Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000

Andrew Fitzmaurice (University of Sydney), Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

"This book analyses the laws that shaped modern European empires from medieval times to the twentieth century. Its geographical scope is global, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Poles. Andrew Fitzmaurice focuses upon the use of the law of occupation to justify and critique the appropriation of territory. He examines both discussions of occupation by theologians, philosophers and jurists, as well as its application by colonial publicists and settlers themselves. Beginning with the medieval revival of Roman law, this study reveals the evolution of arguments concerning the right to occupy through the School of Salamanca, the foundation of American colonies, seventeenth-century natural law theories, Enlightenment philosophers, eighteenth-century American colonies and the new American republic, writings of nineteenth-century jurists, debates over the carve up of Africa, twentieth-century discussions of the status of Polar territories, and the period of decolonisation." 
—Publisher's description

The Economics of Race in the United States

Brendan O'Flaherty (Columbia University), The Economics of Race in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2015).


"Brendan O’Flaherty brings the tools of economic analysis—incentives, equilibrium, optimization, and more—to bear on contentious issues of race in the United States. In areas ranging from quality of health care and education, to employment opportunities and housing, to levels of wealth and crime, he shows how racial differences among blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans remain a powerful determinant in the lives of twenty-first-century Americans. More capacious than standard texts, The Economics of Race in the United States discusses important aspects of history and culture and explores race as a social and biological construct to make a compelling argument for why race must play a major role in economic and public policy. People are not color-blind, and so policies cannot be color-blind either." 
—Publisher's description

International Water Law and the Quest for Common Security

Bjørn-Oliver Magsig (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research). International Water Law and the Quest for Common Security (Routlidge, 2015).

"The world’s freshwater supplies are squeezed by rapidly increasing demand, the impacts of global climate change and unsustainable management. Given the fact that water is the gossamer linking various other security issues – e.g., energy, food and environment – it seems obvious that ‘business as usual’ in transboundary water management will threaten future global stability and endanger the very foundation of international security. Yet, the much needed radical new approach is missing. This is mainly due to the fact that addressing water insecurity is a highly complex task where multilevel and polycentric forces must be balanced and coordinated. The absence of law in much of this emerging debate highlights the necessity for further understanding and elucidation, especially from the legal perspective."
—Publisher's description

Retrieving Realism

Hubert Dreyfus & Charles Taylor (U.C. Berkeley & McGill University), Retrieving Realism (Harvard University Press, 2015).

"According to Descartes, knowledge exists in the form of ideas in the mind that purportedly represent the world. This 'mediational' epistemology—internal ideas mediating external reality—continues to exert a grip on Western thought, and even philosophers such as Quine, Rorty, and Davidson who have claimed to refute Descartes remain imprisoned within its regime. As Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor show, knowledge consists of much more than the explicit representations we formulate. We gain knowledge of the world through bodily engagement with it—by handling things, moving among them, responding to them—and these forms of knowing cannot be understood in mediational terms. Dreyfus and Taylor also contest Descartes’s privileging of the individual mind, arguing that much of our understanding of the world is necessarily shared."
—Publisher's description