Libby Adler offers a comprehensive critique of the mainstream LGBT legal agenda in the United States, showing how LGBT equal rights discourse drives legal advocates toward a narrow array of reform objectives that do little to help the lives of the most marginalized members of the LGBT community.

Research and real-life examples that "lucidly connect some of the divisive social issues confronting us today to that thing we call 'the law'" ( Law and Politics Book Review).Law and society is a rapidly growing field that turns the conventional view of law as mythical abstraction on its head. Kitty Calavita brilliantly brings to life the ways in which law is found not only in statutes and courtrooms but in our institutions and interactions, while inviting ...

All over the world democratic reforms have brought power to the people-but under conditions where the people have little opportunity to think about the power that they exercise. Do we want a democracy inspired by Madison or by Madison Avenue? A democracy animated by deliberation or by manipulation? This book examines each of the principal democratic theories and makes the case for a democracy in which the people offer informed judgments about politics or policy. It then goes on toshow how ...

A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integrationMore than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial A...

The minuscule motion of a butterfly’s wings can trigger a tornado half a world away, according to chaos theory. Under the right conditions, small simple actions can produce large complex effects. In this timely and provocative book, Catharine A. MacKinnon argues that the right seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations.Butterfly Politics brings this incisive understanding of social c...

Stuart A. Scheingold's landmark work introduced a new understanding of the contribution of rights to progressive social movements, and thirty years later it still stands as a pioneering and provocative work, bridging political science and sociolegal studies. In the preface to this new edition, the author provides a cogent analysis of the burgeoning scholarship that has been built on the foundations laid in his original volume. A new foreword from Malcolm Feeley of Berkeley's Boalt Hall Sch...

What should we expect from democracy, and how likely is it that democracies will live up to those expectations? In The State of Democratic Theory, Ian Shapiro offers a critical assessment of contemporary answers to these questions, lays out his distinctive alternative, and explores its implications for policy and political action.Some accounts of democracy's purposes focus on aggregating preferences; others deal with collective deliberation in search of the common good. Sh...

The deeply entrenched patterns of racial inequality in the United States simply do not square with the liberal notion of a nation-state of equal citizens. Uncovering the false promise of liberalism, State of White Supremacy reveals race to be a fundamental, if flexible, ruling logic that perpetually generates and legitimates racial hierarchy and privilege.Racial domination and violence in the United States are indelibly marked by its origin and ongoing development as an em...

In The Name of Hate is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory of hate crimes, arguing for an expansion of the legal definitions that most states in the U.S. hold. Barbara Perry provides an historical understanding of hate crimes and provocatively argues that hate crimes are not an aberration of current society, but rather a by-product of a society still grappling with inequality, difference, fear, and hate.

The Politics of Law is the most widely read critique of the nature and role of the law in American society. This revised edition continues the book's concrete focus on the major subjects and fields of law. New essays on emerging fields and the latest trends and cases have been added to updated versions of the now-classic essays from earlier editions.A unique assortment of leading scholars and practitioners in law and related disciplines-political science, economics, sociology, cri...

"A cornucopia of knowledge and insight on the biggest questions in the sociolegal tradition . . . an invaluable resource for researchers and teachers." —Michael McCann, Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship, University of WashingtonLaw and society scholars challenge the common belief that law is simply a neutral tool by which society sets standards and resolves disputes. Decades of research shows how much the nature of communities, organiz...

**The definitive reckoning with Affirmative Action, one of America’s most explosively contentious and divisive issues—from “one of our most important and perceptive writers on race and the law.”—The Washington Post“A clear-eyed take on America’s battle over affirmative action and diversity.... [Kennedy] goes straight at the issue with fearlessness and a certain cheekiness.” —Los Angeles Times**“Compelling.... Powerful.” —Wall Street Journal