Book picks similar to
The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society by Austin Sarat


law
non-fic---law-and-crime
sociology
blackwell-companions

The Devil's Dozen: How Cutting-Edge Forensics Took Down 12 Notorious Serial Killers


Katherine Ramsland - 2009
    "Katherine Ramsland has brilliantly captured the insights and drama of some fascinating cases" (Dr. Henry Lee) in her previous bestselling books. Now she examines the case histories of twelve of the most notorious serial killers of the last one hundred years, and answers the questions: What clues did they leave behind? How were they eventually caught? How was each twist and turn of their crimes matched by the equally compelling weapons of science and logic? From exploring the nineteenth century's earliest investigative tools to remarkable twenty-first century CSI advances, The Devil's Dozen provides a fascinating window into the world of those who kill-and those who dedicate their lives to bringing them to justice.

The Realm of Rhetoric


Chaïm Perelman - 1977
      In this new study Chaim Perelman continues to develop his ideas on the theory of rhetoric, now even more cogently and persuasively presented. Pruned of much detail present in the earlier book, this new work captures the essence of his thought in a style and presentation suitable to the program and needs of an English-speaking audience. It is an ideal instruction medium for students approaching theories of informal argumentation for the first time.   Perelman raises the questions, "How do claims to reasonableness arise in prose that is not formally logical?" and "What does 'reasonableness' mean for some who speaks of 'reasonable men' or 'beyond reasonable doubt'?" He then shows how claims to rationality are embedded in a number of verbal structures heretofore considered exclusively ornamental or dispositional. He identifies and discusses many argumentative techniques in addition to the quasi-logical methods conventionally treated in textbooks and notes numerous subforms of argumentation within each of the general types he identifies.

Legal Confidential: Adventures of an Indian Lawyer


Ranjeev Dubey - 2015
    Dubey slogs his way through the corridors of Delhi’s trial courts and realizes that the legal system is anything but fair. He stumbles upon a strange world of corruption, sleaze, adultery, eloping couples and clients willing to pay for legal services ‘in kind’. He survives the ‘killing field’ of litigation for twelve long years, biding his time. When he gets an offer to join a law firm, Dubey believes he has finally arrived. But has he? The world of Indian corporate law is one of intense power-play and the merciless pursuit of revenue. In this sinister world of destructive politicking, Ranjeev becomes enemies with the big sharks who own the law firm. What follows is an explosive showdown. In this dark, racy memoir, the now-well-known corporate lawyer exposes the world of the black robes with his trademark wit and leaves you wanting more. If you had to read only one book about the world of lawyers and the Indian legal system, Legal Confidential would have to be it!

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South


Radley Balko - 2018
    Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist chronicles how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system--a relic of the Jim Crow era--failed to deliver justice for its citizens and recounts the horrifying story of the two men who built successful careers on the back of this system. For nearly two decades, medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. Michael West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart. Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, and raise sobering questions about our criminal justice system's ability to address them.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution


Francis Fukuyama - 2011
    Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.

The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America


Eric Cervini - 2020
    Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War is the story of what followed. This book is an assiduously researched history of an early champion of gay liberation, one who fought for the right to follow his passion and serve his country in the wake of Joseph McCarthy's Lavender Scare. We follow Kameny as he explores the underground gay scenes of Boston and Washington, D.C., where he formulates his arguments against the U.S. Government's classification of gay men and women as "sexual perverts." At a time when staying in the closet remained the default, he exposed the hypocrisies of the American establishment, accelerated a broader revolution in sexual morals, and invented what we now know as Gay Pride.Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.

Gideon's Trumpet


Anthony Lewis - 1964
    To most laymen this would seem to provide grounds for a new trial, but the fact is that until the Supreme Court heard Gideon's case, an indigent prisoner did not have the right to a lawyer in many state courts.The case of Gideon v. Wainwright changed all that. The Supreme Court decided to hear Gideon's plea, and it appointed Abe Fortas, a noted Washington lawyer, to represent him.On March 18, 1963, the Court announced its historic decision: the Justices unanimously overruled an earlier case and held that henceforth the "due process of law" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment meant that poverty alone could not deprive a criminal defendant of the right to counsel. For Gideon this meant a new trial, and this time, with the help of a lawyer, he was acquitted.But Gideon's Trumpet is far more than the dramatic story of a single case whose reverberations will change the lives of thousands of other prisoners; it is also an inspiring examination and interpretation of the role of the Supreme Court itself. The reader learns much of the history of the Court, of the constitutional and criminal law in the United States, of the philosophies of law of various Justices, of changing historical interpretations of the Bill of Rights and its various amendments, and of the modus operandi of the Court day by day.Anthony Lewis writes about the complex and momentous issues involved in Gideon v. Wainwright with simplicity, clarity and precision, and his portrait of Gideon and his dogged fight for freedom is as poignant and, in the words of one distinguished reader, "as absorbing as the best fiction."

Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty


Maurice Chammah - 2021
    ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country's death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier.When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty's decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction.In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation's death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state's highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners--many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker--along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do.In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

One Pitch Away: The Players' Stories of the 1986 League Championships and World Series


Mike Sowell - 1995
    An inside-the-dugout account, based on interviews with the key players among the Angels, Astros, Mets and Red Sox, of a remarkable season and arguably the most spectacular comeback in the history of the sport.

Eddie & Sunny


Stacey Cochran - 2015
    For months they've lived out of their car with their young son, and the stress of it all has driven pregnant Sunny to the point she wants to ditch Eddie and her kid and vanish from the life Eddie's tried so futilely to build for them in rural North Carolina. When they stop at an abandoned service station, the point is just to survive another night in their car. But inside they discover a marijuana grow operation, cash, and a stockpile of weapons. As they leave, the owners arrive and Sunny is forced to shoot the dealers to save her family. Eddie and Sunny become fugitives of the law and the drug dealers' kin and are separated with each believing the other has been killed in an act of retribution. Eddie & Sunny is the story of a family finding its soul, but to do so they have to lose one another first. It is a story of hope, love, and the American Dream. It is the great American novel set to a crime fiction soundtrack.

The Morality of Law


Lon L. Fuller - 1965
    Fuller extends and clarifies his definition of the relation between law and morality put forward in the first (1964) edition of The Morality of Law. His original argument distinguishes between the morality of duty and the morality of aspiration, both of which bear on the design and operation of social institutions: the former by setting the necessary preconditions of any purposive social endeavor, the latter by suggesting the directions for such endeavor.                                                                                                                                                                                   In the revised edition, Fuller takes accurate aim at the school of legal philosophy called the New Analytical Jurists and continues his long-running debate with his major intellectual antagonist, H.L.A. Hart. Although the author calls the new chapter "A Reply to Critics," his expressed reason for undertaking it indicates that it is more than that: "As critical reviews of my book came in, I myself became increasingly aware of the extent to which the debate did indeed depend on 'starting points' - not on what the disputants said, but on what they considered it unnecessary to say, not on articulated principles but on tacit assumptions. What was needed, therefore, it seemed to me, was to bring these tacit assumptions to more adequate expression than either side has so far been able to do." There is no question that Mr. Fuller here gives the assumptions of his side adequate expression.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           “The volume must be regarded as an important contribution of general interest to the study of the nature and function of law…Trenchant comment abounds throughout the book, and there is an immense amount of the most valuable material here, as well as considerable food for the thought…his book deserves to reach a very wide audience.” – Law Times.“The book is a provocative one which is certain to excite much academic comment here and abroad.” – Harvard Law Record.“Although fully intelligible to the undergraduate, this book is likely to receive its warmest reception form advanced students of the philosophy of law, who will welcome the relief provided from the frequently sterile tone of much recent work in the field.” – Choice

Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist


Richard Rhodes - 1999
    Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, brings his inimitable vision, exhaustive research, and mesmerizing prose to this timely book that dissects violence and offers new solutions to the age old problem of why people kill.Lonnie Athens was raised by a brutally domineering father.  Defying all odds, Athens became a groundbreaking criminologist who turned his scholar's eye to the problem of why people become violent.  After a decade of interviewing several hundred violent convicts--men and women of varied background and ethnicity, he discovered "violentization," the four-stage process by which almost any human being can evolve into someone who will assault, rape, or murder another human being.  Why They Kill is a riveting biography of Athens and a judicious critique of his seminal work, as well as an unflinching investigation into the history of violence.

Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison


Gresham M. Sykes - 1958
    The book is remarkably short--just 150 pages--but bristles with ideas. Sykes argued that many of the psychological effects of modern prison are even more brutal than the physical cruelties of the past. The trauma of being designated one of the very worst human beings in the world left prisoners with lifelong scars. It also inspired solidarity among prisoners and fierce resistance to authorities as strategies for rejecting those who rejected them. His analysis called into question whether prisons genuinely were, as many believed, total institutions, where every facet of life was rigidly controlled. Sykes showed that the stronger the bonds among prisoners, the more difficult it was for prison guards to run the prisons without finding ways of accommodating the prisoners.The book set the stage for Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, among other works. Since it appeared in 1958, it has served society as an indispensable text in coming to terms with the nature of modern power.

The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives


Jesse Eisinger - 2017
    The Chickenshit Club—an inside reference to prosecutors too scared of failure and too daunted by legal impediments to do their jobs—explains why in “an absorbing financial history, a monumental work of journalism…a first-rate study of the federal bureaucracy” (Bloomberg Businessweek).Jesse Eisigner begins the story in the 1970s, when the government pioneered the notion that top corporate executives, not just seedy crooks, could commit heinous crimes and go to prison. He brings us to trading desks on Wall Street, to corporate boardrooms and the offices of prosecutors and FBI agents. These revealing looks provide context for the evolution of the Justice Department’s approach to pursuing corporate criminals through the early 2000s and into the Justice Department’s approach to pursuing corporate criminals through the early 2000s and into the Justice Department of today, including the prosecutorial fiascos, corporate lobbying, trial losses, and culture shifts that have stripped the government of the will and ability to prosecute top corporate executives.“Brave and elegant….a fearless reporter…Eisinger’s important and profound book takes no prisoners (The Washington Post). Exposing one of the most important scandals of our time, The Chickenshit Club provides a clear, detailed explanation as to how our Justice Department has come to avoid, bungle, and mismanage the fight to bring these alleged criminals to justice. “This book is a wakeup call…a chilling read, and a needed one” (NPR.org).

Classics of Public Administration


Jay M. Shafritz - 1978
    Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde aim to introduce you to the principles of public administration via the most significant scholarly writings on the topic. Straightforward and informative, this text starts you with Woodrow Wilson and takes you all the way to today's political scientists. This edition includes five new readings and helps you learn the key fields of public administration: bureaucracy, organization theory, human resources management, the budgetary process, public policy, implementation, evaluation, intergovernmental relations, and public service ethics.