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Leadership on the Federal Bench: The Craft and Activism of Jack Weinstein by Jeffrey B. Morris
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011
KF373 .W3485 M67 2011 Balcony

Leadership on the Federal Bench: The Craft and Activism of Jack Weinstein chronicles one of the most influential American jurists since World War II. Judge Weinstein's impact on the law has been profound and lasting. In a wide-ranging series of judicial decisions encompassing torts, contracts, evidence, procedure, criminal law and the sentencing of convicted offenders, Weinstein has paved the way in making the law relevant to modern day America. Always controversial and provocative, Weinstein's scholarly legal opinions, treatises, law review articles and hundreds of other writings and speeches provide a blueprint of modern American law. This is a comprehensive study of a legal giant.

The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching by Michael J. Pfeifer
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011
HV6457 .P43 2011 Basement

A valuable, thoughtful, concise, and long overdue contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on lynching. Michael J. Pfeifer extends the historical treatment of lynching back in time and ties the history of mob violence to the broad currents of nineteenth-century American history. His work will be foundational to all subsequent scholarship on lynching, both before and after the Civil War.

The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law by Nancy Levit and Douglas O. Linder
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
KF300 .L485 2010 Reserve

In this important, insightful book, Nancy Levit and Douglas Linder have successfully unpacked the mystery of why so many lawyers seem to be living lives of silent desperation. In doing so, they offer many and varied paths to lawyer happiness. The Happy Lawyer's thoughtful analysis and practical prescriptions are a must-read for every lawyer, as well as for anyone considering attending law school.

All the Justice Money Can Buy: Corporate Greed on Trial by Snigdha Prakash
New York: Kaplan Pub., 2011
RA1242 .R64 P73 2011 Basement

One can read Snigdha Prakash's disturbing book on two levels: either as in-depth reporting of a major corporate scandal, or as a legal thriller, the denouement of which is left hanging until the final pages. All the Justice Money Can Buy is a superb read for the lawyer and the layman alike.

EU External Relations Law by Piet Eeckhout
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011
KJE5105 .E325 2011 Basement

EU External Relations Law will clearly be a central text for any course in the topical and increasingly popular area of the European Union's external relations law. It will be essential reading for government negotiators within and without the European Union, for practitioners and litigators as well as for students of international relations and of European law.

Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty by Kaaryn S. Gustafson
New York: New York University Press, 2011
KF3720 .G87 2011 Balcony

In Cheating Welfare, Kaaryn S. Gustafson provides insights into the history, social construction, and lived experience of welfare. She shows why cheating is all but inevitable--not because poor people are immoral, but because ordinary individuals navigating complex systems of rules are likely to become entangled despite their best efforts. Through an examination of the construction of the crime we know as welfare fraud, which she bases on in-depth interviews with welfare recipients in Northern California, Gustafson challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, welfare recipients, and crime control in the United States.

The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties by David K. Shipler
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011
JC599 .U5 S495 2011 Basement

In The Rights of the People, David Shipler does something extraordinary. He takes the guarantees in our Constitution and explores, on the ground, how they are actually being applied in the lives of Americans. The result is a wonderful book that shows how large a gap there is between constitutional promises and reality.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
New York: New Press ; Jackson, Tenn.: Distributed by Perseus Distribution, 2010
HV9950 .A437 2010 Basement

For every century there is a crisis in our democracy, the response to which defines how future generations view those who were alive at the time. In the 18th century it was the transatlantic slave trade, in the 19th century it was slavery, in the 20th century it was Jim Crow. Today, it is mass incarceration. Alexander's book offers a timely and original framework for understanding mass incarceration, its roots to Jim Crow, our modern caste system, and what must be done to eliminate it.

Inside the Castle: Law and the Family in 20th Century America by Joanna L. Grossman and Lawrence M. Friedman
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011
KF505 .G765 2011 Balcony

This wonderful history of twentieth-century family law blows like a strong fresh wind through the fog of myth that pervades debates over traditional families and their decline. Deeply learned but also clear and lively, Inside the Castle explains how the law of marriage, divorce, parentage, and inheritance has responded to social changes that have eroded old bonds of intimacy and dependence while creating new ones.

Why the Law Is So Perverse by Leo Katz
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011
K290 .K38 2011 Balcony

This is a tour de force of scholarship, demonstrating how disparate and often annoying elements of law have their roots in social choice theory. In most fields the best and most impressive scholarship demonstrates how seemingly independent phenomena have their roots in the same theoretical and empirical sources, and that is exactly what Katz does in Why the Law Is So Perverse. Katz shows that the impossibility of combining divergent views of the social good into a single normative order produces the intellectual tectonic stresses that lead to many of the law’s surface anomalies. For anyone who enjoys thinking deeply about law this book is highly recommended.