New Books in Law
1,471 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★ - 14 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of the Law about their New Books
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Episodes
Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)
December 29, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured―as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality. Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, ...
David T. Beito, "The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance" (Independent Institute, 2023)
December 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, leadership as a wartime president, cozy fireside chats, and groundbreaking support of the "forgotten man," FDR, we have been told, is worthy of the same praise as men like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.... But is that true? Does the father of today's welfare state really deserve such generous approbation? Or is there a dark side to this golde...
The Future of Migration: A Discussion with Hein de Haas
December 23, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesImmigration has become one of the biggest issues in all western democracies. And the debate is so charged it's hard to know who to believe. Which is why Hein de Haas has written How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics (Basic Books, 2023). Listen to him bust some myths with Owen Bennett-Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Genev...
Emily Horowitz, "From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
December 20, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn her book From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), Emily Horowitz shows how current sex-offense policies in the United States create new forms of harm and prevent those who have caused harm from the process of constructive repentance or contributing to society after punishment. Horowitz also illustrates the failure of criminal justice responses to social problems. Sharing detailed narratives from the experiences of those on regist...
Speech Unbound: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen
December 19, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesWhat (and why) can and can't we say? What do empirical examples both at home and abroad tell us about how we should protect freedom of speech? How do we create an environment where speech is not only permitted but encouraged? Does freedom of speech bring people together or sow discord? Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU and Professor Emerita at New York Law School, brings her decades of expertise to bear explaining why freedom of speech is foundational to so many other fundamental ...
Tom Buitelaar, "Assisting International Justice: Cooperation Between UN Peace Operations and the International Criminal Court in the Democratic Republic of Congo" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourAlthough the International Criminal Court (ICC) - as the only permanent international court that addresses crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes - has important potential to end impunity and find justice for victims of atrocities, it is dependent on others for almost all aspects of its functioning. The Court has frequently relied on the peacekeeping operations that the UN deploys in the field and, over the past two decades, UN peacekeepers have provided logistical assistance and s...
Yasser Kureshi, "Seeking Supremacy: The Pursuit of Judicial Power in Pakistan" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
December 18, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourSeeking Supremacy: The Pursuit of Judicial Power in Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2022) discusses the emergence of the judiciary as an assertive and confrontational center of power which has been the most consequential new feature of Pakistan's political system. This book maps out the evolution of the relationship between the judiciary and military in Pakistan, explaining why Pakistan's high courts shifted from loyal deference to the military to open competition, and confrontation, wi...
Sara Chatfield, "In Her Own Name: The Politics of Women’s Rights Before Suffrage" (Columbia UP, 2023)
December 18, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesWe often narrate the history of women’s rights in the United States by focusing on the fight for suffrage. Yet starting as early as 1835, states expanded married women’s economic rights. How were these statutes passed at a time when women’s political power was severely constrained, including no right to vote in most states? With limited national coordination? In In Her Own Name: The Politics of Women’s Rights Before Suffrage (Columbia UP, 2023), Dr. Sara Chatfield argues that married women’s...
Gary J. Bass, "Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia" (Knopf, 2023)
December 15, 2023 09:00 - 31 minutesJudgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by...
Sally Frances Low, "Colonial Law Making: Cambodia Under the French" (NUS Press, 2023)
December 15, 2023 09:00 - 45 minutesIn 1863 the French established a protectorate over the kingdom of Cambodia. The protectorate, along with Vietnam and Laos, later became part of the colonial state of French Indochina. Part of the French ‘civilizing mission’ in Cambodia involved reforming Cambodian law and legal processes. Sally Low’s pioneering study, Colonial Law Making: Cambodia under the French (NUS Press, 2023), tells the story of the encounter between what she calls two different legal and social ‘cosmologies’: Cambodia...
Lynette J. Chua, "The Politics of Rights and Southeast Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
December 15, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutesThe Politics of Rights and Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP, 2022) offers an empirically-grounded approach to understanding the mobilisation of rights in the region. Instead of deriving definitions of rights from abstract philosophical text, court verdicts or statutes, the book advances a socio-legal approach which considers rights as social practices that take meaning from the various ways in which people enact, mobilise, and practice these rights. In doing so, the book offers a point of view th...
Kathy Stuart, "Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
December 13, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourSuicide by Proxy became a major societal problem after 1650. Suicidal people committed capital crimes with the explicit goal of “earning” their executions, as a short-cut to their salvation. Desiring to die repentantly at the hands of divinely-instituted government, perpetrators hoped to escape eternal damnation that befell direct suicides. In Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin, and Salvation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Kathy Stuart shows how this crime emerged as an unin...
Melinda N. Ritchie, "Backdoor Lawmaking: Evading Obstacles in the US Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 12, 2023 09:00 - 42 minutesCivics textbooks focus on how Congress makes policy through the legislative process, but the reality is that members of Congress have limited opportunities to advance their policy priorities. In fact, less than five percent of the bills that are introduced in Congress become law. Even the most tenacious legislators are confronted by bicameralism, partisan gridlock, chamber procedures, leadership's control of the agenda, and the diverse interests of 534 other members of Congress. What strategi...
Julian Go, "Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 12, 2023 09:00 - 53 minutesThe police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, properly demilitarizing the police requires a deeper understanding of its historical development, causes, and social logics. Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US (Oxford UP, 2023) offers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States to aid that effor...
Tristan G. Brown, "Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
December 11, 2023 09:00 - 57 minutesWelcome to another episode of New Books in Chinese Studies. I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and I am speaking today to Prof. Tristan Brown about his book, Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China (Princeton UP, 2023). Brown’s book considers fengshui, that is, the knowledge of orienting structures, such as graves and houses, in accordance with well-established cosmological principles, as an administrative technology and language of power that was intrinsic to governance ...
Paolo Caroli, "Transitional Justice in Italy and the Crimes of Fascism and Nazism" (Routledge, 2022)
December 11, 2023 05:00 - 1 hourPaolo Caroli's book Transitional Justice in Italy and the Crimes of Fascism and Nazism (Routledge, 2022) presents a comprehensive analysis of the Italian experience of transitional justice examining how the crimes of Fascism and World War II have been dealt with from a comparative perspective. Applying an interdisciplinary and comparative methodology, the book offers a detailed reconstruction of the prosecution of the crimes of Fascism and the Italian Social Republic as well as crimes committ...
Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)
December 04, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industrialization, racialization, and capitalism—were quickly reshaping the world. The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism (NYU Press, 2023) slows down the moment in which the technology of photography seemed to speed itself—and so the history of racial capitalism—up. It follows the substantial shifts in the markets, me...
Andrew C. McKevitt, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" (UNC Press, 2023)
December 04, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe United States has more guns than people – a condition that is “unprecedented in world history.” Scholars often focus on gun culture, the Second Amendment, or the history of gun safety, duties, and rights. Often, people assume that the number of guns is a natural state – the guns were always there. But were the guns always there? What caused the drastic boom in firearms, and when did it happen? In Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America (UNC Press, 2023), Dr. ...
Rebecca Simon, "The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
November 28, 2023 09:00 - 42 minutesIn The Pirate's Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship (Reaktion, 2023), Dr. Rebecca Simon presents a rollicking account of pirates’ codes, the strict rules essential for survival at sea. Pirates have long captured the imagination with images of cutlass-wielding swashbucklers, eye patches and buried treasure. But what was life really like on a pirate ship? Piracy was a risky, sometimes deadly occupation, and strict orders were essential for everyone’s survival. These ‘Laws’ were sets of rules that d...
Stephanie Convery, "After the Count: The Death of Davey Browne" (Penguin Australia, 2020)
November 27, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesToday we are joined by Stephanie Convery, inequality editor at Guardian Australia, and author of After the Count: The Death of Davey Browne (Penguin Australia, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the history of boxing in Australia, the failures that explain Davey Browne’s death in Sydney in 2015, the nature of violence in sport, and the future of boxing. In After the Count, Convery blends the genres of history, reportage, and memoir to explore the death of Davey Browne and shows how this...
Fae Garland and Mitchell Travis, "Intersex Embodiment: Legal Frameworks Beyond Identity and Disorder" (Bristol UP, 2022)
November 26, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesWhat is intersex and why does it matter? What is the power of law to disrupt dominant narratives? I had a fascinating conversation with authors Dr Fae Garland and Dr Mitchell Travis about their book, Intersex Embodiment: Legal Frameworks Beyond Identity and Disorder (Bristol UP, 2023). We got into detail about these groundbreaking human rights issues. We spoke about the very real challenges faced in conducting legal research that has meaningful impact for social change. In research spanning m...
Jenny Benham, "International Law in Europe, 700–1200" (Manchester UP, 2022)
November 24, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourWas there international law in the Middle Ages? Using treaties as its main source, International Law in Europe, 700-1200 (Manchester University Press, 2022) by Dr. Jenny Benham examines the extent to which such a system of rules was known and followed in the period 700 to 1200. It considers how consistently international legal rules were obeyed, whether there was a reliance on justification of action and whether the system had the capacity to resolve disputed questions of fact and law. The bo...
Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor, "Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society" (Princeton UP, 2016)
November 18, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutesPrinceton University Press’ Our Compelling Interests series focuses on diversity, in racial, gender, socioeconomic, religious, and other forms. Some of the titles in this series so far include The Walls around Opportunity: The Failure of Colorblind Policy for Higher Education by Gary Orfield, Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise By Eboo Patel, and The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy, by Scott E. Page. Earl Lewis is the Thomas C. Ho...
Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)
November 16, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesHuman trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has developed an impressive edifice of human rights law, these laws are not equally recognized or enforced by all countries. Sex Trafficking and Human Rights demonstrates that state responsiveness to human trafficking is shaped by the political, social, cultural, and economic rights afforded to women i...
Kay Wilson, "Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform?" (Oxford UP, 2021)
November 11, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe debate about whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed is one that is highly charged and to which there are no easy solutions. In Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform? (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr Kay Wilson does not shy away from these controversial debates. Examining the work that dignity can do, she makes the case for an holistic interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In thinking about mental health reform, she provides a core framework wh...
Malcolm D. Evans, "Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice" (Bristol UP, 2023)
November 08, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesHow big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? Why does the UN appear at times to be so impotent in the face of it? Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice (Bristol University Press, 2023) by Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really happening around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to bring about change. The author draws on ov...
Speak Freely: The Princeton Principles
November 07, 2023 09:00 - 59 minutesKicking off our new monthly series on freedom of speech, Keith Whittington and Donald Downs discuss the Princeton Principles for a Campus of Free Inquiry. These principles, outlined by a group of scholars convened by Professor Robert P. George here at the James Madison Program in March 2023, expand on the well-known Chicago Principles in ensuring campus free speech and institutional neutrality. Professors Whittington and Downs are both among the original fifteen participants and endorsers of ...
B Camminga, "Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies Over Borders and Borders Over Bodies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018)
November 06, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutesTransgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies Over Borders and Borders Over Bodies (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) tracks the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North—where it originated—along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two. The term 'transgender' transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national h...
Antitrust Policy, The Chicago School Consumer Welfare Standard and The Rise of the New Brandeisians
November 04, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesLuke Froeb joins the podcast to talk about his career in economics, what it's like to be the chief economist at the FTC and DOJ antitrust division, how these agencies make decisions about merger cases, the history of the Chicago School consumer welfare standard and the types of analytical tools and modeling that underlies the approach, along with the rise of the New Brandeisians and their failures thus far. Jon Hartley is an economics researcher with interests in international macroeconomics,...
Wendy H. Wong, "We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2023)
November 02, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesOur data-intensive world is here to stay, but does that come at the cost of our humanity in terms of autonomy, community, dignity, and equality? In We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023), Wendy H. Wong argues that we cannot allow that to happen. Exploring the pervasiveness of data collection and tracking, Wong reminds us that we are all stakeholders in this digital world, who are currently being left out of the most pressing conversations around technology, ethics, an...
Paolo Sandro, "The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
November 01, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThis book is a tour de force. In The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (Bloomsbury, 2022), Dr Paolo Sandro explores the assumed unproblematic tension between the creation and application of law, and the way that this guides constitutional democracy. Crossing both jurisdictional borders and legal traditions, the author draws out the intrinsic relation between law, power and politics, to reveal law's authority. Ten years in the writing, the work is truly in...
The Future of Cancelling: A Conversation with Greg Lukianoff
November 01, 2023 08:00 - 39 minutesCancel culture is something all academics are aware of and some are concerned about. Certainly that’s true of Greg Lukianoff who was the co-author (with Jonathan Haidt) of The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin, 2018) and who has now co-authored (with Rikki Schlott) of The Canceling of the American Mind (Simon and Schuster, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has...
Marion Gibson, "Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials" (Scribner, 2023)
October 31, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesWitchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018. In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials (Simon & Schuster, 2023), Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen signific...
Agata Fijalkowski, "Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial" (Routledge, 2023)
October 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAddressing the relationship between law and the visual, this book examines the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show trials. The dispensation of justice during communist rule in Albania, East Germany, and Poland was reliant on legal propaganda, making the visual a fundamental part of the legitimacy of the law. Analysing photographs of trials, Agata Fijalkowski's Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial (Routledge, 2023) examines how this message was conveyed t...
Nicole Nguyen, "Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
October 27, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesRather than functioning as a final arbiter of justice, U.S. domestic courts are increasingly seen as counterterrorism tools that can incapacitate terrorists, maintain national security operations domestically, and produce certain narratives of conflict. Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) by Dr. Nicole Nguyen examines the contemporary role that these courts play in the global war on terror and their use as a weapon of war: hunt...
Youcef L. Soufi, "The Rise of Critical Islam: 10th-13th Century Legal Debate" (Oxford UP, 2023)
October 27, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourYoucef Sufi's book The Rise of Critical Islam: 10th-13th Century Legal Debate (Oxford University Press, 2023) is a fascinating and engaging exploration of the history of critique in Islamic legal and intellectual history. It does this specifically through a case study of dispensations and disputations, known as munāẓarāt in Arabic. Dispensations were a practice of debates that were an important feature of a jurist's practice and an opportunity for him to showcase his juristic skills – for ins...
Greg Glasgow and Kathryn Mayer, "Disneyland on the Mountain: Walt, the Environmentalists, and the Ski Resort That Never Was" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
October 25, 2023 08:00 - 45 minutesA fascinating look at Walt Disney's last, unfinished project and the controversy that surrounded it. It was going to be Disneyland at the top of a mountain. A vacation destination where guests could ski, go ice skating, or be entertained by a Disney Imagineer-created band of Audio-Animatronic bears. In the summer, visitors could fish, camp, hike, or take a scenic chairlift ride to the top of a mountain. It was the Mineral King resort in Southern California, and it was Walt Disney's final pass...
Jeff Kosseff, "Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
October 24, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThanks to the First Amendment, Americans enjoy a rare privilege: the constitutional right to lie. And although controversial, they should continue to enjoy this right. When commentators and politicians discuss misinformation, they often repeat five words: "fire in a crowded theater." Though governments can, if they choose, attempt to ban harmful lies, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, how effective will their efforts really be? Can they punish someone for yelling "fire" in a cro...
Aaron Tang, "Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court--And How We Can Fix It" (Yale UP, 2023)
October 23, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesThe American public’s confidence in the United States Supreme Court is a historic low – in part based on a belief that the Supreme Court is increasingly behaving as a partisan, political body. In Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court--And How We Can Fix It (Yale UP, 2023), legal scholar Aaron Tang argues that partisanship is not the best lens for understanding the Supreme Court. He focuses on overconfidence. According to Professor Tang, the legal arguments of both conser...
Campbell F. Scribner, "A Is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education" (Cornell UP, 2023)
October 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn A Is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education (Cornell UP, 2023), Campbell F. Scribner sifts through two centuries of debris to uncover the conditions that have prompted school vandalism and to explain why attempts at prevention have inevitably failed. Vandalism costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year, as students, parents, and even teachers wreak havoc on school buildings. Why do they do it? Can anything stop them? Who should pay for the damage? Underlyin...
Matthew Guariglia, "Police and the Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York" (Duke UP, 2023)
October 21, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourDuring the years between the Civil War and World War II, police in New York City struggled with how to control a diverse metropolis. In Police and the Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York (Duke UP, 2023), Matthew Guariglia tells the history of the New York Police Department to show how its origins were built upon and inseparably entwined with the history of race, ethnicity, and whiteness in the United States. Guariglia explores the New York City Police Department ...
Alexandre Baril, "Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide" (Temple UP, 2023)
October 20, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourNote: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. A list of resources is available below. In Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide (Temple UP, 2023), Alexandre Baril argues that suicidal people are oppressed by what he calls structural suicidism, a hidden oppression that, until now, has been unnamed and under-theorized. Each year, suicidism and its preventionist script and strategies reproduce violence and cause additional harm and death among s...
The Future of Incarceration: A Discussion with Colleen P. Eren
October 18, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesThe United States has long been associated with a very harsh criminal justice system with, in some cases, people serving long sentence for minor crimes. But attempts to reform the system have proven very difficult. In her new book Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movement to End Mass Incarceration (Stanford UP, 2023), Colleen P. Eren explains why. Listen to her in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent...
Javier Garcia Oliva and Helen Hall, "Constitutional Culture, Independence, and Rights: Insights from Quebec, Scotland, and Catalonia" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
October 17, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesIn Constitutional Culture, Independence, and Rights: Insights from Quebec, Scotland, and Catalonia (University of Toronto Press, 2023), Dr. Javier García Oliva and Dr. Helen Hall coin the term "constitutional culture" to encapsulate the collective rules and expectations that govern the collective life within a jurisdiction. Significantly, these shared norms have both legal and social elements, including matters as diverse as standards of parenting, the modus operandi of police officers, and t...
Vilja Hulden, "The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor Before the New Deal" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
October 15, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAt the opening of the twentieth century, labor strife repeatedly racked the nation. Union organization and collective bargaining briefly looked like a promising avenue to stability. But both employers and many middle-class observers remained wary of unions exercising independent power. In The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor Before the New Deal (U Illinois Press, 2023), Vilja Hulden reveals how this tension provided the opening for pro-business organizations to shift publ...
Dennis C. Rasmussen, "The Constitution's Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America's Basic Charter" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
October 12, 2023 08:00 - 51 minutesDennis Rasmussen’s new book, The Constitution's Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America's Basic Charter (UP of Kansas, 2023), is a propulsive analysis of one of the key members of the Founding generation, Gouverneur Morris of New York and Pennsylvania. Morris is quite a character—from his reputation as a lady’s man to his brilliant speeches at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Rasmussen has pulled together archival research on Morris along with historical an...
Rhoda Kanaaneh, "The Right Kind of Suffering: Gender, Sexuality, and Arab Asylum Seekers in America" (U Texas Press, 2023)
October 10, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutesFrom the overloaded courts with their constantly changing dates and appointments to the need to prove oneself the “right" kind of asylum seeker, the asylum system in the United States is an exacting and drawn-out immigration process that itself results in suffering. When anthropologist Rhoda Kanaaneh became a volunteer interpreter for Arab asylum seekers, she discovered how applicants learned to craft a specific narrative to satisfy the system's requirements. Kanaaneh tells the stories of fou...
Andrew Monteith, "Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs" (NYU Press, 2023)
October 08, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourMany people view the War on Drugs as a contemporary phenomenon invented by the Nixon administration. But as Dr. Andrew Monteith shows in Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs (NYU Press, 2023), the conflict actually began more than a century before, when American Protestants began the temperance movement and linked drug use with immorality. Dr. Monteith argues that this early drug war was deeply rooted in Christian impulses. While many scholars understand Prohibition to have...
Stephanie R. Larson, "What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)
October 08, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesWhat it feels like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture (Penn State Press, 2021) by Dr. Stephanie Larson interrogates an underexamined reason for our failure to abolish rape in the United States: the way we communicate about it. Using affective and feminist materialist approaches to rhetorical criticism, Dr. Larson examines how discourses about rape and sexual assault rely on strategies of containment, denying the felt experiences of victims and ultimately stalling broader clai...
James N. Druckman and Elizabeth A. Sharrow, "Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
October 05, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe year 1972 is often hailed as an inflection point in the evolution of women's rights. Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that outlawed sex-based discrimination in education. Many Americans celebrate Title IX for having ushered in an era of expanded opportunity for women's athletics; yet fifty years after its passage, sex-based inequalities in college athletics remain the reality. James N. Druckman and Elizabeth A. Sharrow's book Equality Unfulfilled: How Ti...