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.

The Rights of War and Peace


Hugo Grotius - 1625
    However, in the seventeeth century and during the Enlightenment, it was considered a major defense of the rights of states and private persons to use their power to secure themselves and their property.Book I examines the question of whether any war is just and who may lawfully make war. The causes of war; the implications of contracts, oaths, and promises; and the moral strictures of punishments are the subjects of Book II. The third book discusses what is lawful in war, the various kinds of peace and agreements given, and the treatment and ransoming of prisoners.The Liberty Fund edition is based on the classic English text of 1738, with extensive commentary by Jean  Barbeyrac. It also includes the Prolegomena to the first edition, a document never before translated into English.Hugo Grotius is one of the most important thinkers in the early-modern period. A great humanistic polymath—lawyer and legal theorist, diplomat and political philosopher, ecumenical activist and theologian—his work was seminal for modern natural law and influenced the moral, political, legal, and theological thought of the Enlightenment, from Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Locke to Rousseau and Kant, as well as America’s Founding leaders.Richard Tuck is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Professor of Government at Harvard University.Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth


Bertrand De Jouvenel - 1945
    This development Jouvenel traces all the way back to the days of royal absolutism, which established large administrative bureaucracies and thus laid the foundation of the modern omnipotent state.On Power is an important work that Professor Angelo M. Petroni of the Luigi Einaudi Center for Research in Torino, Italy, has said is "simply a book that no serious scholar of political science or political philosophy can afford to ignore."Bertrand de Jouvenel was born in Paris in 1903; he traveled widely, becoming an astute observer of British and American institutions. Later in life, he was an author and teacher, first publishing On Power in 1945. Jouvenel died in 1987. Among his other books, besides The Ethics of Redistribution, are Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good (1957) and The Pure Theory of Politics (1963).

Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty


Carl Schmitt - 1922
    Focusing on the relationships among political leadership, the norms of the legal order, and the state of political emergency, Schmitt argues in Political Theology that legal order ultimately rests upon the decisions of the sovereign. According to Schmitt, only the sovereign can meet the needs of an "exceptional" time and transcend legal order so that order can then be reestablished. Convinced that the state is governed by the ever-present possibility of conflict, Schmitt theorizes that the state exists only to maintain its integrity in order to ensure order and stability. Suggesting that all concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, Schmitt concludes Political Theology with a critique of liberalism and its attempt to depoliticize political thought by avoiding fundamental political decisions.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights


United Nations - 1948
    The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Document" in the world. It consists of thirty articles which outline the view of the General Assembly on the human rights guaranteed to all people. The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, & the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights & its two Optional Protocols. In 1966 the General Assembly adopted the two detailed Covenants which complete the International Bill of Human Rights. In 1976, after the Covenants had been ratified by a sufficient number of individual nations, the Bill took on the force of international law.

Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto


Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - 2014
    The cure is a radical one because, as the book incontrovertibly shows, the many problems that confront us today are no accident. They stem from the nature of government itself. Only peaceful cooperation based on the free market can rescue us from our present plight.Against the State is written by Lew Rockwell, the founder of the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com, and the closest friend and associate of Murray Rothbard, the leading theorist of anarcho-capitalism. Rockwell applies Rothbard’s combination of individualist anarchism and Austrian economics to contemporary America. The book shows how the government is based on war, both against foreign nations and against the American people themselves, through massive invasions of our liberties. Fueled by an out-of-control banking system, the American State has become in essence fascist. We cannot escape our predicament through limited government: the government is incapable of controlling itself. Only a purely private social order can save us, and Rockwell succinctly sets out how an anarcho-capitalist order would work.

International Law


Malcolm N. Shaw - 1991
    The fifth edition includes new material on Inter-state Courts and Tribunals, arbitration tribunals and the role of international institutions such as the WTO. It will remain an invaluable resource for students and practitioners alike. While essential reading for students of international relations and the political sciences, the scope of the text also makes it of interest to lawyers and government and international employees. Previous Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-59384-0 Previous Edition Pb (1997): 0-521-57667-9

Letters to a Law Student: A Guide to Studying Law at University


Nicholas J. McBride - 2006
    It provides a useful guide to those considering a law degree or conversion course and helps students prepare for what can be a daunting first year of study.

The Harm in Hate Speech


Jeremy Waldron - 2012
    For constitutionalists, regulation of hate speech violates the First Amendment and damages a free society. Against this absolutist view, Jeremy Waldron argues powerfully that hate speech should be regulated as part of our commitment to human dignity and to inclusion and respect for members of vulnerable minorities.Causing offense--by depicting a religious leader as a terrorist in a newspaper cartoon, for example--is not the same as launching a libelous attack on a group's dignity, according to Waldron, and it lies outside the reach of law. But defamation of a minority group, through hate speech, undermines a public good that can and should be protected: the basic assurance of inclusion in society for all members. A social environment polluted by anti-gay leaflets, Nazi banners, and burning crosses sends an implicit message to the targets of such hatred: your security is uncertain and you can expect to face humiliation and discrimination when you leave your home.Free-speech advocates boast of despising what racists say but defending to the death their right to say it. Waldron finds this emphasis on intellectual resilience misguided and points instead to the threat hate speech poses to the lives, dignity, and reputations of minority members. Finding support for his view among philosophers of the Enlightenment, Waldron asks us to move beyond knee-jerk American exceptionalism in our debates over the serious consequences of hateful speech.

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.

Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other


Nat Hentoff - 1992
    His principled advocacy of free expression for all seems to be needed more than ever today, at a time of appalling assaults on expression not only by traditional opponents on the political right—those offended by what they consider obscene or radical or otherwise taboo—but also from the left—radical feminists calling for the suppression of pornography, members of minorities banning language they consider psychologically damaging, and various other proponents of so-called political correctness. These more recently minted censors are now to be found within such former bastions of free speech as the universities and even the American Civil Liberties Union. This urgently important book is not a mere collection of legal cases; neither is it a history of free expression or a polemic from either left or right. It is rather a wide-ranging report on—and analysis of—the many kinds of conflicts throughout our country between the illusion that this is a land of unfettered free speech and the reality when that illusion is acted upon. It is a book of many stories—of the continuing efforts to deprive students of Mark Twain's masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, and of attempts to deprive other students of the right not to read books that offend them; of the well-intentioned rulings that result in speech codes and loyalty oaths; of the wide-spread lack of understanding, over the years, of such basic concepts as the marketplace of ideas and of the overriding value of untrammeled speech. Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee is a book about fear, duplicity, some courage, a lot of hypocrisy, and a good deal of irony. It is a book of dramatic confrontations, of people acting, for better or for worse, on one of the most important of our domestic battlefields. And above all, it presents hopeful, practical suggestions for ways toward saving perhaps the most fragile of our cherished freedoms.

Between Facts & Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law & Democracy (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)


Jürgen Habermas - 1992
    This new work is a major contribution to recent debates on the rule of law and the possibilities of democracy in postindustrial societies, but it is much more. The introduction by William Rehg succinctly captures the special nature of the work, noting that it offers a sweeping, sociologically informed conceptualization of law and basic rights, a normative account of the rule of law and the constitutional state, an attempt to bridge normative and empirical approaches to democracy, and an account of the social context required for democracy. Finally, the work frames and caps these arguments with a bold proposal for a new paradigm of law that goes beyond the dichotomies that have afflicted modern political theory from its inception and that still underlie current controversies between so-called liberals and civic republicans. The book includes a postscript written in 1994, which restates the argument in light of its initial reception, and two appendixes, which cover key developments that preceded the book. Habermas himself was actively involved in the translation, adapting the text as necessary to make it more accessible to English-speaking readers.

Criminal Law


Joel Samaha - 2007
    With a balanced blend of case excerpts and author commentary, Samaha guides you as you hone your critical thinking and legal analysis skills. You'll see the principles, defenses, and elements of crime at work as you progress through the book-and you'll learn about the general principles of criminal liability and its defenses, as well as the elements of crimes against persons property, society, and crimes against the state. Featuring the latest topics and court cases, as well as many study tools to help you do well in this course, Samaha's CRIMINAL LAW is a text you will want to keep as a valuable reference even after you graduate and begin your career in the criminal justice field of your choosing.

Trial Techniques


Thomas A. Mauet - 1995
    This long-time leading course book is an invaluable source for prospective trial lawyers, presenting: - a best-selling author renowned for his skills both as a writer and litigator - a clear, engaging writing style that breaks the trial process down into its critical components for more thorough and efficient comprehension - excellent examples illustrating strategies for opening statements, jury selection, direct- and cross-examination, exhibits, objections, and more - an appendix containing the Federal Rules of Evidence for easy reference

The Path to Otherwhere: or How I Spent My Summer Vacation


T.S. Paul - 2018
    But there are secrets never discussed and she believes the key is through the garden gate. Join Agatha and Fergus as they travel to the realm of the Mystical Library and discover who and what they were meant to be. This long awaited story is a crossover of sorts merging two story lines into one. It takes place between Witness Enchantment (Book 4) and Night of the Unicorn (Book 5).