Biddle acquired a number of interesting and informative titles in June 2014, including the following. For a complete list of new acquisitions, see here.
“By relying on private enterprise more than any other developed nation, American health care has all the appearances of the free-market in action. And for more than a hundred years, attempts to reform this system (including President Obama’s Affordable Care Act) have been met with opposition from parties warning against the stifling effect of government intervention.
Mother of Invention traces the government’s role in building four key health care sectors into the financial powerhouses they are today: pharmaceuticals, hospitals, the medical profession, and private insurance. It traces their history, surveys their growth, and highlights some of their greatest success stories, which together reveal the indispensable role of public initiatives in contemporary private health care.”
“‘Great cases like hard cases make bad law,’ declared Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his dissenting opinion in the Northern Securities antitrust case of 1904. In Do Great Cases Make Bad Law?, Lackland H. Bloom, Jr. tests Justice Holmes’ dictum by analyzing in detail the history of the Supreme Court’s great cases, from Marbury v. Madison in 1803, to National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case, in 2012. He treats each case with its own chapter, and explains why the Court found a case compelling, how the background and historical context affected the decision and its place in constitutional law and history, how academic scholarship has treated the case, and how the case integrates with and reflects off of Justice Holmes’ famous statement. In doing so, Professor Bloom draws on the whole of the Supreme Court’s decisional history to form an intricate scholarly understanding of the holistic significance of the Court’s reasoning in American constitutional law.”
“The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?” What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think.
Yes, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship. Rules have replaced leadership in America. Bureaucracy, regulation, and outmoded law tie our hands and confine policy choices. Nobody asks, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Instead, they wonder, “What does the rule book say? ”There’s a fatal flaw in America’s governing system—trying to decree correctness through rigid laws will never work.
Public paralysis is the inevitable result of the steady accretion of detailed rules. America is now run by dead people—by political leaders from the past who enacted mandatory programs that churn ahead regardless of waste, irrelevance, or new priorities. America needs to radically simplify its operating system and give people—officials and citizens alike—the freedom to be practical. Rules can’t accomplish our goals. Only humans can get things done. In The Rule of Nobody Philip K. Howard argues for a return to the framers’ vision of public law—setting goals and boundaries, not dictating daily choices. This incendiary book explains how America went wrong and offers a guide for how to liberate human ingenuity to meet the challenges of this century.”
“China’s recent economic transformation and integration into the world economy has coincided with increasing pressure for corporate law reform to make corporate social responsibility (CSR) integral to business and management strategy in China. This timely book critically analyses contemporary notions of CSR in China, discussing theory and practice alongside legal responses in this emerging field.
Jingchen Zhao uniquely combines the history, traditions and social policies of China with Chinese law, explaining the significance of path dependence in China. He presents an in-depth debate on the difficulties involved in transplanting developed legal principles directly into Chinese society, and takes a detailed look at the CSR provisions in Chinese company law which aimed to put social and environmental concerns onto the corporate agenda. He suggests how these laws could be more effectively and efficiently enforced with reference to UK law, and explores specific issues including: Chinese Company Law 2006; the ‘Harmonious Society’ in China; the 2008 Financial Crisis and its impact on the Chinese economy; and recent corporate scandals including the Sanlu Baby Milk scandal, the Wenchuan earthquake and CSR donations, the Beijing Olympic Games and CSR, and the Fujia chemical plant.”
“Intellectual property is one of the most valuable forms of property in the modern world. From the perspective of companies producing knowledge-intensive goods, it encourages technological innovations for the benefit of humanity. For consumers of technology, it can be seen as a restriction on access to knowledge that inflates corporate rents. When genetic material crucial for human life is isolated from the commons, engineered and turned into private intellectual property, dissent is likely to emerge.
Felipe Filomeno uses the case of Monsanto in South American soybean agriculture to theorize about the emergence and change of intellectual property regimes. Based on official documents, interviews, journalistic material, and academic literature, the study shows not only the relations of competition, coercion, and alliances that lie behind the post-1980 global upward ratchet of intellectual property protection but also the strategies that have the potential to reverse it.”
“Confronted with today’s global interdisciplinary challenges, international economic law offers a myriad of legal tools to provide both procedural and substantive solutions. Frontiers of International Economic Law: Legal Tools to Confront Interdisciplinary Challenges will appeal to those interested in the general theory of international economic law, but also readers looking for innovative answers to practical questions will also be pleased to find a broad array of topics structured along four frontier themes: facing economic crises and uncertainties, confronting environmental challenges, considering human rights and development objectives, and finally, regulating energy transit and new technologies. The contributions presented here will help to push forward, through promoting and developing the rule of law, the – at times contentious – frontiers of international economic law.”
“This book provides analysis and critique of the dual protection of human rights in Europe by assessing the developing legal relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The book offers a comprehensive consideration of the institutional framework, adjudicatory approaches, and the protection of material rights within the law of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It particularly explores the involvement and participation of stakeholders in the functioning of the EU and the ECtHR, and asks how well the new legal model of ‘the EU under the ECtHR’ compares to current EU law, the ECHR and general international law.
Including contributions from leading scholars in the field, each chapter sets out specific case-studies that illustrate the tensions and synergies emergent from the EU-ECHR relationship. In so doing, the book highlights the overlap and dialectic between Europe’s two primary international courts. The book will be of great interest to students and researchers of European Law and Human Rights.”