Sorting Sexualities

Stefan Vogler, Sorting Sexualities: Expertise and the Politics of Legal Classification (University of Chicago Press, 2021). 

In the United States, when LGBTQ people seek asylum and when sexual offenders are evaluated for carceral placement, state actors must determine individuals' sexualities. Though these legal settings are diametrically opposed -- one a punitive assessment, the other a protective one -- they present the same question: how do we know someone's sexuality? In Sorting Sexualities, Stefan Vogler focuses specifically on these state classification processes to deftly unpack the politics of the techno-legal classification of sexuality in the U.S. 

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What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said

Helen M. Alvare, Jack M. Balkin, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Katherine Franke, Robert P. George, Sherif Gorges, John C. Harrison, Andrew Koppelman, Melissa Murray, Douglas NeJaime, Reva B. Siegel, Catherine Smith & Jeremy Waldron, What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Same-Sex Marriage Decision (Yale University Press, 2020). 

Jack Balkin and an all-star cast of legal scholars, sitting as a hypothetical Supreme Court, rewrite the famous 2015 opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. In eleven incisive opinions, the authors offer the best constitutional arguments for and against the right to same-sex marriage, and debate what Obergefell should mean for the future. 

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Queering Law and Order

Kevin Leo Yabut Nada, Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System (Lexington Books, 2020).

Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System examines the state of LGBTQ people within the criminal justice system. Intertwining legal cases, academic research, and popular media, Nadal reviews a wide range of issues -- ranging from historical heterosexist and transphobic legislation to police brutality to the prison industrial complex to family law. Grounded in Queer Theory and intersectional lenses, each chapter provides academic resource and call to action for readers who are interested in advocating for LGBTQ rights. 

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His Name is George Floyd

Robert Samuels & Toluse Olorunnipa, His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Struggle and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking, 2022).

His Name is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston’s housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country’s enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd’s family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd’s closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd’s America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world. 

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Championship Mock Trial

Hon. David Nelmark & Justin Berstein, Championship Mock Trial: The Guide for Students and Coaches (American Bar Association, 2022). 

Championship Mock Trial is the culmination of lessons learned and techniques developed by Judge David Nelmark and Professor Justin Berstein during their more than 50 years of combined experience. They have competed for and coached teams to dozens of championships and run hundreds of Middle School, High School, College, and Law School Mock Trial tournaments. Both are former presidents of the American Mock Trial Association. 

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