The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right

Sophia Z. Lee (University of Pennsylvania). The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

"Today, most Americans lack constitutional rights on the job. Instead of enjoying free speech or privacy, they can be fired for almost any reason or no reason at all. This book uses history to explain why. It takes readers back to the 1930s and 1940s when advocates across the political spectrum – labor leaders, civil rights advocates, and conservatives opposed to government regulation – set out to enshrine constitutional rights in the workplace. The book tells their interlocking stories of fighting for constitutional protections for American workers, recovers their surprising successes, explains their ultimate failure, and helps readers assess this outcome."

—Publisher's website

Deadly Censorship: Murder, Honor, and Freedom of the Press

James Lowell Underwood (University of South Carolina). Deadly Censorship: Murder, Honor, and Freedom of the Press (University of South Carolina Press, 2014).

"On January 15, 1903, South Carolina lieutenant governor James H. Tillman shot and killed Narciso G. Gonzales, editor of South Carolina's most powerful newspaper, the State. Blaming Gonzales's stinging editorials for his loss of the 1902 gubernatorial race, Tillman shot Gonzales to avenge the defeat and redeem his 'honor' and his reputation as a man who took action in the face of an insult. . . . Underwood offers a painstaking re-creation of an act of violence in front of the State House, the subsequent trial, and Tillman's acquittal, which sent shock waves across the United States. A specialist on constitutional law, Underwood has written the definitive examination of the court proceedings, the state's complicated homicide laws, and the violent cult of personal honor that had undergirded South Carolina society since the colonial era."

—Publisher's website

Judicial Review of National Security

David Scharia. Judicial Review of National Security (Oxford University Press, 2014).

"In Judicial Review of National Security, David Scharia explains how the Supreme Court of Israel developed unconventional judicial review tools and practices that allowed it to provide judicial guidance to the Executive in real-time. In this book, he argues that courts could play a much more dominant role in reviewing national security, and demonstrates the importance of intensive real-time inter-branch dialogue with the Executive, as a tool used by the Israeli Court to provide such review. This book aims to show that if one Supreme Court was able to provide rigorous judicial review of national security in real-time, then we should reconsider the conventional wisdom regarding the limits of judicial review of national security."

—Publisher's website

Hate Crime and Restorative Justice: Exploring Causes, Repairing Harms

Mark Austin Walters (University of Sussex). Hate Crime and Restorative Justice (Oxford University Press, 2014).

"The product of an 18 month empirical study which examined the use of restorative justice for hate crime in the United Kingdom, this book draws together theory and practice in order to examine the causes and consequences of hate crime victimisation. Hate Crime and Restorative Justice . . . also identifies the key process variables within restorative practice that can help to repair the harms of hatred. In doing so, it challenges commonly held conceptions of both 'hate crime' and 'restorative justice' through its use of qualitative research of restorative interventions across the UK."

—Publisher's website

Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America

Andre Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto & Alexander Laban Hinton (eds.). Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America (Duke University Press, 2014).

"This important collection of essays expands the geographic, demographic, and analytic scope of the term genocide to encompass the effects of colonialism and settler colonialism in North America. Colonists made multiple and interconnected attempts to destroy Indigenous peoples as groups. The contributors examine these efforts through the lens of genocide. . . . Contributors examine some of the most egregious assaults on Indigenous peoples and the natural environment, including massacres, land appropriation, the spread of disease, the near-extinction of the buffalo, and forced political restructuring of Indigenous communities. Assessing the record of these appalling events, the contributors maintain that North Americans must reckon with colonial and settler colonial attempts to annihilate Indigenous peoples."
—Publisher's website

Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United

Zephyr Teachout (Fordham University). Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard University Press, 2014).

"'Corruption in America,' includes plenty of the juicy stories . . . . We learn, for example, about a diamond-studded snuffbox that Louis XVI gave Benjamin Franklin, then our ambassador to France, and how the Revolutionary generation regarded this gift — the result of a noncontroversial custom in Europe — as a possible threat to republican virtue. We read about an officer of the Turkish government in the 1870s who agreed to sell the products of an American arms manufacturer to his government in exchange for a small consideration, and who then, having duly moved the units, went to court to have the deal enforced. Good stuff, all of it. . . . As you might have guessed, Teachout’s main target is the currently reigning money-in-politics doctrine of the Supreme Court, as defined mainly by Citizens United, the 2010 decision that struck down certain restrictions on political spending by corporations."

—Thomas Frank, New York Times

Men Who Batter

Nancy Nason & Barbara Fisher-Townsend (University of New Brunswick). Men Who Batter (Oxford University Press, 2014).

"Men who act abusively have their own story to tell, a journey that often begins in childhood, ripens in their teenage years, and takes them down paths they were hoping to never travel. Men Who Batter recounts the journey from the point of view of the men themselves. . . . The men's accounts of their lives are told within a broader framework of the agency where they have attended groups, and the regional coordinated community response to domestic violence, which includes the criminal justice workers (e.g., probation, parole, judges), and those who staff shelters and work in advocacy. Based on interview data with this wide array of professionals, we are able to examine how one community, in one western state, responds to men who batter."

—Publisher's website