to us, it begs the question, are we in fact, unknowingly breaking these laws on a regular basis?

With SCALIA: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986, the opening installment in a two-volume biography, acclaimed reporter and bestselling historian James Rosen provides the first comprehensive account of the life of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose singular career in government—including three decades on the Supreme Court—shaped American law and society in the twenty-first century.

The fascinating true story of how a group of visionary attorneys helped make American business synonymous with Big Business, and Wall Street the center of the financial world “Entertaining.”—The Wall Street Journal “Fast-paced history.”—Library Journal “Insightful and...

A rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it “The greatest trick conservatives ever pulled was convincing the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, drawing on exclusive interviews and first-time access to Justice O’Connor’s archives—as seen on PBS’s American Experience...

An appreciation of the “greatest common law jurist of the 20th Century,” these two lectures also include a comparison and contrast of the Parliamentary system of Commonwealth countries within which Lord Denning operated and American Constitutionalism.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER YOU’VE BEEN LIED TO BY THE GOVERNMENT We shrug off this fact as an unfortunate reality. America is the land of the free, after all. Does it really matter whether our politicians bend the truth here and there? When the truth is traded for lies, our freedoms are...

Operation Greylord was the longest and most successful undercover investigation in FBI history, and the largest corruption bust ever in the US. It resulted in bribery and tax charges against 103 judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, and, eventually, more than 70 indictments. And it was led by Terrence Hake, a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago, who worked undercover for nearly four years.

New York Times Editors’ Choice Winner of the Bancroft Prize Winner of the New York Society Library's New York City Book Award A riveting Revolutionary Era drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two...