Government Law

Our legal system often feels like it only works for the rich and powerful - for those who have the means to use the courts to enforce their will and defend their interests. But we can fight back. Jolyon Maugham KC founded Good Law Project in 2017 with the belief that the law can also put power in the hands of ordinary people. . It has brought a series of landmark cases against a dishonest and increasingly autocratic government and won widespread acclaim in successfully reversing Boris Johnson's unlawful suspension of Parliament.

This book explores the powers, activities, and accountability of MI5 from the end of the Second World War to 1964. It argues that MI5 acted with neither statutory authority nor statutory powers, and with no obvious forms of statutory accountability. It was established as a counter-espionage agency, yet was beset by espionage scandals on a frequency that suggested if not high levels of incompetence, then high levels of distraction and the squandering of resources.

The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American...

In this alarming book, Fox News commentator Judge Napolitano makes the solid case that there is a pernicious and ever-expanding pattern of government abuse in America's criminal justice system, leading him to establish his general creed: "The government is not your friend." As an attorney, a law...

Candid and compelling, A Bigger Picture is the definitive narrative of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. He describes how he legalised same-sex marriage, established Snowy Hydro 2.0, stood up to Donald Trump and many achievements – remarkable in their pace and significance, and that they were delivered in the teeth of so much opposition. But it’s far more than just politics. Turnbull’s life has been filled with colourful characters and controversies, success and failure.

Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right.

One of three volumes responding to the 7 October attack, Law and Society begins with a legal and a genocide studies critique of the claim that Israel is genocidal; another reflects on the absence of an understanding of antisemitism in international legal discourse. There are reflections on experiences in the Palestine solidarity movement and on the twists that discourse there takes. Contributions draw on Judaism, feminism, and sociology to face what happened and to trace how Israelis were transported back to a quintessentially pre-Israel Jewish experience.

India has taken so sharp a turn in recent years that the very centre has shifted considerably. What led to this swing? Is it possible to trace the path to this point? Is there a way back to the just, secular, inclusive vision of our Constitution-makers?This country has long been an outlier in...

An investigative study of the far-right’s attack on education and an on-the-ground look at the parent activist battle, on either side of the debate, to control the future of public schools For well over a century, public schools have been a non-partisan gathering place and vital center of...

For most of the 20th century, the American founding has been presented as a struggle between social classes over issues arising primarily within, rather than outside, the United States. But in recent years, new scholarship has instead turned to the international history of the American union to interpret both the causes and the consequences of the US Constitution. Max M. Edling argues that the Constitution was created to defend US territorial integrity and the national interest from competitors in the western borderlands and on the Atlantic Ocean.

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses.

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered a seminal point in the battle to end segregation, but it was in fact the culmination of a decades-long legal campaign. Root and Branch is the epic story of the two fiercely dedicated lawyers who led the fight from county courthouses to the marble halls of the Supreme Court, and, in the process, laid the legal foundations of the civil rights movement.

A provocative history that reveals how guns - not abortion, race, or religion - are at the heart of America's cultural divide. Gunfight promises to be a seminal work in its examination of America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. Adam Winkler uses the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital, as a springboard for a groundbreaking historical narrative.

This is one of the true classics in world legal literature. Written by a master of law and language, it is a primary source book for anyone interested either in legal theory or political science. For the layman, it serves to clarify the very essence of the common law, the cornerstone of our present legal system.

The defense of human rights is often marked by ethical dilemmas, which are especially acute in Israel, where lawyers have for decades sought redress for the abuse of Palestinian rights in the country's High Court - that is, in the court of the abuser. In The Wall and the Gate, Michael Sfard chronicles this struggle - a story that has never before been fully told - and in the process engages the core principles of human rights legal ethics.

Read about the electrifying and continuing fight for voting rights—and discover your place in it—in this dramatic exploration of American democracy, from renowned thought leader Michael Eric Dyson and widely celebrated author Marc Favreau. One of the most important and least understood true...

Reservation or affirmative action is a hugely controversial policy in India. While constitutionally mandated and with historians, political scientists and social activists convinced of its need, many resist it and consider it as compromising 'merit' and against the principle of equality of...

An "admirable, courageous, and meticulously fair and honest book” (New York Times Book Review) in which “one of our most important and perceptive writers on race" (The Washington Post) takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. "This book should be a standard for all...

What ever happened to our inalienable rights? The Constitution was once the bedrock of our country, an unpretentious parchment that boldly established the God-given rights and freedoms of America. Today that parchment has been shred to ribbons, explains Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge...

The Law Says What? offers a crash course on some of the most bizarre, infuriating, and vitally important legal topics of today. Using real-world cases as a guide, you’ll explore laws that affect your everyday life and analyze the rationales behind the ones that might make your head spin. Your mind will be blown, and you’ll even find yourself laughing as you learn about the weird quirks of criminal law, civil law, contract law, property law, tort law, international law, and courtroom procedure.