Government Law

One promise of democracy is the right of every citizen to vote. And yet, from our founding, strong political forces were determined to limit that right. The Supreme Court, Alexander Hamilton wrote, would protect the weak against this very sort of tyranny. Still, as On Account of Race forcefully demonstrates, through the better part of American history the Court has instead been a protector of white rule. And complex threats against the right to vote persist even today.

When we think of Constitutional law, we invariably think of the US Supreme Court and the federal court system. Yet much of our constitutional law is not made at the federal level. In 51 Imperfect Solutions, US Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton argues that American Constitutional law should account for the role of the state courts and state constitutions, together with the federal courts and the federal Constitution, in protecting individual liberties.

A must-listen for the informed citizen, The Impeachment Power argues that impeachment is ultimately a political instrument and gives us the perspective we need to recognize when an impeachment might be useful and when we are better served by looking for alternative ways to solve our political problems.

Kropotkin's Law and Authority (1900) is a classic statement of anarchist thought. Considering prisons as “schools of crime”, he presents an anarchist critique of the law and the criminal-justice system.

Ottobre 2020: per la prima volta nella storia della magistratura un ex membro del Csm viene radiato dall'ordine giudiziario. Chi è Luca Palamara? Una carriera brillante avviata con la presidenza dell'Associazione nazionale magistrati a trentanove anni. A quarantacinque viene eletto nel Consiglio superiore della magistratura e, alla guida della corrente di centro, Unità per la Costituzione, contribuisce a determinare le decisioni dell'organo di autogoverno dei giudici.

When Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court in 1991, he found with dismay that it was interpreting a very different Constitution from the one the framers had written - the one that had established a federal government manned by the people's own elected representatives, charged with protecting citizens' inborn rights while leaving them free to work out their individual happiness themselves, in their families, communities, and states.

Imagine having everything taken away from you - permanently - with no hope of resuming a normal life. This is the case for many teenagers in America who are tried and convicted as adults for the crime of murder. Here Susan Kuklin takes you behind bars for frank interviews with a collection of young men who will spend the better part of their lives in jail. She lets them speak for themselves, providing the raw details of their incarceration and the anger, despair, and surprising hope they experience every day. Kuklin also provides an in-depth look at the American penal system, highlighting its many intricacies and inequities while focusing on capital cases involving juveniles.

Discover the truth about the Second Amendment, the NRA, and the United States' centuries-long fight over guns in this first-of-its-kind book for middle-grade listeners. Hana Bajramovic's Whose Right Is It?: The Second Amendment and the Fight over Guns reveals how a once obscure amendment became the focus of daily heated debate. The book will show young listeners how gun legislation has always been a part of American history and how money, power, and race have long dictated our ability to own guns.

Over the last 30 years, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies has grown from a small group of disaffected conservative law students into an organization with extraordinary influence over American law and politics. Although the organization is unknown to the average citizen, this group of intellectuals has managed to monopolize the selection of federal judges, take over the Department of Justice, and control legal policy in the White House.

In Prosecuting the President, Andrew Coan offers a highly engaging look at the long, mostly forgotten history of special prosecutors in American politics. For more than a century, special prosecutors have struck fear into the hearts of presidents, who have the power to fire them at any time. How could this be, Coan asks? And how could the nation entrust such a high responsibility to such subordinate officials? With vivid storytelling and historical examples, Coan demonstrates that special prosecutors can do much to protect the rule of law under the right circumstances.

The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and Lincoln's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency. Lincoln and Taney's bitter disagreements began with Taney's Dred Scott opinion in 1857, when the chief justice declared that the Constitution did not grant the black man any rights that the white man was bound to honor.

In this dispatch from exile, Hong Kong political activist Nathan Law explores the meaning of freedom - and shows how easily freedoms can be eroded or dismantled. Freedom is fragile - it is not a given, and each generation must fight to protect it, whether in emerging democracies or in the Western world, where freedom is too often taken for granted.

Labor unions and courts have rarely been allies. From their earliest efforts to organize, unions have been confronted with hostile judges and antiunion doctrines. In this book, Julius G. Getman argues that while the role of the Supreme Court has become more central in shaping labor law, its opinions betray a profound ignorance of labor relations along with a persisting bias against unions.

In his most important book to date, award-winning author Timothy Ferris — “the best popular science writer in the English language today” (Christian Science Monitor) — makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of liberalism and democracy.

Although Montaigne’s writing resists easy analysis, Montaigne includes seven essays before he even explicitly states the purpose of the Essays. Manent finds in it a subtle unity, and demonstrates both the philosophical depth of Montaigne’s reflections and the distinctive and even radical character of his central ideas.

From the late 19th century through the 1930s, scholars of politics defined and continually reoriented their field in response to the political imperatives of the racial order at home and abroad as well to as the vagaries of race science. The Gilded Age scholars who founded the first university departments and journals located sovereignty and legitimacy in a "Teutonic germ" of liberty planted in the new world by Anglo-Saxon settlers and almost extinguished in the conflict over slavery.

Is the Great Reset the scheme of a vast global elite to control the lives of ordinary people or a well-intentioned but dangerously misguided approach to correct systemic ills? In The Greater Reset, Greaney and Brohawn trace the historical, religious, political, and economic roots of humanity’s perilous condition and how returning to God-given, universal principles of natural law, with equal access to the institutions of the common good, can help build a more just, liberating, prosperous, and hopeful future for every person.

Walter Frank tackles, in a comprehensive but lively manner, subjects rarely treated in one volume. Aiming at both the general listener and students of political science, law, or history, Frank begins with a brief discussion of the nature of constitutional law and why the Court divides so closely on many issues. He then proceeds to an analysis of the Constitution and subsequent amendments, placing them in their historical context.

The Supreme Court has never simply evaluated laws and arguments in light of permanent and immutable constitutional meanings, and social, moral, and yes, political ideas have always played into Supreme Court justices' impressions of how they think a case should be decided. Mark Tushnet traces the ways constitutional thought has evolved from the liberalism of the New Deal and Great Society to the Reagan conservatism that has been dominant since the 1980s.

The Washington Post’s must-read guide to health-care reform traces how President Obama and the Democrats achieved this historic overhaul, explains the legislation itself, and shows how it will impact individual Americans.