Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures: The Creation of Women's Caucuses

Anna Mitchell Mahoney (Tulane University), Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures: The Creation of Women's Caucuses (Temple University Press 2018).

"How do women strategically make their mark on state legislatures? Anna Mitchell Mahoney’s book traces the development of women’s state legislative caucuses and the influence both gender and party have on women’s ability to organize collectively. She provides a comprehensive analysis of how and why women organize around their gender identity in state legislatures—or why they do not. . . . Mahoney also provides insights into broad questions regarding gendered institutions, collective action, and political party governance. Women Take Their Place in State Legislatures fills a lacuna in the evaluation of women in government."

– Publisher's description

The Free Speech Century

Lee C. Bollinger (Columbia University) and Geoffrey R. Stone (University of Chicago Law School), The Free Speech Century (Oxford University Press 2018).

“In The Free Speech Century, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone have gathered a group of the nation’s leading legal scholars to evaluate the evolution of free speech doctrine since Schenk and to assess where it might be headed in the future. Since 1919, First Amendment jurisprudence in America has been a signal development in the history of constitutional democracies. Publishing on the 100^th anniversary of Schenk, this volume will serve as an essential overview for anyone interested in how our understanding of the First Amendment transformed over time and why it continues to change to this day.”

–Publisher’s description

Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers

Jill Norgren (John Jay College of Criminal Justice), Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers: Lives in the Law (NYU Press 2018).

“This remarkable volume collects the life and career stories of a hundred female lawyers, all part of the so-called ‘second wave’ of the movement, this is the period after women gained suffrage and other full citizenship rights…. a vast collaborative effort of oral history taking and writing, now organized with an historian’s fine hand. It will be useful for years to all scholars of legal profession as a model and an inspiration.” 

– Barbara Babcock, Crown Professor Emerita, Stanford Law School

Law and the Visual

Desmond Manderson (Australian National University), ed., Law and the Visual: Representations, Technologies, and Critique (University of Toronto Press 2018).

“ . . .  legal theorists, art historians, and critics come together to present new work examining the intersection between legal and visual discourses. Proceeding chronologically, the volume offers leading analyses of the juncture between legal and visual culture as witnessed from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries.”   
– book jacket 

"Desmond Manderson’s Law and the Visual marks a significant development in visual studies of law. Manderson moves readers across centuries, cultural contexts, and visual media. There is nothing like this book!"

– Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

The Long Reach of the Sixties

Laura Kalman (University of California, Santa Barbara), The Long Reach of the Sixties: LBJ, Nixon, and the Making the Contemporary Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2018).

“The 2016 election removed the last shred of doubt that the Supreme Court has become an important spoil of electoral success. But this is not truly a brand new phenomenon. Laura Kalman demonstrates the role that the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon--- those quintessential figures of the turbulent 1960s---played in this process. Drawing on many newly available primary sources, she sets out in wonderfully accessible prose the way that Supreme Court appointments became a key aspect of presidents’ attempt to realize their agendas for the nation. In turn, the presidents’ opponents felt empowered to mobilize as never before in order to defeat appointments. This is not only a seminal work in American history; it also enables us to understand why nominations are likely to generate ever more bitter contention.”  

– Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair, University of Texas School of Law 

Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law

Hugh Collins (Oxford) & Tarunabh Khaitan (Oxford), eds., Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law (Bloomsbury / Hart 2018).

“Indirect discrimination (or disparate impact) concerns the application of the same rule to everyone, even though that rule significantly disadvantages one particular group in society. Ever since its recognition by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1971, liberal democracies around the world have grappled with the puzzle that it can sometimes be unfair and wrong to treat everyone equally. The law's regulation of private acts that unintentionally (but disproportionately) harm vulnerable groups has remained extremely controversial, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. In original essays in this volume, leading scholars of discrimination law from North America and Europe explore the various facets of the law on indirect discrimination, interrogating its foundations, history, legitimacy, purpose, structure, and relationship with other legal concepts.” 

– book jacket