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Her Body, Our Laws: On the Front Lines of the Abortion War, from El Salvador to Oklahoma
Michelle Oberman - 2018
Oberman reveals the practical challenges raised by a thriving black market in abortion drugs, as well as the legal challenges to law enforcement. She describes a system in which doctors and lawyers collaborate in order to identify and prosecute those suspected of abortion-related crimes, and the troubling results of such collaboration: mistaken diagnoses, selective enforcement, and wrongful convictions.Equipped with this understanding, Oberman turns her attention to the United States, where the battle over abortion is fought almost exclusively in legislatures and courtrooms. Beginning in Oklahoma, one of the most pro-life states, and through interviews with current and former legislators and activists, she shows how Americans voice their moral opposition to abortion by supporting laws that would restrict it. In this America, the law is more a symbol than a plan.Oberman challenges this vision of the law by considering the practical impact of legislation and policies governing both motherhood and abortion. Using stories gathered from crisis pregnancy centers and abortion clinics, she unmasks the ways in which the law already shapes women's responses to unplanned pregnancy, generating incentives or penalties, nudging pregnant women in one direction or another.In an era in which every election cycle features a pitched battle over abortion's legality, Oberman uses her research to expose the limited ways in which making abortion a crime matters. Her insight into the practical consequences that will ensue if states are permitted to criminalize abortion calls attention to the naive and misguided nature of contemporary struggles over abortion's legality.A fresh look at the battle over abortion law, Her Body, Our Laws is an invitation to those on all sides of the issue to move beyond the incomplete discourse about legality by understanding how the law actually matters.
Employment Law for Business
Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander - 1997
It is intended to instruct students on how to manage effectively and efficiently with full comprehension of the legal ramifications of their decisions. Students are shown how to analyze employment law facts using concrete examples of management-related legal dilemmas that do not present clear-cut solutions. The methods of arriving at resolutions are emphasized, so that when the facts of the workplace problem are not quite the same, the student can still reach a good decision based on the legal considerations required by law, which remain relevant.
The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America
John Micklethwait - 2004
It's for any of us who want to understand one of the most important forces shaping American life. How did America's government become so much more conservative in just a generation? Compared to Europe-or to America under Richard Nixon-even President Howard Dean would preside over a distinctly more conservative nation in many crucial respects: welfare is gone; the death penalty is deeply rooted; abortion is under siege; regulations are being rolled back; the pillars of New Deal liberalism are turning to sand. Conservative positions have not prevailed everywhere, of course, but this book shows us why they've been so successfully advanced over such a broad front: because the battle has been waged by well-organized, shrewd, and committed troops who to some extent have been lucky in their enemies.John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, like modern-day Tocquevilles, have the perspective to see this vast subject in the round, unbeholden to forces on either side. They steer The Economist's coverage of the United States and have unrivaled access to resources and-because of the magazine's renown for iconoclasm and analytical rigor-have had open-door access wherever the book's research has led them. And it has led them everywhere: To reckon with the American right, you have to get out there where its centers are and understand the power flow among the brain trusts, the mouthpieces, the organizers, and the foot soldiers. The authors write with wit and skewer whole herds of sacred cows, but they also bring empathy to bear on a subject that sees all too little of it. You won't recognize this America from the far-left's or the far-right's caricatures. Divided into three parts-history, anatomy, and prophecy-The Right Nation comes neither to bury the American conservative movement nor to praise it blindly but to understand it, in all its dimensions, as the most powerful and effective political movement of our age.Chapter OneFROM KENNEBUNKPORT TO CRAWFORDSir Lewis Namier, the great historian of English politics in the age of George III, once remarked that English history, and especially English parliamentary history, is made by families rather than individuals. The same could be said of American political history, especially in the age of George I and George II. There is no better introduction to the radical transformation of Republicanism in the past generation-from patrician to populist, from Northeastern to Southwestern, from pragmatic to ideological-than the radical transformation of Republicanism's current leading family, the Bushes.Grandfather PrescottThe Bushes began political life as classic establishment Republicans: WASPs who summered in Kennebunkport, educated their children at boarding schools and the Ivy League and claimed family ties to the British royal family (Queen Elizabeth II is the thirteenth cousin of the first President Bush). George W.'s paternal great-grandfather, Samuel P. Bush, was a steel and railroad executive who became the first president of the National Association of Manufacturers and a founding member of the United States Chamber of Commerce. His maternal great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, was even grander. The cofounder of W. A. Harriman, Wall Street's oldest private investment bank, Walker's stature was summed up by his twin Manhattan addresses: his office at One Wall Street and his home at One Sutton Place. There was certainly muck beneath this brass: both Walker and Bush had their share of Wall Street shenanigans and cozy government deals, but in the age...
Pox: An American History
Michael Willrich - 2011
The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox, award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century.At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights.At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease.As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox, Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today.
The Prosecutors: A Year in the Life of a District Attorney's Office
Gary Delsohn - 2003
Allowed unprecedented access to spend a year inside an urban prosecutors' office, Gary Delsohn provides a riveting, behind-the-scenes look at how America's increasingly overburdened judicial system really functions. Seen through the eyes of the main characters in this true-life drama-John O'Mara, a tough, jaded homicide chief and Jan Scully, an accomplished former sex-crimes prosecutor who is now the D.A.-The Prosecutors shows us these dedicated public servants at work. The cases they encounter within this one year are as shocking as they are indelible: * A simple robbery in Sacramento, California, goes bad and shatters a family forever. * A serial killer is caught only after a nationwide manhunt. * A well-respected doctor is accused of murdering his own daughter. * A twenty-five-year-old cold case involving Patty Hearst and the SLA explodes and brings incredible pressure and scrutiny to the D.A.'s office. * The son of a high-ranking California state prosecutor faces a possible death penalty for kidnap, rape,and murder. The Prosecutors chronicles the real-life legal dramas that are waged daily in our courtrooms. It is a book that enlightens, educates, entertains, and even infuriates at times with the miscarriages of justice, but, ultimately, shows in stark detail the intricacies that make our legal system work.
A Nation of Nations: A Story of America After the 1965 Immigration Law
Tom Gjelten - 2015
Significantly, these immigrants are not coming from Europe, as was the case before 1965, but from all corners of the globe.In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was ninety percent white, ten percent African American, with a little more than one hundred families who were "other." Currently the African American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than fifty percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually "Americanize." Hailing from Korea, Bolivia, and Libya, these families have stories that illustrate common immigrant themes: friction, economic competition and entrepreneurship, and racial and cultural stereotyping.It's been half a century since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act changed the landscape of America, and no book has assessed the impact or importance of this law as this one does, with its brilliant combination of personal stories and larger demographic and political issues.
Letters to a Law Student: A guide to studying law at university
Nicholas J McBride - 2017
Memoirs Of A Radical Lawyer
Michael Mansfield - 2009
Unafraid of rejection or failure, Michael has taken on the most difficult and challenging cases of our times and despite the odds, won plenty. In Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer Michael dissects many of them, revealing his motivations, meticulous approach to forensic science, cross examination techniques, the political dimensions and emotional reactions with clarity, subtlety and charm. Interspersed with personal anecdotes and recollections, this insightful book is liberally laced with Michael's quirky brand of anarchic humour. Cases range from the Angry Brigade, the Bradford 12, the Birmingham Six, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Angela Cannings, Jill Dando, Ruth Ellis, Dodi Fayed, the 'Fertilizer' conspiracy, Iraqi hi-jackers, Stephen Lawrence, Fatmir Limaj (Leader of the Kosovan Liberation Army), the Marchioness Disaster, the Price sisters, the 'Ricin' trial, Risley prison riots, Tahira Tabassum, Judith Ward, Arthur Scargill and the miners to the Jean Charles de Menezes inquiry, and many more. Issues of public concern, human rights and innovative attempts to construct a democratic legal system are discussed in full, but Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer also unveils with honesty and wit a man who has put as much passion and energy into his life as his work, one of the great personalities of our time.
The Vietnam War: A Very Brief History
Mark Black - 2012
For many, it defined a generation.The Very Brief History series is intended to give the reader a short, concise account of the most important events in world history. Each book provides the reader with the essential facts concerning a particular event or person; no distractions, just the essential facts, allowing the reader to master the subject in the shortest time possible. With The Very Brief History series, anyone can become a history expert!
Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain, and Injustice
Maureen Faulkner - 2007
Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge. For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person. He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript. “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
Ira Katznelson - 2013
Ira Katznelson, “a towering figure in the study of American and European history” (Cornel West), boldly asserts that, during the 1930s and 1940s, American democracy was rescued yet distorted by a unified band of southern lawmakers who safeguarded racial segregation as they built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power. This original study brings to vivid life the politicians and pundits of the time, including Walter Lippmann, who argued that America needed a dose of dictatorship; Mississippi’s five-foot-two Senator Theodore Bilbo, who advocated the legal separation of races; and Robert Oppenheimer, who built the atomic bomb yet was tragically undone by the nation’s hysteria. Fear Itself is a necessary work, vital to understanding our world—a world the New Deal first made.
The Debate on the Constitution, Part 1: Federalist and Anti-Federalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification: September 1787 to February 1788
Bernard BailynJoseph Barrell - 1993
Instead of revising the Articles of Confederation, the framers had created a fundamentally new national plan that placed over the states a supreme government with broad powers. They proposed to submit it to conventions in each state, elected “by the People thereof,” for ratification.Immediately, a fierce storm of argument broke. Federalist supporters, Antifederalist opponents, and seekers of a middle ground strove to balance public order and personal liberty as they praised, condemned, challenged, and analyzed the new Constitution.Assembled here in chronological order are hundreds of newspaper articles, pamphlets, speeches, and private letters written or delivered in the aftermath of the Constitutional Convention. Along with familiar figures like Franklin, Madison, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and Washington, scores of less famous citizens are represented, all speaking clearly and passionately about government. The most famous writings of the ratification struggle—the Federalist essays of Hamilton and Madison—are placed in their original context, alongside the arguments of able antagonists, such as “Brutus” and the “Federal Farmer.”Part One includes press polemics and private commentaries from September 1787 to January 1788. That autumn, powerful arguments were made against the new charter by Virginian George Mason and the still-unidentified “Federal Farmer,” while in New York newspapers, the Federalist essays initiated a brilliant defense. Dozens of speeches from the state ratifying conventions show how the “draft of a plan, nothing but a dead letter,” in Madison’s words, had “life and validity…breathed into it by the voice of the people.” Included are the conventions in Pennsylvania, where James Wilson confronted the democratic skepticism of those representing the western frontier, and in Massachusetts, where John Hancock and Samuel Adams forged a crucial compromise that saved the country from years of political convulsion.Informative notes, biographical profiles of all writers, speakers, and recipients, and a detailed chronology of relevant events from 1774 to 1804 provide fascinating background. A general index allows readers to follow specific topics, and an appendix includes the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution (with all amendments).
Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
Stephen Kinzer - 2019
He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace--including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world.Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about U.S. clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the twentieth century. Gottlieb's reckless experiments on "expendable" human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats.During his twenty-two years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.
The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison "Promiscuous" Women
Scott W. Stern - 2018
Confused and humiliated, Nina did as she was told, and the health officer performed a hasty (and invasive) examination and quickly diagnosed her with gonorrhea. Though Nina insisted she could not possibly have an STI, she was coerced into committing herself to the Bay City Detention Hospital, a facility where she would spend almost three miserable months subjected to hard labor, exploitation, and painful injections of mercury.Nina McCall was one of many women unfairly imprisoned by the United States government throughout the twentieth century. The government locked up tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and girls--usually without due process--simply because officials suspected these women were prostitutes, carrying STIs, or just "promiscuous."This discriminatory program, dubbed the "American Plan," lasted from the 1910s into the 1950s, implicating a number of luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Earl Warren, and even Eliot Ness, while laying the foundation for the modern system of women's prisons. In some places, vestiges of the Plan lingered into the 1960s and 1970s, and the laws that undergirded it remain on the books to this day.Scott Stern tells the story of this almost forgotten program through the life of Nina McCall. Her story provides crucial insight into the lives of countless other women incarcerated under the American Plan. Stern demonstrates the pain and shame felt by these women and details the multitude of mortifications they endured, both during and after their internment. Yet thousands of incarcerated women rioted, fought back against their oppressors, or burned their detention facilities to the ground; they jumped out of windows or leapt from moving trains or scaled barbed-wire fences in order to escape. And, as Nina McCall did, they sued their captors. In an age of renewed activism surrounding harassment, health care, prisons, women's rights, and the power of the state, this virtually lost chapter of our history is vital reading.
How To Be A Landlord: The Definitive Guide to Letting and Managing Your Rental Property
Rob Dix - 2017
By the author of the UK’s most popular property book, The Complete Guide To Property Investment. Please note that this book only covers letting and management of a property you already own. For a guide to buying the right property in the first place, you should buy ‘The Complete Guide To Property Investment’. Take a property, throw in a tenant and watch the money roll in. This seemingly simple formula has attracted nearly two million people in the UK to become landlords, but the reality is a whole lot more complicated. Did you know, for example, that if you forget to provide a certain piece of paper you might be unable to evict a tenant – even if they don’t pay the rent? Or that you could be fined for not checking your tenant’s immigration status? And don’t forget the inevitable broken boilers, mysterious leaks and various tenant complaints that always seem to happen at the most inconvenient time. How To Be A Landlord is a straightforward guide to everything involved in letting and managing a property – whether you’re an accidental landlord or an enthusiastic investor. In simple and entertaining language, it covers important steps like preparing the property to let, advertising for tenants, conducting viewings, doing all the paperwork, managing the tenancy, and dealing with any tricky situations that crop up (including the dreaded emergency repairs and evictions…). You’ll learn: • How to set yourself up for success when preparing a property to let • Where to find the perfect tenants for your property • The essential checks you must make to avoid a nightmare tenant • Everything you need to do when setting up a tenancy to avoid problems later • How to deal with the most common maintenance issues and repairs • The proper legal processes to follow when you have troublesome tenants • Top tips from experienced landlords for how to look after your tenants – keeping them happy, your property safe, and the rent rolling in Frequently updated and with contributions from over 50 experienced landlords, this is the most current and comprehensive book on the subject – and essential reading for anyone who wants a simple, profitable life as a landlord.