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New Biddle Acquisitions

January 07, 2015

New titles acquired by Biddle Law Library in the past month.

Economic and social rights after the global financial crises.

Edited by Aoife Nolan.
Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
K3820 .E26 2014.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.

“The global financial and economic crises have had a devastating impact on economic and social rights. These rights were ignored by economic policy makers prior to the crises and continue to be disregarded in the current ‘age of austerity’.

This is the first book to focus squarely on the interrelationship between contemporary and historic economic and financial crises, the responses thereto, and the resulting impact upon economic and social rights. Chapters examine the obligations imposed by such rights in terms of domestic and supranational crisis-related policy and law, and argue for a response to the crises that integrates these human rights considerations. The expert international contributors, both academics and practitioners, are drawn from a range of disciplines including law, economics, development and political science. The collection is thus uniquely placed to address debates and developments from a range of disciplinary, geographical and professional perspectives.”

 

Humanitarian intervention and legitimacy wars: seeking peace and justice in the 21st century

By Richard Falk.
Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2014.
Click hear to view ebook.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.

“In the aftermath of the Cold War there has been a dramatic shift in thinking about the maintenance of peace and security on a global level. This shift is away from a preoccupation with how to prevent major wars between sovereign states to a preoccupation about non-state transnational warfare and violence and strife within states in a world order that continues to be juridically and politically delimited by spatial ideas of national sovereignty and national independence as signified by international boundaries.

In this book, Richard Falk draws upon these changes to examine the ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention in the 21st Century. As well as analysing the theoretical and conceptual basis of the responsibility to protect, the book also contains a number of case studies looking at Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Syria. The final section explores when humanitarian intervention can succeed and the changing nature of international political legitimacy in countries such as India, Tibet, South Africa and Palestine.”

 

Patients with passports: medical tourism, law and ethics

By I. Glenn Cohen.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
K3607 .C64 2014.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.

“Medical tourism is a growing multi-billion dollar industry involving millions of patients who travel abroad each year to get health care. Some seek legitimate services like hip replacements and travel to avoid queues, save money, or because their insurer has given them an incentive to do so. Others seek to circumvent prohibitions on accessing services at home and go abroad to receive abortions, assisted suicide, commercial surrogacy, or experimental stem cell treatments.

In this book, author I. Glenn Cohen focuses on patients traveling for cardiac bypass and other legal services to places like India, Thailand, and Mexico, and analyzes issues of quality of care, disease transmission, liability, private and public health insurance, and the effects of this trade on foreign health care systems. He goes on to examine medical tourism for services illegal in the patient’s home country, such as organ purchase, abortion, assisted suicide, fertility services, and experimental stem cell treatments. Here, Cohen examines issues such as extraterritorial criminalization, exploitation, immigration, and the protection of children. Through compelling narratives, expert data, and industry explanations Patients with Passports enables the reader to connect with the most prevalent legal and ethical issues facing medical tourism today.”

 

Torture, power, and law

By David Luban, Georgetown University.
Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
KZ7170 .L83 2014.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.

“This volume brings together the most important writing on torture and the ‘war on terror by one of the leading US voices in the torture debate. Philosopher and legal ethicist David Luban reflects on this contentious topic in a powerful sequence of essays including two new and previously unpublished pieces. He analyzes the trade-offs between security and human rights, as well as the connection between torture, humiliation, and human dignity, the fallacy of using ticking bomb scenarios in debates about torture, and the ethics of government lawyers. The book develops an illuminating and novel conception of torture as the use of pain and suffering to communicate absolute dominance over the victim. Factually stimulating and legally informed, this volume provides the clearest analysis to date of the torture debate. It brings the story up to date by discussing the Obama administration’s failure to hold torturers accountable.”

 

Social media in the courtroom:  a new era for criminal justice?

By Thaddeus A. Hoffmeister.

Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2014.
Click here to view ebook.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.


“Social media hasn’t just changed society—it’s changing the way in which criminal law is prosecuted, defended, and adjudicated. This fascinating book explains how.

Can a Facebook page prove a defendant innocent, or a YouTube clip implicate a suspect?
While social media has become embedded in our society as a way to stay connected with friends, it serves another important purpose: to support the prosecution and defense of criminal cases. Social media is now used as proof of a crime; further, social media has become a vehicle for criminal activity. How should the law respond to the issue of online predators, stalkers, and identity thieves? This book comprehensively examines the complex impacts of social media on the major players in the criminal justice system: private citizens, attorneys, law enforcement officials, and judges. It outlines the many ways social media affects the judicial process, citing numerous example cases that demonstrate the legal challenges; and examines the issue from all sides, including law enforcement’s role, citizens’ privacy issues, and the principles of the Fourth Amendment. The author also shines a critical spotlight on how social media has enabled new types of investigations previously unimagined—some of which present ethical problems.
Features
  • Examines the criminal justice system from multiple perspectives in order to give fair attention to the successful uses of social media as well as the abuses
  • Comprehensively covers current issues that have broad, long-term repercussions for the criminal justice system
  • Provides a convenient overview of all the information related to social media and criminal law in one place
  • Cites relevant cases and statutes”

 

Corruption in America: from Benjamin Franklin’s snuff box to Citizens United

By Zephyr Teachout. 
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014. 
JK2249 .T43 2014.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.


“When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to ‘corrupt’ Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruption—rooted in ideals of civic virtue—was a driving force at the Constitutional Convention.

For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.

In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.”

 

Judicial politics in polarized times

By Thomas M. Keck. 
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014. 
KF8775 .K43 2014.

Click here to view the Full Catalog Record.

 

“When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, some saw the decision as a textbook example of neutral judicial decision making, noting that a Republican Chief Justice joined the Court’s Democratic appointees to uphold most provisions of the ACA. Others characterized the decision as the latest example of partisan justice and cited the actions of a bloc of the Court’s Republican appointees, who voted to strike down the statute in its entirety. Still others argued that the ACA’s fate ultimately hinged not on the Court but on the outcome of the 2012 election. These interpretations reflect larger stories about judicial politics that have emerged in polarized America. Are judges neutral legal umpires, unaccountable partisan activists, or political actors whose decisions conform to—rather than challenge—the democratic will?

Drawing on a sweeping survey of litigation on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, and gun rights across the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras, Thomas M. Keck argues that, while each of these stories captures part of the significance of judicial politics in polarized times, each is also misleading. Despite judges’ claims, actual legal decisions are not the politically neutral products of disembodied legal texts. But neither are judges ‘tyrants in robes,’ undermining democratic values by imposing their own preferences. Just as often, judges and the public seem to be pushing in the same direction. As for the argument that the courts are powerless institutions, Keck shows that their decisions have profound political effects. And, while advocates on both the left and right engage constantly in litigation to achieve their ends, neither side has consistently won. Ultimately, Keck argues, judges respond not simply as umpires, activists, or political actors, but in light of distinctive judicial values and practices.”