Books, Nonfiction, Law, Legal History

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Noah Feldman
The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Council on Foreign Relations)
by Princeton University Press (Hardcover)

Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this penetrating book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally ...

Gerald M. Stern
The Buffalo Creek Disaster: How the survivors of one of the worst disasters in coal-mining history brought suit against the coal company--and won (Vintage)
by Vintage (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-05-06)

One Saturday morning in February 1972, an impoundment dam owned by the Pittston Coal Company burst, sending a 130 million gallon, 25 foot tidal wave of water, sludge, and debris crashing into southern West Virginia's Buffalo Creek hollow. It was one of the deadliest floods in U.S. history. 125 people were killed instantly, more than 1,000 were injured, and over 4,000 were suddenly homeless. Instead of accepting the small settlements offered by the coal company's insurance offices, a few hundred of the survivors banded together to sue. This is the story of their triumph over incredible odds and corporate irresponsibility, as told by Gerald M. Stern, who as a young lawyer and took on the case and won.

Nonie Darwish
Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law
by Thomas Nelson (Hardcover)

Cruel and Usual Punishment is a wake up call to the Western world. Nonie Darwish presents an insider's look at Sharia and examines how radical Muslim laws are destroying the Western world from within. Living under Sharia law for the first thirty years of her life,a virtual slave to Islamic law, Darwish never questioned or challenged her rights--or dared to even think about the validity of Sharia laws. She didn't try to examine what Sharia was, how it came about or why she followed it. "This is Allah's law," she was told, and she knew what awaited those who questioned Allah's law. But she doesn't believe the lies anymore, and now she wants to share her experiences with the Western world. Cruel and Usual Punishment is an insider's look at how Muslims sacrifice their basic human rights to obey the archaic and brutal laws handed down to their prophet centuries ago. Heed this warning: Sharia Law is attempting to infiltrate Western culture and destroy democracy.

Harry M. Caldwell, Michael S. Lief
The Devil's Advocates: Greatest Closing Arguments in Criminal Law
by Blackstone Audiobooks (CD)

From the authors of the acclaimed Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, and featuring some of the most important cases in criminal law, The Devil's Advocates is the final volume of a must-have trilogy of the best closing arguments in American legal history.Criminal law is considered by many to be the most exciting of the legal specialties, and here the authors turn to the type of dramatic crimes and trials that have so captivated the public -- becoming fodder for countless television shows and legal thrillers. But the eight cases in this collection have also set historical precedents and illuminated underlying principles of the American criminal justice system.Future president John Adams makes clear that even the most despised and vilified criminal is entitled to a legal defense in the argument he delivers on behalf of the British soldiers who shot and killed five Americans during the Boston Massacre.The always-controversial temporary-insanity defense makes its debut within sight of ...

Victor H. Matthews, Don C. Benjamin
Old Testament Parallels: Laws And Stories from the Ancient Near East
by Paulist Press (Paperback)

An all-new translation of the most important ancient Near East documents that share parallel themes and issues with biblical stories.

Bruce Watson
Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (Penguin Us)
by Penguin (Non-Classics) (Paperback)

In this groundbreaking narrative of one of America’s most divisive trials and executions, award-winning journalist Bruce Watson mines deep archives and newly available sources to paint the most complete portrait available of the “good shoemaker” and the “poor fish peddler.” Opening with an explosion that rocks a quiet Washington, D.C., neighborhood and concluding with worldwide outrage as two men are executed despite widespread doubts about their guilt, Sacco & Vanzetti is the definitive history of an infamous case that still haunts the American imagination.

Tariq Ramadan
Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation
by Oxford University Press, USA (Hardcover)

Tariq Ramadan has emerged as one of the foremost voices of reformist Islam in the West, notable for urging his fellow Muslims to participate fully in the civil life of the Western societies in which they live. In this new book, Ramadan addresses Muslim societies and communities everywhere with a bold call for radical reform. He challenges those who argue defensively that reform is a dangerous and foreign deviation, and a betrayal of the faith. Authentic reform, he says, has always been grounded in Islam's textual sources, spiritual objectives, and intellectual traditions. But the reformist movements that are based on renewed reading of textual sources while using traditional methodologies and categories have achieved only adaptive responses to the crisis facing a globalizing world. Such readings, Ramadan argues, have reached the limits of their usefulness. Ramadan calls for a radical reform that goes beyond adaptation to envision bold and creative solutions to transform the ...

Paul A. Lombardo
Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell
by The Johns Hopkins University Press (Hardcover)

"Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Few lines from Supreme Court opinions are as memorable as this declaration by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in the landmark 1927 case Buck v. Bell. The ruling allowed states to forcibly sterilize residents in order to prevent "feebleminded and socially inadequate" people from having children. It is the only time the Supreme Court endorsed surgery as a tool of government policy. Paul Lombardo's startling narrative exposes the Buck case's fraudulent roots.In 1924 Carrie Buck -- involuntarily institutionalized by the State of Virginia after she was raped and impregnated -- challenged the state's plan to sterilize her. Having already judged her mother and daughter mentally deficient, Virginia wanted to make Buck the first person sterilized under a new law designed to prevent hereditarily "defective" people from reproducing. Lombardo's more than twenty-five years of research and his own interview with Buck before she died demonstrate ...

Lawrence M. Friedman
Law in America: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)
by Modern Library (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2002-07-30)

Kermit L. Hall, William M. Wiecek, Paul Finkelman
American Legal History: Cases and Materials
by Oxford University Press, USA (Hardcover)

Approaching American legal history from a new perspective, this text employs cases and other legal documents to reveal the law's underlying culture. American Legal History provides a comprehensive selection of the most important documents--well over 170--which integrate the history of public and private law from America's colonial origins to the present. It devotes special attention to the interaction of social and legal change, shows how legal ideas developed in tandem with specific historical events, and reveals a rich legal culture unique to America. Introductions and explanations accompany each document, tying legal developments to broader historical themes and providing a social and political context essential to an understanding of the history of law in America. Offering a thorough examination of both public and private law, American Legal History is essential for students and teachers of constitutional and legal history, the judicial process, and the effects of law on ...

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