New Books

What does it mean that human rights derive from human dignity? And what is the foundation of human dignity? How are human dignity and its foundation connected? Is the recent development of natural sciences dealing with human nature, like evolutionary psychology, relevant to these questions?  The book addresses these points by connecting the discussion on the foundations of human rights with the recent claims regarding human nature made in evolutionary psychology, and with contemporary analytic metaphysics, especially the relation of metaphysical grounding. It offers in-depth insights into the so-called naturalistic approach to human rights, together with detailed proposals on how the approach could be truly naturalized in the philosophical sense. It shows how human rights and human dignity may have foundations in natural facts about human nature and offers a detailed analysis of how the "is" / "ought" gap problematic can be solved. The book also addresses the objection of Western ethnocentrism - unlike most of the contemporary philosophical accounts of human rights, which draw on highly individualistic Western concepts, it employs concepts like altruism and cooperation. 

In the current legal climate where "everyone is an originalist," conventional wisdom suggests that judges merely find law, rather than make it. Orthodox common-law jurisprudence makes fidelity to the past the central goal and criterion. By contrast, the alternative approach, "reading the law forward"--what some call judicial pragmatism or consequentialism--is viewed as heretical. Rather than mount a theoretical defense of a forward-thinking jurisprudence, legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer offers an empirical study of how this approach to constitutional interpretation actually leads to better law. Reading Law Forward looks at seven judges who exemplify this alternative jurisprudence: John Marshall, Joseph Story, Lemuel Shaw, Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, and Stephen G. Breyer. "In the hands of America's leading judges, a jurisprudence of reading law forward enabled courts to respond to the challenges of changing conditions. It kept law fresh. It promoted and still promotes the growth of a democratic society," Hoffer convincingly argues.

This book is a concise and accessible introduction to the problem of war crimes in modern history, emphasizing the development of laws aimed at regulating the conduct of armed conflict developed from the 19th Century to the present. Bringing together multiple strands of recent research in history, political science, and law the book starts with an overview of the attempts across the pre-modern world to regulate the initiation, conduct, and outcomes of war. It them moves on to present a survey of the legal revolution of the 19th Century when, amidst a global welter of colonial wars, the first body of formal codes and laws relating to distinguishing legal from criminal conduct in war was developed. Further chapters investigate failed but influential attempts to develop the laws of war in the post-World War I period, summarize the major landmarks in international law related to war crimes, such as the Hague conventions and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, as well as hundreds of lesser-known post-World War II trials in Europe and Asia. It also looks at the origins and debated significance of the Genocide Convention of 1948 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions accounts for the acceleration worldwide of war crimes investigations and trials from the 1970s into the 2000s and summarizes current thinking about international law and the rapidly changing nature of warfare worldwide as well as the memorialization of war crimes. Including images, documents, a bibliography highlighting the most recent scholarship, a chronology, who's who, and a glossary, this is the perfect introduction for those wishing to understand the complex field or war crimes history and its politics

This collection provides an innovative and engaging way of assessing the development of legal profession scholarship and its potential future development by presenting an analysis of the 'leading works' of the discipline. Written by prominent and emerging international scholars in the field, each contributor has been invited to select and analyse a work which has for them shed light on what the legal profession is and what it does. The chapters explore the effect that the chosen work has had upon legal profession scholarship as a whole, both within particular jurisdictions and internationally. Contributors also reflect upon the likely implications of the leading work on the future study of and application to the legal profession. They relate the works to recent and contemporary developments in law and access to justice such as the rise of technology, impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and issues of funding to highlight the interpretative value of such scholarship. Presenting an overview and introduction to the field of legal profession research, the collection will be required reading for researchers looking to study any aspect of the legal profession. It will also prove compelling for a wide variety of access to justice and justice system research projects. The book will also appeal to scholars interested in legal ethics

This book focuses on trend-setting judgments in different parts of the world that impacted on the rights of persons belonging to minorities and Indigenous people. The cases illustrate how the judiciary has been called upon to fill out the detail of minority protection arrangements and how, in doing so, in many instances the judiciary has taken the respective countries on a course that parliament may not have been able to navigate. In this book authors from various backgrounds in the practical application of minority protection arrangements investigate the role of the judiciary in constitutional arrangements aimed at the protection of the rights of minorities and Indigenous peoples.

This unique book is designed to introduce non-lawyers to what law is and how it is interpreted and made, and to prepare prospective law students for law school. Although primarily intended for those interested in going to law school, it is also very useful for those who simply want a working knowledge of how the American legal system actually works. The text is highly pragmatic, helping the reader understand not just theory but the realities of how law works and what lawyers actually do to assist clients in the real world. To that end, it contains a sample legal problem along with the necessary legal materials to address it and an illustrative answer.

The January 2018 headline story in the Los Angeles Times was riveting. Andrew from the United States and Elad Dvash-Banks from Israel married in Canada in 2010 when gay couples could not marry in these countries. The couple conceived fraternal twins, Aiden and Ethan, with a Canadian surrogate by means of egg and sperm donation. The two boys were born just four minutes apart. Aiden was conceived with a donated egg and Andrew's sperm cell, and Ethan was conceived with a donated egg (from the same woman) and Elad's sperm cell. Andrew and Elad wished to raise their children in the United States, but when they arrived at the American Consulate in Toronto to apply for citizenship, a staff member fired off a series of "shocking" and humiliating questions, and informed the couple of her authority to require a DNA test to determine each parents' relatedness to each twin-she warned that without these tests neither twin would be granted US citizenship. Andrew and Elad knew which twin each had fathered and had planned on keeping this information confidential. They knew this because DNA analyses had already been performed, but the consulate insisted that these costly tests be repeated using their designated laboratory. Having no alternative, DNA testing was arranged, and results submitted to the consulate. Soon, two envelopes arrived at their home, bearing both welcome and dreaded news: United States citizenship was offered to Aiden, whose father was a US citizen, but not to Ethan, whose father was Israeli. And, thus, their ground-breaking legal journey began. The couple's high-profile lawsuit nearly reached the US Supreme Court, capturing worldwide attention along the way. Nancy Segal brings the story to life through firsthand accounts of each father's life history and analysis of the legal intricacies that threatened to deny US citizenship to one of their twin sons.

The Responsibility to Protect and Counter-Terrorism both 'came of age' at the turn of the millennium, as the international community was grappling with the challenges emerging from the end of the Cold War. R2P embraced the value of the individual, while counter-terrorism emphasized the importance of the state. Each appeared to represent a distinct way of understanding security. However, as these two concepts have evolved through contestation, application, and reform, surprising points of conflict and congruence have emerged which open up new ways of understanding what it means to protect both civilians and the state. This collection of essays was first published in the journal Global Responsibility to Protect (vols. 14 and 15, 2022 and 2023).

This book brings together prominent scholars in the fields of international cultural heritage law and heritage studies to scrutinise the various branches of international law and governance dealing with heritage destruction from human rights perspectives, both in times of armed conflict as well as in peace. Importantly, it also examines cases of heritage destruction that may not be intentional, but rather the consequence of large-scale infrastructural development or resource extraction. Chapters deal with high profile cases from Europe, North Africa, The Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, with a substantial afterword on heritage destruction in Ukraine.

In The Laws of Restitution, Robert Stevens shows that there is no unified law of restitution or unjust enrichment. Instead, there are seven or eight different kinds of private law claim, depending on how you count them, which have nothing important in common one with another that have been grouped together by commentators. Few of these claims have anything to do with enrichment, and what is restituted differs between them. Like all private law claims, those gathered here concern (in)justice between individuals, but they have no further unity. Many of them are not based upon an agreement or a wrong, but that negative feature has no utility. "Restitution" or "unjust enrichment' should cease to be discussed as unified areas of law. With close attention to caselaw and legislation, the work identifies and describes the various reasons for "restitution" that any properly constructed system of private law ought to recognise. It explains how the law of restitution relates to, and is bound up with, contract, torts, equity, and property law.

Documents the story of Brandon Teena's coming of age struggle with identity and how his gender ambiguity induced feelings of betrayal, confusion and hostility among residents of a town in Nebraska. Teena arrived in rural Falls City, Nebraska, in 1993 where he found new friends. Three weeks later he was raped and beaten by friends who had discovered that he was actually a woman. A week later the same two men killed Teena along with two other people.

This book is a comprehensive guide to patent application administrative (non-substantive) procedure. Written for anyone engaged in or contemplating patent application, it covers the patenting process from initial invention disclosure by the inventor/applicant through post-grant proceedings. In light of malpractice risk and increasing workload, it is vital for practitioners to work effectively and efficiently. This manual provides a tool for promoting the quality of application conduct by enhancing mindfulness of the practitioner to procedural options available at any given point during the application protocol. It will aid the practitioner in anticipating the Patent Office's actions, as well as elevate the practitioner's awareness of options available in prosecuting an application.

Technology in Construction Law is a resource and practical reference for construction lawyers who are looking for basic information about the various types of technology now being used in design and construction, or who want guidance on how to gather and manage the vast quantities of data these technologies generate.

Today's jurors are more easily frustrated, suspicious, and educated in the practices of the legal system, and lawyers must adapt or risk getting left behind. The New Science of Trial Advocacy offers a guide for lawyers on how to work within this new era, less like intimidating experts and more like good waiters, bringing jurors what they want and pointing out what they may have missed.

This book will be very useful to insurance regulatory lawyers, surplus lines brokers, surplus lines insurers, state surplus lines associations, and stamping offices. Much of what was covered in the fifth edition of the book was affected or displaced by the Non-Admitted and Reinsurance Reform Act (NRRA), which was part of Dodd-Frank, and other changes to the law

The focus of Construction Arbitration: The Advocate's Practical Guide is squarely on what you need to know to maximize your effectiveness in the arbitration context - your advance planning for the arbitration, your conduct as an advocate, your preparation of the case, your presentation of the case at the hearing, and your drafting of post-hearing submissions. Ultimately, this book should provide you with the information you need to fit your own personal style to the needs of a complex construction arbitration.

Commercial General Liability policies are the most common form of liability insurance purchased by both public and private sectors and are also the most litigated insurance product in the marketplace. Providing concise overviews of the most salient points of these policies, this new edition of The Reference Handbook on the Commercial General Liability Policy surveys important developments and issues that can arise from a CGL liability policy.

This must-have resource for business lawyers and corporate and financial service executives provides updated, comprehensive coverage of Truth in Lending law compliance, disclosure, and private enforcement. Written by highly-respected specialists in the field, the treatise discusses important changes in the law and its evolution over the years.

This guide is a one-stop resource for attorneys, legislators, and others to understand how COVID-19 affected the most vulnerable populations in the U.S., and examines important efforts necessary to promote and protect civil rights and civil liberties during crisis. The framework presented--by 30 attorney experts--sets the stage for how to approach and best provide support during times of pandemic. Reducing the devastating effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on underserved and historically disadvantaged communities is a high priority to achieve health equity and social justice. This resource explains how COVID-19 exacerbated disparities rooted in historical structural inequalities and provides a full picture of how different populations are affected in times of emergency. The book provides guidance for attorneys, policymakers, elected officials, businesses, and citizens so they can work together to address inequities in the aftermath of COVID-19 and during future pandemics. Leading experts explore how most fundamental rights--which include housing, health care, voting practices, and religion--were challenged by the health emergency. This valuable guide raises awareness of these issues and examines: How the virus heightened threats to immigrants, people with disabilities, and historically disadvantaged students The chronic underfunding of the Native American health system The impact of the virus on Asian Americans The role climate change played in the pandemic How lawyers and governments can work to alleviate a pandemic's worst effects The necessity to increase access to justice in the courts How to minimize the harms to incarcerated people in prison The tax system and how to deliver economic relief during times of shutdown The future of public health mandates and what needs to change to better protect us all

This comprehensive guide contains model contract clauses (MCCs) that companies and their counsel can use to implement balanced, responsible, and sustainable corporate policies to protect human rights and the environment. The guide provides legal analysis from practicing lawyers and prominent scholars and includes extensive explanatory materials to help adapt and implement the MCCs.

What do you say when a potential employer asks, "Tell me about a project that you have managed and what you learned from that experience; tell me specifically about how you handled a difficult team member in implementing the project?" If you are like most law students, the slightest mention of "project management" or "difficult team member" makes you cringe, evoking painful memories of free-riding classmates. Once your discomfort passes, you either struggle to come up with a meaningful answer or fail to think of an experience demonstrating your project management and teamwork competencies. Would it surprise you to know that was supposed to be an easy question? What happens when you get a tricky question, such as, "What value do you bring beyond just technical legal skills to help our clients be successful?" The Roadmap process transforms this type of challenging question into an opportunity to differentiate yourself from other students. You will not need to wait for a specific question about the value you bring beyond technical legal skills to help legal employers and clients. Instead, you will understand what skills legal employers and clients need and will be able to explain how your strongest skills can help them succeed. You will be prepared with your best stories to demonstrate persuasive evidence of your strongest skills.

Clearly written and informative, this updated and expanded edition explains the most critical aspects involved in creating a premarital agreement. Includes a model agreement, sample letters and forms, and summary of the law in all 51 jurisdictions.

A thorough and engaging look at an unexpected driver of changes in the American criminal justice system Driving is an unavoidable part of life in the United States. Even those who don't drive much likely know someone who does. More than just a simple method of getting from point A to point B, however, driving has been a significant influence on the United States' culture, economy, politics - and its criminal justice system. Rules of the Road tracks the history of the car alongside the history of crime and criminal justice in the United States, demonstrating how the quick and numerous developments in criminal law corresponded to the steadily rising prominence, and now established supremacy, of the automobile. Spencer Headworth brings together research from sociology, psychology, criminology, political science, legal studies, and histories of technology and law in illustrating legal responses to changing technological and social circumstances. Rules of the Road opens by exploring the early 20th-century beginnings of the relationship between criminal law and automobility, before moving to the direct impact of the automobile on prosecutorial and criminal justice practices in the latter half of the 20th century. Finally, Headworth looks to recent debates and issues in modern-day criminal justice to consider what this might presage for the future. Using a seemingly mundane aspect of daily life as its investigative lens, this creative, imaginative, and thoroughly researched book provides a fresh perspective on the transformations of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Although they are nonviolent, white collar crimes are hardly victimless. These crimes bring significant losses to individual investors and also can result in severe damage to the entire US economy. Insider trading, corporate fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering all fall under this umbrella, and there are many more offenses to join them. The explosion of the internet and related technology has only added to the list of white collar crimes. But unlike many violent crimes, white collar offenses can be difficult to uncover and difficult to prosecute. The expert viewpoints in this volume examine the topic in fascinating detail.

Over 2 billion people (61% of the world's employed population) work in the informal economy. Due to its pervasiveness, informality plays a major role in understanding a wide swath of ideas, such as development, work, employment, governance, and growth. Its scope, nonetheless, goes far beyond economic definitions and political agendas. As the book argues, at the root of informality lies another comprehensive, yet generally unnoticed-or at best improperly treated-phenomenon: that of noncompliance with the law. Whilst it is true that much attention has been paid to the economic aspect over the past 5 decades, the same cannot be said about the legal aspect, which is one of its constitutive features. This book takes the first steps in this direction. The book provides an account of the phenomenon's legal nature through the lens of a case study on street vendors in Brazil, focusing on what can be conceived as noncompliance and by which forms noncompliant behaviour can be assessed. It goes on to set out the most striking impacts of noncompliance; specifically, what happens with the legal system when noncompliance becomes pervasive. The Nature and Impacts of Noncompliance was awarded The European Award for Legal Theory 2022 from the European Academy of Legal Theory (EALT) and Prêmio Abrafi de Teses 2022 from the Brazilian Association for Philosophy of Law and Sociology of Law (Abrafi).

Illustrates how the power of narrative influences how police, prosecutors, juries, and judges construct legal reality Wrongful convictions have been studied primarily through the lenses of law, psychology, and the social sciences. Though scholarship has established canonical factors that help explain why the innocent are convicted, a very simple question has not been answered: How is it possible that prosecutors can convince juries and themselves of the guilt of an innocent defendant, often even against strong exculpatory evidence? Narratives of Guilt and Innocence seeks to address this crucial question by highlighting the narrative blueprint of a given criminal justice system and then how the power of narrative influences how police, prosecutors, juries, and judges construct legal reality and the evidence for it. That law and storytelling are connected is a common trope, but we know surprisingly little about the intricate role storytelling plays in criminal cases and wrongful convictions in particular. This book questions the effectiveness of the adversarial contest between prosecutor and defense as a means to arrive at the truth and argues that narrative is an important a factor in the construction of legal reality. Wrongful convictions exemplify that narrative and truth have an uncomfortable relationship. Ralph Grunewald provides a retelling and reading of well-known miscarriages of justice, including the best-known wrongful conviction in Germany. Applying a comparative perspective shows that the narrative desire as a human trait has a universal power with a persistence that transcends the regulatory and procedural setup of a given system. Narratives of Guilt and Innocence puts wrongful convictions into an interdisciplinary and comparative context and vividly demonstrates just how much the process of storytelling affects legal reality.

The Logic of the Transfer Taxes: A Guide to the Federal Taxation of Wealth Transfers offers a broad survey of the federal transfer tax system. It thoroughly covers all of the fundamental rules of the gift, estate and generation skipping transfer taxes and provides numerous illustrative examples. It also offers a glimpse of some popular tax planning techniques, including FLPs, GRATS and IDGT'S, and the Special Valuation Rules of Chapter 14. It is appropriate for use as a coursebook for a two or three credit JD or LLM course, or as a reference for newcomers to the area. The Second Edition incorporates changes to the law made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

This critically-acclaimed treatise provides both newcomers and experts with clear, accessible, and comprehensive materials and critical comparative analyses for the study of Islamic Law. It embraces the entire history, religion, and law of Islam, both Sunni and Shī'a, and covers all pertinent fields: banking and finance, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, family law, inheritance, international law, and property. The book includes a user-friendly Glossary of Arabic terms, in English, with diacritical marks to assist in pronunciation. Balanced, logically organized, and well-written, the text can be used without supplementation in a one-semester Islamic Law course, and it has been used in law schools and graduate programs around the world and in programs for United States Special Operations Forces. Every chapter is thoroughly updated to incorporate recent developments and scholarship, with new chapters on the Constitution of Iran, the Taliban, and the Afghanistan War

"WHY DO I NEED A WILL, OR TRUST, OR POWER OF ATTORNEY?" "WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING IN PLACE AT ALL?" The simple answer is ... YOU ONLY DIE ONCE. But what really does happen if you pass away and don't have a plan in place? This topic is a difficult one to begin discussing, and once you do start to talk about it, it can sometimes be impossible to comprehend or you receive legal advice that only confuses the matter. This book was written with an eye toward simplicity and keeping it easy to understand for everyone. It will be your guide to understanding what estate planning is, what documents make up a good plan, how those documents work, and what happens if you don't have a plan in place. From wills, to trusts and everything in between, this book provides the groundwork so you can understand the basics. Should you make a plan for yourself? Do you need a lawyer? What is a living will? All of these questions and more are answered inside.

Authors emeritus professor Michael Davis and famed Harvard professor Arthur Miller provide authoritative coverage on the foundations of patents, trademarks, and copyright laws. Authoritative treatment of all relevant doctrines and the latest statutory and judicial changes, with up-to-date coverage provided by associate professor of legal research, Dana Neacşu. Text further addresses relevant torts, property, antitrust, regulatory, and federalism intersections with intellectual property law.

This new edition is a invaluable tool for reviewing commercial business and professional practice returns to gather information and prepare a complete discovery plan for family law cases. The Business Tax Return Handbook, Fifth Edition supplies hypothetical examples to illustrate points in the text, including the most common forms and schedules for partnerships, corporations, and unincorporated businesses.

It used to be that the path to a successful career as a corporate lawyer was found in private practice. In recent years this has changed dramatically with corporate lawyers building satisfying, engaging, and rewarding careers as in-house counsel. With the right career transition, you can rediscover your passion for business law and build the fulfilling career you deserve. Start your journey from private practice into a successful position as an in-house lawyer. With crisp, original insight, Corporate Counsel is your guide to becoming a successful in-house lawyer.

In one of the most thorough accounts of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell provide an insightful overview of the legal history and meaning of the clause, as well as its value for promoting equal religious freedom and diversity incontemporary America.The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", may be the most contentious and misunderstood provision of the entire U.S. Constitution. It lies at the heart of America's culture wars. But what, exactly, is an "establishment ofreligion"? And what is a law "respecting" it?Many commentators reduce the clause to "the separation of church and state." This implies that church and state are at odds, that the public sphere must be secular, and that the Establishment Clause is in tension with the Free Exercise of Religion Clause. All of these implications misconstrue theEstablishment Clause's original purpose and enduring value for a religiously pluralistic society. The clause facilitates religious diversity and guarantees equality of religious freedom by prohibiting the government from coercing or inducing citizens to change their religious beliefs and practices.In Agreeing to Disagree, Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell detail the theological, political, and philosophical underpinnings of the Establishment Clause, state disestablishment, and the disestablishment norms applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Americans in the earlyRepublic were intimately acquainted with the laws used in England, the colonies, and early states to enforce religious uniformity. The Establishment Clause was understood to prohibit the government from incentivizing such uniformity. Chapman and McConnell show how the U.S. Supreme Court has largelyimplemented these purposes in cases addressing prayer in school, state funding of religious schools, religious symbols on public property, and limits on religious accommodations. In one of the most thorough accounts of the Establishment Clause, Chapman and McConnell argue that the clause is bestunderstood as a constitutional commitment for Americans to agree to disagree about matters of faith.

In Animals as Legal Beings, Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Canadian law and, by extension, other legal orders around the world, participate in the social construction of the human-animal divide and the abject rendering of animals as property. Through a rigorous but cogent analysis, Deckha calls for replacing the exploitative property classification for animals with a new transformative legal status or subjectivity called "beingness." In developing a new legal subjectivity for animals, one oriented toward respecting animals for who they are rather than their proximity to idealized versions of humanness, Animals as Legal Beings seeks to bring critical animal theorizations and animal law closer together. Throughout, Deckha draws upon the feminist animal care tradition, as well as feminist theories of embodiment and relationality, postcolonial theory, and critical animal studies. Her argument is critical of the liberal legal view of animals and directed at a legal subjectivity for animals attentive to their embodied vulnerability, and desirous of an animal-friendly cultural shift in the core foundations of anthropocentric legal systems. Theoretically informed yet accessibly presented, Animals as Legal Beings makes a significant contribution to an array of interdisciplinary debates and is an innovative and astute argument for a meaningful more-than-human turn in law and policy