New Books In Law

In Law and Personality Disorder: Human Rights, Human Risks, and Rehabilitation (Oxford UP, 2024), Dr Ailbhe O'Loughlin considers the controversial and under-researched concern of what to do with dangerous people with severe personality disorders. She brings together scientific evidence, law and policy, to consider risk prevention, public security and human rights. This is a controversial area of law and policy, informed by ongoing debates about 'dangerous' offenders which exists at the intersection of liberal legal principles and advocates of social defence.  In today's conversation, we spoke about preventative detention, the effectiveness of therapeutic intervention and risk management, gaps in human rights protections, and the assumptions that the legal principles and processes that govern this population are founded on. O'Loughlin draws out key issues for reform and calls for further evidence-based inquiry with regards to criminal defences, sentencing and dispositions. This will be an important book for po

In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many have dubbed "crimmigration." Southern border enforcement still monopolizes the national immigration debate, but immigration enforcement has become common within the United States as well. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations are a major part of American immigration enforcement, Felicia Arriaga maintains that ICE relies on an already well-established system--the use of local law enforcement and local governments to identify, incarcerate, and deport undocumented immigrants. In Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America (UNC Press, 2023), Arriaga contends that the long-term partnership between local sheriffs and immigration law enforcement in places like North Carolina has created a form of racialized social control of the Latinx community. Arriaga uses data from five county sheriff's offices and their governing bodies

In Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton UP, 2022), Dr. Jeremy Schipper tells the story of a free Black man accused of plotting an anti-slavery insurrection in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822. Vesey was found guilty and hanged along with dozens of others accused of collaborating with him. At the center of the book is an examination of how former slave Denmark Vesey used interpretations of the Bible to justify the revolt while members of the white establishment in South Carolina use that same Bible to support the slaveholders view of themselves as benevolent biblical patriarchs.  The book is a riveting account of a key moment in antebellum American history that underscores deep racial inequities and the assumed supremacy of white Christians during a time of violence, fear, and conflicting understandings of moral superiority and biblical truth. Recommended reading:  The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History edited by Douglas R. Egerton and Robert

Placing the Frontier in British North-East India: Law, Custom, and Knowledge (Oxford UP, 2023) is a study of the travels of colonial law into the North-East frontier of the British Empire in India. Focusing on the nineteenth century, it examines the relationship of law and space, and indigenous place-making. Inhabitants of the frontier hills examined in this book were not defined as British subjects, yet they were incorporated within the colonial legal framework. The work examines the nature of this legal limbo that produced both the hills and their inhabitants as interruptions but equally as integral to the imperial project. Through a study of place-making by indigenous inhabitants of the frontier, it further demonstrates the heterogeneous narratives of self and belonging found in sites of orality and kinship that shape the hills in the present day. The book contributes to the historiography of law in colonial South Asia. It focuses on an understudied region that reveals intricacies of colonial law that are

How can the novel be a way to understand the development of nation-state borders? An important work in the intersections of law, literature, history, and migration, Stephanie DeGooyer's Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022) offers fascinating insight into understanding naturalization. Tracing the idea of naturalization as it can be understood as a legal fiction and through literary fiction, DeGooyer offers a compelling approach to understanding naturalization as a generative mechanism for national expansion. Through a careful and engaging analysis that spans from Mary Shelley to court proceedings, De Gooyer's Before Borders is a compelling read that will be of great interest for those interested in histories of migration, creative approaches to studying the state, and ways to approach law through and alongside literature. Stephanie DeGooyer is Assistant Professor and Frank Borden and Barbara Lasater Hanes Fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Liter

Germany and China: How Entanglement Undermines Freedom, Prosperity and Security (Bloomsbury, 2024) is a groundbreaking book, of which the findings have significant implications both for German-China relations and also in understanding the rising influence of autocratic China on liberal democracies globally. In today's interview, Associate Professor Andreas Fulda and I spoke about Germany's entanglement with China, and the extent of Germany's dependancies on China in terms of economics, technology, politics and academia. We spoke about the blind spots of policy makers and academics have, and the way that China policy is constructed and interpreted as a result. We also spoke about the implications for national security and German sovereignty, and the way that Germany entanglement with China is a warning sign for democratic states everywhere.  Dr Fulda is a political scientist and China scholar with a keen interest in the philosophy of science. You can listen to an interview about his previous book, The Struggle

In this episode of our occasional series, Postscript, we focus on the Supreme Court’s recently published decisions in two cases, about guns and abortion, but more about how the Executive and Judicial branches of government function in the United States. Constitutional Law scholar (and New Books in Political Science co-host) Susan Liebell takes us through Garland v. Cargill, which focused on the Trump Administration’s implementation of a prohibition against bump stocks for rifles following the deadly shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017. Liebell, a published expert on the Second Amendment and the long history of gun regulation in the United States, explains the thrust of the case, which is only tangentially connected to the Second Amendment, but calls into question the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm’s (ATF) expertise, particularly in context of the majority opinion’s decision that the ATF was not using its administrative power correctly. The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, may s

In recent years, philanthropy, the use of private assets for the public good, has come under renewed scrutiny. Do elite philanthropists wield too much power? Is big-money philanthropy unaccountable and therefore anti-democratic? And what about so-called "tainted donations" and "dark money" funding pseudo-philanthropic political projects? The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified many of these criticisms, leading some to conclude that philanthropy needs to be fundamentally reshaped to play a positive role in our future. In What is Philanthropy For? (Bristol University Press, 2023), Rhodri Davies examines why it's important to ask what philanthropy is for, as it has shaped our world for centuries. Considering the alternatives, including charity, justice, taxation, the state, democracy, and the market, he explores the pressing questions that philanthropy must tackle to be equal to the challenges of the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium m

In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today’s reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. Rana connects this widespread idolization to another relatively recent development: the rise of US global dominance. Ultimately, such veneration has had far-reaching consequences: despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home. Revealing how the current constitutional order was forged over the twentieth century, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them (U Chicago Press, 2024) also sheds light on an array of movement activists—in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics—who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. As time passed, these voices of opposition were excised from memory. Today, they offer essential insights that Rana reconstructs t

Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction? In recent years, politicians and advocates have sought to expand the use of conservatorships, a legal tool used to force someone deemed “gravely disabled,” or unable to meet their needs for food, clothing, or shelter as a result of mental illness, to take medication and be placed in a locked facility. At the same time, civil liberties and disability rights groups have seized on cases like that of Britney Spears to argue that conservatorships are inherently abusive. Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness (Columbia UP, 2023) is an incisive and compelling portrait of the functioning—and failings—of California’s conservatorship system. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with professionals, policy makers, families, and conservatees, Alex V. Barnard takes readers to the streets where police encounter homeless people in crisis, the locked wa

Chinese philanthropic foundations navigate a uniquely challenging terrain shaped by authoritarian governance. The Governance of Philanthropic Foundations in Authoritarian China: A Power Perspective (Routledge, 2022) examines these complexities, delivering a novel multilevel analysis of the power dynamics that underpin the governance of nonprofit organizations within an authoritarian context. Chinese philanthropic foundations, with their distinct democratic culture, grapple with a unique set of challenges. The government’s evolving methods of control often lead to stringent regulations that limit the foundations’ autonomy. Foundations that heavily rely on individual donations are particularly vulnerable to these pressures, potentially transforming into conduits of authoritarianism rather than champions of democratic values. This book offers a comprehensive and, at times, bleak picture of the conditions under which Chinese foundations operate, offering critical insights into the future trajectory of the nonprof

In Implications of Pre-Emptive Data Surveillance for Fundamental Rights in the European Union (Brill Nijhoff, 2023) Julia Wojnowska-Radzińska offers a comprehensive legal analysis of various forms of pre-emptive data surveillance adopted by the European legislator and their impact on fundamental rights. It also identifies what minimum guarantees have to be set up to recognize pre-emptive data surveillance as a legitimate measure in a democratic society. The book aims to answer the essential question of how to strike the proper balance between fundamental rights and security interests in the digital age. Caleb Zakarin is Editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Until 1900, most political parties in the United States chose their leaders – either in back rooms with a few party elites making decisions or in conventions. The direct primary, in which voters select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century Progressive movement. Intuitively, the direct primary sounds democratic. Voters directly select the candidates. They have more of say over who will ultimately represent or govern them. But decades of scholarship suggests that direct primaries might not have changed the outcomes of party nominations. The conventional wisdom is that as the strength of the Progressive movement declined and voters paid attention to other issues. Party leaders were able to reassert control over candidate selection. In Reform and Retrenchment: A Century of Efforts to Fix Primary Elections (Oxford UP, 2024), Dr. Robert G. Boatright insists this narrative is incorrect and misleading for contemporary efforts

In Do I Know You? From Faceblindness to Super Recognition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023), Dr. Sharrona Pearl explores the fascinating category of face recognition and the "the face recognition spectrum," which ranges from face blindness at one end to super recognition at the other. Super recognizers can recall faces from only the briefest exposure, while face blind people lack the capacity to recognize faces at all, including those of their closest loved ones. Informed by archival research, the latest neurological studies, and testimonials from people at both ends of the spectrum, Dr. Pearl tells a nuanced story of how we relate to each other through our faces. The category of face recognition is relatively new despite the importance of faces in how we build relationships and understand our own humanity. Dr. Pearl shows how this most tacit of knowledge came to enter the scientific and diagnostic field despite difficulties with identifying it. She offers a grounded framework for how we evaluate others

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the criminalization of all aspects of reproduction, pregnancy, abortion, birth, and motherhood in the United States. In her extensively researched monograph, Michele Goodwin recounts the horrific contemporary situation, which includes, for example, mothers giving birth shackled in leg irons, in solitary confinement, even in prison toilets, and in some states, women being coerced by the State into sterilization, in exchange for reduced sentences. She contextualises the modern day situation in America’s history of slavery and oppression, and also in relation to its place in the world. Goodwin shows how prosecutors abuse laws, and medical professionals are complicit in a system that disproportionally impacts the poor and women of color. However, Goodwin warns that these women are just the canaries in the coalmine. Not only is the United States the deadliest country in th

Judith Herman is renowned for her groundbreaking work with survivors of trauma, including sexual trauma. Her earlier books include Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (Basic Books, 2022) and Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard UP, 2000) The #MeToo movement brought worldwide attention to sexual violence, in both domestic and work settings. However, the movement did not address the crime of sexual violence in war, and the use of rape as a weapon of war. In fact, when these historical horrors were brutally used once again in October 2023, the #MeToo movement, and other feminist and anti-rape organizations responded - not with outrage- but with silence. In contrast, high profile, celebrity cases of sexual abuse and harasment in the U.S. and U.K. gained media coverage, with attention focused on the fates of a few notorious predators who were put on trial. We heard far less about the outcomes of those trials for the survivors of their abuse. Professor Herman maintain

In Seeking Truth in International News: China, CGTN and the BBC (Routledge, 2023) Dr Vivien Marsh analyses the differences between journalistic traditions in China and the West, and extent to which this impacts the ability of news media to hold power to account. This facilitates a fascinating account of the role of journalists in seeking truth from facts, and the way that public narratives of events are constructed. The book has extensive global coverage, and readers will come to understand the significance of both what is reported, and also the significance of scrutinising what is left out.  Dr Vivien Marsh is an independent academic researcher at The University of Westminster, UK. She is a former global news editor, reporter and writer.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal friend Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfill Kafka’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted his life to championing Kafka’s work, rescuing his legacy from both obscurity and physical destruction. Nearly a century later, an international legal battle erupted to determine which country could claim ownership: the Jewish state, where Kafka dreamed of living, or Germany, where Kafka’s three sisters perished in the Holocaust?  In Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy (Norton, 2019), Benjamin Balint offers a gripping account of the controversial trial in Israeli courts—brimming with dilemmas legal, ethical, and political—that determined the fate of Kafka’s manuscripts. Benjamin Balint, a fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is the author most recently of Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History (Norton), winner of a National Jewish Book Award. His book Kafka's Last Trial (Norton) won the S

Many of us know that immigrants have been deported from the United States for well over a century, but has anyone ever asked how? In The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020), author Adam Goodman brings together new archival evidence to write an expansive history of deportation from the United States that threads the late-nineteenth century through to the present. Goodman, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino studies as well as history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues that the “deportation machine” operated through three main mechanisms: formal deportations, voluntary departures, and self-deportations. But contrary to mainstream assumptions about the U.S. immigration system, the overwhelming majority of deportations throughout the 1900s have not been formal proceedings in immigration court, but instead administrative processes and informal fear campaigns that pushed immigrants out of the country. Our interview with Go

Aya Gruber, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, has written a history of how the women’s movement in America has shaped the law on domestic violence and sexual assault. In The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration (University of California Press, 2020), Professor Gruber contends that the legal reform movement on sexual assault began with feminists in the 19th century, who argued in favor of temperance reform, partly in the hope that it would lead to less violence against women. She also argues that the social context in which sexual assault allegations were made in the 19th century, especially regarding African-American males and white women, influenced the outcomes in legal cases and divided the feminists of the 19th century. Professor Gruber also addresses the fissures created in the women’s movement from the 1960s through today regarding how sexual assault should be treated under the law has worked against justice for both victims an