Social Systems

In the first edition of A Country Called Prison, Mary Looman and John Carl presented persuasive data calling for downsizing of America's prisons. Their novel approach continues in their second edition, shifting the beliefs many people have about prisons and their role in the American society. Since the original edition was published, the landscape of incarceration has been changing.

Almost every society has professional judges, but from ancient Athens to modern Asia, cultures have wanted ordinary people involved in legal decisions. The use of juries comes with challenges; societies must determine how to select jurors, what cases jurors should decide and by what rules, and how to inform jurors about the law and evidence. This Very Short Introduction shows how and why societies around the world have used juries, charting the spread of the twelve-person jury from England to the British colonies in America, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean.

Bestsellerautor Albrecht Müller zeigt, dass und wie sich die Verhältnisse grundlegend verschlechtert haben. Die Revolution ist überfällig! Aber leider im Grundgesetz nicht vorgesehen... Der Idee nach haben wir eine schöne Demokratie, tatsächlich aber verhärtete Verhältnisse: Die Einkommen sind ungerecht verteilt. Große Vermögen in wenigen Händen und Finanzkonzerne beherrschen die Wirtschaft. Die Parteien sind programmatisch entkernt, die Medien konzentriert und meist angepasst. Frieden? Gemeinsame Sicherheit?

Guaranteed to give the listener a deeper understanding of America’s most powerful judicial body, John Yoo, professor of law at UC Berkeley, and Robert Delahunty, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas, detail in sprightly, slightly irreverent manner how the black-robed judges who make up the U.S. Supreme Court have swung like a pendulum from saviors of the Republic to super-legislators who usurp the roll of Congress and dictate law from the bench, back to defenders of the Constitution again—or at least for the moment.

There are moments in American history when all eyes are focused on a federal court: when its bench speaks for millions of Americans, and when its decision changes the course of history. More often, the story of the federal judiciary is simply a tale of hard work: of finding order in the chaotic system of state and federal law, local custom, and contentious lawyering. The Federal Courts is a story of all of these courts and the judges and justices who served on them, of the case law they made, and of the acts of Congress and the administrative organs that shaped the courts.

The courthouse is an important part of every story of mass incarceration in America and, too often, it is a place of powerlessness for those facing criminal charges, their families, and their communities. But the courthouse can also be an important site of resistance, a place where Americans affected by incarceration can become agents of change—even though they are not lawyers or judges.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, Daniel W. Drezner, like so many others, looked at the smoking ruins of the global economy and wondered why global economic governance structure had failed so spectacularly, and what could be done to reform them in the future. But then a funny thing happened. As he surveyed their actions in the wake of the crash, he realized that the evidence pointed to the exact opposite conclusion: global economic governance had succeeded.

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court released two interlocked abortion decisions overturning the laws of all the individual states. Only one of the decisions, Roe v. Wade, tends to get much media attention, and it is popularly said that it grants a "woman's right to choose". But Justice Blackmun is in several places very adamant: Though it had been explicitly sought, he was not granting to women the "right to choose". In Doe v. Bolton, the second and often unexamined companion decision, Blackmun is explicit. The right he is granting is to the doctor.

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.

Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. In Mr. Lancaster's System, Adam Laats tells the story of how this abusive, scheming reformer fooled the world into believing his system could provide free high-quality education for poor children. The system never worked as promised, but thanks to real work done by students, teachers, and families, Lancaster's failed reforms eventually led to the creation of the modern public school system.

Toxic Water, Toxic System exposes the consequences of a seemingly anonymous authoritarian state willing to maintain white supremacy at any cost—including poisoning an entire city and shutting off water to thousands of people. Weaving together narratives of frontline activists along with archival data, Michael Mascarenhas provides a powerful exploration of the political alliances and bureaucratic mechanisms that uphold inequality.

Inside Strafprozess. Täglich sollen sie den moralischen Verfall unserer Gesellschaft verhindern, doch wie finden Richter zu ihrem Urteil? Und mit welchen Herausforderungen sind sie dabei konfrontiert? Strafrichter Patrick Burow gewährt seltene Einblicke in den Gerichtssaal. "Auf hoher See und vor Gericht ist dein Leben in Gottes Hand", weiß der Volksmund. Doch wie denkt und arbeitet ein Richter? Und wie findet er zu einem gerechten Urteil ? Spiegel-Bestseller-Autor Patrick Burow ist Richter aus Leidenschaft. In seinem neuen Buch blickt er hinter die Kulissen deutscher Gerichte.

19 Jahre saß Marco Bülow im Bundestag. Offen und eindringlich berichtet er in seinem neuen Buch von seinen konkreten Erfahrungen im Parlament und zeigt ...

Courtroom 302 is the fascinating story of one year in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse, the busiest felony courthouse in the country. Here we see the system through the eyes of the men and women who experience it, not only in the courtroom but in the lockup, the jury room, the judge's chambers, the spectators' gallery. From the daily grind of the court to the highest-profile case of the year, Steve Bogira's masterful investigation raises fundamental issues of race, civil rights, and justice in America.

The 1018 presents the African Love/Wisdom System of the Laws of One—The works of Army Special Forces Veteran Obalajii Khephren Rust. What was a chance meeting during the Vietnam war sent Obalajii Khephren Rust on a 40-year journey in search of metaphysical principles that underlie everyday life. Over the course of 40 years Obalajii Khephren Rust produced thousands of pages of handwritten 'fact-sheets' on the 11 areas of human activity: economics, education, war, sex, politics, labor, entertainment, law, metaphysics, religion and energetics.

Since the Supreme Court's 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, this judicial review has been highly deferential: courts must uphold agency interpretations of unclear laws as long as these interpretations are "reasonable." But the Chevron doctrine faces backlash from constitutional scholars and, now, from Supreme Court justices who insist that courts, not administrative agencies, have the authority to say what the law is. Recognizing that Congress cannot help relying on agencies to carry out laws, Merrill rejects the notion of discarding the administrative state.

This book looks at 13 different legal systems, ranging from Imperial China to modern Amish: how they worked, what problems they faced, how they dealt with them. Some chapters deal with a single legal system, others with topics relevant to several, such as problems with law based on divine revelation or how systems work in which law enforcement is private and decentralized.

In this path-breaking volume, engagingly written for the general public, psychiatrist Jeffrey Kahn reveals that the Angst of anxiety and depression ultimately results from our transformation, over tens of thousands of years, from biologically shaped, almost herd-like prehistoric tribes, to rational and independent individuals in modern civilization. Because of our Reason, we don't choose to act like sheep.

America’s criminal justice system perpetuates profound social and racial harms. But despite growing recognition of its destructiveness, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage be undone? In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates for change provide us with tools to move from critique to action and from despair to hope. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring a wide range of bold but practical interventions.

A "profound", heart-wrenching story of violence, grief, and the American justice system, explored through the story of one teenager (Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted). In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car...