Explores the lives and intellectual influences of the creators of Critical Race Theory

Critical race theory (CRT), a vital movement and discipline in American legal scholarship, has transformed our understanding of systemic racism. Yet despite insightful analysis revealing the threads of racism embedded in American institutions and society, it has been demonized by opponents at every turn, with numerous state legislators now seeking to ban its use in the classroom.

The Origins of Critical Race Theory weaves together the many sources of critical race theory, recounting the origin story for one of the most insightful and controversial academic movements in U.S. history. In addition to introducing readers to the tenets and key insights of critical race theory, Martinez and Smith explore the lives and intellectual influences of the movement's founders, shedding light on how the many components of critical race theory eventually formed into a movement.

Through archival research and interviews with scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Jean Stefancic, Aja Y. Martinez and Robert O. Smith provide the personal side of critical race theory. They reveal that despite the Marxist menace it has recently been made out to be, critical race theory is an organic extension of the Civil Rights movement, a deeply human and deeply American response to ongoing systemic injustice and inequity. An insightful exploration into the story of a movement, The Origins of Critical Race Theory narrates the hidden influences, fascinating characters, and intellectual struggles that informed critical race theory's inception.

Copyright is everywhere. Your smartphone incorporates thousands of items of intellectual property. Someone owns the reproduction rights to photographs of your dining table. At this very moment, battles are raging over copyright in the output of artificial intelligence programs. Not only books but wallpaper, computer programs, pop songs, cartoon characters, snapshots, and cuddly toys are now deemed to be intellectual properties--making copyright a labyrinthine construction of laws with colorful and often baffling rationales covering almost all products of human creativity.

It wasn't always so. Copyright has its roots in eighteenth-century London, where it was first established to limit printers' control of books. But a handful of little-noticed changes in the late twentieth century brought about a new enclosure of the cultural commons, concentrating ownership of immaterial goods in very few hands. Copyright's metastasis can't be understood without knowing its backstory, a long tangle of high ideals, low greed, opportunism, and word-mangling that allowed poems and novels (and now, even ringtones and databases) to be treated as if they were no different from farms and houses. Principled arguments against copyright arose from the start and nearly abolished it in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, countless revisions have made copyright ever stronger.

Who Owns This Sentence? is an often-humorous and always-enlightening cultural, legal, and global history of the idea that intangible things can be owned, and makes a persuasive case for seeing copyright as an engine of inequality in the twenty-first century.

In Judicial Territory, Shaina Potts reveals how the American empire has benefited from the post-World War II expansion of United States judicial authority over the economic decisions of postcolonial governments. Introducing the term judicial territory to refer to the increasingly transnational space over which US courts wield authority, Potts argues that law is an essential tool for US geopolitical and economic interests. Through close examination of cases involving private US companies, on the one hand, and foreign state-owned enterprises, nationalizations, and sovereign debt, on the other, she shows that technical changes relating to the treatment of foreign sovereigns in domestic US law allowed the United States to extend its purview over global financial and economic relations, including many economic decisions of foreign governments. Throughout, Potts argues, US law has not become divorced from territoriality but instead actively remapped it; it has not merely responded to globalization, but actively produced it--making the whole world part of US economic space in the process.

Learn about the most important legal milestones in history in The Law Book.

Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Law in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Law Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in.

This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Law, with:

- More than 90 ground-breaking legal milestones
- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Law Book is a captivating introduction to the legal precedents, and religious, political, and moral codes that have shaped the world we live in, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Discover the most important milestones in legal history, from the Code of Hammurabi to groundbreaking legislation including Magna Carta and the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, all through exciting text and bold graphics.

Your Law Questions, Simply Explained

This engaging overview goes into legal history across the world, all the way into the 21st century, with copyright in the digital age, same-sex marriage, and the right to be forgotten. If you thought it was difficult to learn about legislations and legal history, The Law Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. Learn about the most important breakthroughs, like the fight for universal suffrage and workers' rights, and the establishment of international legal bodies like INTERPOL and the European Court of Justice.

The Big Ideas Series

With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Law Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

A synthesis of legal, political, and social history to show how the post-founding generations were forced to rethink and substantially revise the U.S. constitutional vision

Between 1815 and 1861, American constitutional law and politics underwent a profound transformation. These decades of the Interbellum Constitution were a foundational period of both constitutional crisis and creativity.

The Interbellum Constitution was a set of widely shared legal and political principles, combined with a thoroughgoing commitment to investing those principles with meaning through debate. Each of these shared principles--commerce, concurrent power, and jurisdictional multiplicity--concerned what we now call federalism, meaning that they pertain to the relationships among multiple levels of government with varying degrees of autonomy. Alison L. LaCroix argues, however, that there existed many more federalisms in the early nineteenth century than today's constitutional debates admit.

As LaCroix shows, this was a period of intense rethinking of the very basis of the U.S. national model--a problem debated everywhere, from newspapers and statehouses to local pubs and pulpits, ultimately leading both to civil war and to a new, more unified constitutional vision. This book is the first that synthesizes the legal, political, and social history of the early nineteenth century to show how deeply these constitutional questions dominated the discourse of the time.

Stephen Bright emerged on the scene as a cause lawyer in the early decades of mass incarceration, when inflammatory politics and harsh changes to criminal justice policy were crashing down on the most vulnerable members of society. He dedicated his career to unleashing social change by representing clients that society had long ago discarded, and advocated for all to receive a fair trial.

In Demand the Impossible, Robert L. Tsai traces Bright's remarkable career to explore the legal ideas that were central to his relentless pursuit of equal justice. For nearly forty years, Bright led the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit that provided legal aid to incarcerated people and worked to improve conditions within the justice system. He argued four capital cases before the US Supreme Court--and won each one, despite facing an increasingly hostile bench. With each victory, he brought to light how the law itself had become corrupted by the country's thirst for severe punishment, exposing prosecutorial misconduct, continuing racial inequality, inadequate safeguards for people with intellectual disabilities, and the shameful quality of legal representation for the poor.

Organized around these four major Supreme Court cases, each narrated in vivid and dramatic detail, Tsai's essential account explores the racism built into the criminal justice system and the incredible advancements one lawyer and his committed allies made for equal rights. An electrifying work of legal history, Demand the Impossible reveals how change can be won in even the most challenging times and how seemingly small victories can go on to have outsized effects.

States are erecting walls at their borders at a pace unmatched in history, and the wall between the United States and Mexico stands as an icon among these dividing structures. Much has been said about the US-Mexico border wall in the last few decades, yet American walling projects have a much longer history, dating back almost a century. Building Walls, Constructing Identities offers a rich account of this legal history, informed by two episodes of wall-building-the Act of August 19, 1935, and the Secure Fence Act of 2006. These two legislative periods illustrate that today's wall imprints onto the landscape a grammar of racial inequality underpinned by a settler colonial rationality. Marie-Eve Loiselle argues in favor of an account of the law that considers its material translation into space and identifies discursive processes by which the law and the wall come together to communicate legal knowledge about territory and identity.

Great cases are those judicial decisions around which the common law develops. This book explores eight exemplary cases from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia that show the law as a living, breathing, and down-the-street experience. It explores the social circumstances in which the cases arose and the ordinary people whose stories influenced and shaped the law as well as the characters and institutions (lawyers, judges, and courts) that did much of the heavy lifting. By examining the consequences and fallout of these decisions, the book depicts the common law as an experimental, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalizing, and bottom-up process, thereby revealing the diverse and uncoordinated attempts by the courts to adapt the law to changing conditions and shifting demands. Great cases are one way to glimpse the workings of the common law as an untidy, but stimulating exercise in human judgment and social accomplishment.

Copyright is everywhere. Your smartphone incorporates thousands of items of intellectual property. Someone owns the reproduction rights to photographs of your dining table. At this very moment, battles are raging over copyright in the output of artificial intelligence programs. Not only books but wallpaper, computer programs, pop songs, cartoon characters, snapshots, and cuddly toys are now deemed to be intellectual properties--making copyright a labyrinthine construction of laws with colorful and often baffling rationales covering almost all products of human creativity.

It wasn't always so. Copyright has its roots in eighteenth-century London, where it was first established to limit printers' control of books. But a handful of little-noticed changes in the late twentieth century brought about a new enclosure of the cultural commons, concentrating ownership of immaterial goods in very few hands. Copyright's metastasis can't be understood without knowing its backstory, a long tangle of high ideals, low greed, opportunism, and word-mangling that allowed poems and novels (and now, even ringtones and databases) to be treated as if they were no different from farms and houses. Principled arguments against copyright arose from the start and nearly abolished it in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, countless revisions have made copyright ever stronger.

Who Owns This Sentence? is an often-humorous and always-enlightening cultural, legal, and global history of the idea that intangible things can be owned, and makes a persuasive case for seeing copyright as an engine of inequality in the twenty-first century.

The defining legal history of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court that gutted a key piece of FDR's New Deal.

On May 25, 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, the US Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that dealt mortal blows to New Deal legislation and presidential initiatives--a day known to New Dealers as Black Monday. The most significant of these decisions was A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S., which members of the press promptly labeled the sick chicken case. In this decision, the Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, thus abolishing the National Recovery Administration and the hundreds of codes it had enacted. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the Court's action, which started him down the road to his ill-fated plan to pack the Court in 1937.

As Williamjames Hull Hoffer shows, however, the sick chicken case is about much more than a single piece of New Deal legislation. It is a window into American society during the Great Depression and the New Deal--a 1930s America before World War II and the Cold War, the age of radio and movie palaces, and a time of experimentation with government that some likened to fascism or communism, or maybe both. More than a landmark law case that threatened the New Deal, but ultimately did not, Schechter Poultry is not just about a sick chicken; it is about a sick nation trying to heal itself.

AFRICAN AMERICAN LAWMEN, 1877-1900, Vol. 2, discusses the understudied topic of African Americans holding civic and professional positions in the criminal justice system following Reconstruction. For a better understanding of this topic, Lievin Kambamba Mboma tackles the early unofficial lapse of Reconstruction Era policies resulting from rebellion by underprivileged Southern Whites. Namely, regarding the unofficial end of Reconstruction, Mboma briefly explores the lapse of this period as contextualized by rebellions in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas along with the peaceful end of Reconstruction policies in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia. He also examines the position of the federal government on the premature lapse of Reconstruction Era policies, and with expert precision, offers critique of the non-interference of Federal authorities in Southern rebellion as indicated through the policies of President Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes. Mboma further finds that Presidential successors, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley also observed the same non-interference policies as their predecessors.

From Reconstruction failure and federal government responses, Mboma's study progresses to documentary evidence of the emergence of Black union members, their associations with the Republican Party and Lily Whites, and the Black and Tans political phenomenon. Moreover, he analyzes legally restrictive franchise methods utilized by Southern officials, such as the Constitutional Amendment and political party's restrictive election measure, which he describes as tools used to disenfranchise African Americans and circumvent their inclusion in criminal justice. The specific areas of inclusion in the criminal justice system explored by Mboma include African American retentions, exclusion, and re-inclusions in the police force, prisons, judiciary system, and regulatory agencies at the county, state, and federal levels.

The totality of historical documentation analyzed reveals that many African Americans executed political strategies to maintain their presence as political actors at the local and state levels. They furthermore joined the fusion government or switched political parties on the federal level. Additionally, the strategic exodus of African Americans heading North, West, or even East to Liberia to overcome civil and political injustices in the South cannot be discounted. Thus, the works of such leaders as Henry Adams of Louisiana and Benjamin 'Pap' Singleton of Tennessee during the African American exodus from the South are highlighted in the context of connections with the emergence of African Americans in the pollical sphere of the North. This book is an essential addition to the literature on African Americans in the aftermath of Reconstruction for students, professors, scholars and anyone interested in U.S. history and law.

The leading U.S. expert on abortion law charts the many meanings associated with Roe v. Wade during its fifty-year history

Ziegler sets a brisk pace but delivers substantial depth. . . . A must-read for those seeking to understand what comes next.--Publishers Weekly

What explains the insistent pull of Roe v. Wade? Abortion law expert Mary Ziegler argues that the U.S. Supreme Court decision, which decriminalized abortion in 1973 and was overturned in 2022, had a hold on us that was not simply the result of polarized abortion politics. Rather, Roe took on meanings far beyond its original purpose of protecting the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. It forced us to confront questions about sexual violence, judicial activism and restraint, racial justice, religious liberty, the role of science in politics, and much more.

In this history of what the Supreme Court's best-known decision has meant, Ziegler identifies the inconsistencies and unsettled issues in our abortion politics. She urges us to rediscover the nuance that has long resided where we would least expect to find it--in the meaning of Roe itself.

Arbitrating Empire offers a new history of the emergence of the United States as a global power-one shaped as much by attempts to insulate the US government from international legal scrutiny as it was by efforts to project influence across the globe. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and the United Kingdom, the book traces how thousands of dispossessed residents of US-annexed territories petitioned international Claims Commissions between the 1870s and the 1930s to charge the United States with violating international legal protections for life and property.

Through attention to the consequences of their unexpected claims, Allison Powers demonstrates how colonized subjects, refugees from slavery, and migrant workers transformed a series of tribunals designed to establish the legality of US imperial interventions into sites through which to challenge the legitimacy of US colonial governance. One of the first social histories of international law, the book argues that contests over meanings of sovereignty and state responsibility that would reshape the mid-twentieth-century international order were waged not only at diplomatic conferences, but also in Arizona copper mines, Texas cotton fields, Samoan port cities, Cuban sugar plantations, and the locks and stops of the Panama Canal.

Arbitrating Empire uncovers how ordinary people used international law to hold the United States accountable for state-sanctioned violence during the decades when the nation was first becoming a global empire-and demonstrates why State Department attempts to erase their claims transformed international law in ways that continue to shield the US government from liability to this day.

The gripping story of one American lawyer's obsessive crusade--waged at any cost--against Big Oil on behalf of the poor farmers and indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest.

Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the Ecuadorian peasants and tribes people whose lives were affected by decades of oil production near their villages and fields. During twenty years of legal hostilities in federal courts in Manhattan and remote provincial tribunals in the Ecuadorian jungle, Donziger and Chevron's lawyers followed fierce no-holds-barred rules. Donziger, a larger-than-life, loud-mouthed showman, proved himself a master orchestrator of the media, Hollywood, and public opinion. He cajoled and coerced Ecuadorian judges on the theory that his noble ends justified any means of persuasion. And in the end, he won an unlikely victory, a $19 billion judgment against Chevon--the biggest environmental damages award in history. But the company refused to surrender or compromise. Instead, Chevron targeted Donziger personally, and its counter-attack revealed damning evidence of his politicking and manipulation of evidence. Suddenly the verdict, and decades of Donziger's single-minded pursuit of the case, began to unravel.

Written with the texture and flair of the best narrative nonfiction, Law of the Jungle is an unputdownable story in which there are countless victims, a vast region of ruined rivers and polluted rainforest, but very few heroes.

The defining legal history of a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court that gutted a key piece of FDR's New Deal.

On May 25, 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, the US Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that dealt mortal blows to New Deal legislation and presidential initiatives--a day known to New Dealers as Black Monday. The most significant of these decisions was A.L.A. Schechter Poultry v. U.S., which members of the press promptly labeled the sick chicken case. In this decision, the Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, thus abolishing the National Recovery Administration and the hundreds of codes it had enacted. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the Court's action, which started him down the road to his ill-fated plan to pack the Court in 1937.

As Williamjames Hull Hoffer shows, however, the sick chicken case is about much more than a single piece of New Deal legislation. It is a window into American society during the Great Depression and the New Deal--a 1930s America before World War II and the Cold War, the age of radio and movie palaces, and a time of experimentation with government that some likened to fascism or communism, or maybe both. More than a landmark law case that threatened the New Deal, but ultimately did not, Schechter Poultry is not just about a sick chicken; it is about a sick nation trying to heal itself.

A selection of the landmark Supreme Court decisions that have shaped American society

Penguin presents a series of six portable, accessible, and--above all--essential reads from American political history, selected by leading scholars. Series editor Richard Beeman, author of The Penguin Guide to the U.S. Constitution, draws together the great texts of American civic life, including the founding documents, pivotal historical speeches, and important Supreme Court decisions, to create a timely and informative mini-library of perennially vital issues.

The Supreme Court is one of America's leading expositors of and participants in debates about American values. Legal expert Jay M. Feinman introduces and selects some of the most important Supreme Court Decisions of all time, which touch on the very foundations of American society. These cases cover a vast array of issues, from the powers of government and freedom of speech to freedom of religion and civil liberties. Feinman offers commentary on each case and excerpts from the opinions of the Justices that show the range of debate in the Supreme Court and its importance to civil society. Among the cases included will be Marbury v. Madison, on the supremacy of the Constitution and the power of judicial review; U.S. v. Nixon, on separation of powers; and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a post-9/11 case on presidential power and due process.

An in-depth study of how each of the Ten Commandments had a historical impact on the development of laws in America and affected the legal philosophy of our government framers. For example, the 4th Commandment-Keep Holy the Sabbath PENNSYLVANIA FRAME OF GOVERNMENT, April 25, 1682, Article XXII: That as often as any day of the month...shall fall upon the first day of the week, commonly called the Lord's Day, the business appointed for that day shall be deferred till the next day, unless in the case of emergency. U.S. CONSTITUTION, 1787, Article I, Section 7, Paragraph 2 If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law Read how the Ten Commandments affected the views of America's leaders: The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion - John Adams, Nov. 4, 1816, letter to Thomas Jefferson. The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. - Harry S Truman, Feb. 15, 1950, Attorney General's Conference. See references to the Ten Commandments in court cases: The Ten Commandments have had an immeasurable effect on Anglo-American legal development - U.S. District Court, Crockett v. Sorenson, W.D. Va. (1983) It is equally undeniable ...that the Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the Western World. - U.S. Supreme Court, Stone v. Graham, (1980) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) An ideal book for students, teachers, journalists, writers and those interested in researching the foundations of American law

Oxford's variorum edition of William Blackstone's seminal treatise on the common law of England and Wales offers the definitive account of the Commentaries' development in a modern format. For the first time it is possible to trace the evolution of English law and Blackstone's thought through the eight editions of Blackstone's lifetime, and the authorial corrections of the posthumous ninth edition. Introductions by the general editor and the volume editors set the Commentaries in their historical context, examining Blackstone's distinctive view of the common law, and editorial notes throughout the four volumes assist the modern reader in understanding this key text in the Anglo-American common law tradition.

In the final volume of the Commentaries Blackstone presents a comprehensive and critical overview of English criminal law and procedure, prefaced by a discussion of the philosophical and basis of the criminal justice system. His final chapter 'On the Rise, Progress, and Gradual Improvements, of the Laws of England' provides a fitting historical conclusion to the work as a whole.

The Scopes Monkey Trial was a watershed moment in American history, pitting 'old time religion' against the growing acceptance of Darwinism. Strictly speaking, the Darwinists lost: Scopes was declared guilty. However, Clarence Darrow won in the court of public opinion. After the movie Inherit the Wind ensured that William Jennings Bryan would be seen by later generations as a bumbling fool, there is no doubt just who were the victors and who were the losers in the trial. However, what is portrayed in movies and newspaper accounts don't always match reality. Since no film exists of the actual trial, the next best thing is to read the actual trial transcript. For the first time in generations, readers can now hold in their hands the transcript of one of America's most famous trials, complete and unabridged.

This edition has only been lightly edited, leaving intact many of the inconsistencies and incongruities of the original transcript. In its own way, these various typographical errors contribute to the 'charm' of the actual event, as remembered in the annals of history.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
This collection reveals the history of English common law and Empire law in a vastly changing world of British expansion. Dominating the legal field is the Commentaries of the Law of England by Sir William Blackstone, which first appeared in 1765. Reference works such as almanacs and catalogues continue to educate us by revealing the day-to-day workings of society.
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British Library

T128575

Translated from the French of Louis S bastien Mercier. With a list of subscribers.

London: printed for the translator; and sold by her: also by T. Chapman; and Hookham and Carpenter, 1797. xii,308p.; 8