Featuring a multicast narrationPercival Everett meets Sinners in this gripping, haunting novel of history, rebellion, and the unpredictable nature of truthWhen antiquarian Malcolm Washington is sent to a decaying plantation home on Johns Island, South Carolina, his mission is simple: authenticate and acquire a shackle rumored to have been used on Denmark Vesey, the legendary leader of a thwarted slave rebellion. But the task proves...

A gripping novel of history, rebellion, and the unpredictable nature of truthWhen antiquarian Malcolm Washington is sent to a decaying plantation home on Johns Island, South Carolina, his mission is simple: authenticate and acquire a shackle rumored to have been used on Denmark Vesey, the legendary leader of a thwarted slave rebellion. But the task proves far more complicated than Malcolm could have imagined. The shackle’s owner, the enigmatic Mrs. Manigault—the la...

'Is it possible to be both a judge and a feminist?' Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions answers that question in the affirmative by re-writing seminal opinions that implicate critical dimensions of criminal law jurisprudence, from the sexual assault law to provocation to cultural defences to the death penalty. Right now, one in three Americans has a criminal record, mass incarceration and over-criminalization are the norm, and our jails cycle through about ten million peopl...

By re-writing US Supreme Court opinions that implicate critical dimensions of racial justice, Critical Race Judgments demonstrates that it's possible to be judge and a critical race theorist. Specific issues covered in these cases include the death penalty, employment, voting, policing, education, the environment, justice, housing, immigration, sexual orientation, segregation, and mass incarceration. While some rewritten cases – Plessy v. Ferguson (which constitutionalized Jim Crow) and Ko...

The #1 New York Times -bestselling legal thriller writer delivers "the most convincing, levelheaded analysis of [the death penalty] I have encountered" ( The Washington Post ).Scott Turow is known to millions as the author of peerless novels about the troubling regions of experience where law and reality intersect. In "real life," as a respected criminal lawyer, he has been involv...

A groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone knows about but no one knows.“One of the marvels of Robin’s razor-sharp book is how carefully he marshals his evidence. . . . It isn’t every day that reading about ideas can be both so gratifying and unsettling.”**—**The New York TimesMost people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of s...

When news breaks that a convicted murderer, released from prison, has killed again, or that an innocent person has escaped the death chamber in light of new DNA evidence, arguments about capital punishment inevitably heat up. Few controversies continue to stir as much emotion as this one, and public confusion is often the result. This volume brings together seven experts--judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and philosophers--to debate the death penalty in a spirit of open inquiry and civil discu...

The sixth edition of the classic and concise account of the US Supreme Court, its history, and its place in American politics.For more than fifty years, Robert G. McCloskey's classic work on the Supreme Court's role in constructing the US Constitution has introduced generations of students to the workings of our nation's highest court.As in prior editions, McCloskey's original text remains unchanged. In his historical interpretation, he argues that the streng...

From a prize-winning Harvard legal scholar, “a damning portrait” (New York Review of Books) of the misdemeanor machine that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminalsPunishment Without Crime offers an urgent new perspective on inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massiv...

The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Constitutional Law presents an accessible introduction to the enduring topics of American constitutional law, including judicial review, methods of interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, equal protection, and individual liberties. One of the most important functions performed by the American Constitution and the more than two centuries' worth of cases interpreting it is the allocation of decision-making. Professor Dorf and Professor...

"Thou shalt not kill" is arguably the most basic moral and legal principle in any society. Yet while some killers are pilloried and punished, others are absolved and acquitted, and still others are lauded and lionized. Why? The traditional answer is that how killers are treated depends on the nature of their killing, whether it was aggressive or defensive, intentional or accidental. But those factors cannot explain the enormous variation in legal officials' and citizens' responses to real-...

Should the Supreme Court have the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution? The justices on the Supreme Court certainly seem to think so--and their critics say that this position threatens democracy. But Keith Whittington argues that the Court's justices have not simply seized power and circumvented politics. The justices have had power thrust upon them--by politicians, for the benefit of politicians. In this sweeping political history of judicial supremacy in America, Whit...