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In this book, the first to offer a comprehensive examination of the emerging study of law as literature, Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg show that law is not only a scheme of social order, but also a process of creating meaning, and a crucial dimension of modern culture. They present lawyers as literary innovators, who creatively interpret legal authority, narrate disputed facts and hypothetical fictions, represent persons before the law, move audiences with artful rhetoric, and invent new legal forms and concepts. Binder and Weisberg explain the literary theories and methods increasingly applied to law, and they introduce and synthesize the work of over a hundred authors in the fields of ...
The felony murder doctrine is one of the most widely criticized features of American criminal law. Legal scholars almost unanimously condemn it as irrational, concluding that it imposes punishment without fault and presumes guilt without proof. Despite this, the law persists in almost every U.S. jurisdiction. Felony Murder is the first book on this controversial legal doctrine. It shows that felony murder liability rests on a simple and powerful idea: that the guilt incurred in attacking or endangering others depends on one's reasons for doing so. Inflicting harm is wrong, and doing so for a bad motive—such as robbery, rape, or arson—aggravates that wrong. In presenting this idea, Guyora Binder criticizes prevailing academic theories of criminal intent for trying to purge criminal law of moral judgment. Ultimately, Binder shows that felony murder law has been and should remain limited by its justifying aims.
A field-defining study of the novel as a tragic form. Sandra Macpherson's groundbreaking study of the rise of the novel connects its form to developments in liability law across the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. In particular, Macpherson argues for a connection to legal principles of strict liability that hold persons accountable for harms inflicted upon others in the absence of intention, consent, direct action, or foreknowledge. In convincing polemical readings of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, she shows that these laws share with the novel the view that the state of a person's mind is irrelevant to the question of her responsibility for her actions. Macpherson urges readers to rethink the ancient consensus that the novel differs from tragedy in its elevation of character over plot. She concludes that the realist novel is ultimately a tragic form, committed to holding persons accountable for accidents of fate. Macpherson's original insights continue to have a broad and lasting impact on the study of the novel.
Explores different examples of unpunished homicides and what these tell us about the interaction of law and society.
This engaging and accessible book focuses on high-profile criminal trials and examines the strategy of the lawyers, the reasons for conviction or acquittal, as well as the social importance of these famous cases.
Private Security and the Law, Fourth Edition, is a unique resource that provides a comprehensive analysis of practices in the security industry as they relate to law, regulation, licensure, and constitutional questions of case and statutory authority. It is an authoritative, scholarly treatise that serves as a solid introduction for students regarding the legal and ethical standards that shape the industry. The book takes you step-by-step through the analysis of case law as it applies to situations commonly faced by security practitioners. It describes the legal requirements faced by security firms and emphasizes the liability problems common to security operations, including negligence and ...
In this study of literature and law before and since the Civil War, Stephen M. Best shows how American conceptions of slavery, property, and the idea of the fugitive were profoundly interconnected. The Fugitive's Properties uncovers a poetics of intangible, personified property emerging out of antebellum laws, circulating through key nineteenth-century works of literature, and informing cultural forms such as blackface minstrelsy and early race films. Best also argues that legal principles dealing with fugitives and indebted persons provided a sophisticated precursor to intellectual property law as it dealt with rights in appearance, expression, and other abstract aspects of personhood. In t...
Discussions of punishment typically assume that punishment is criminal punishment carried out by the State. Punishment is, however, a richer phenomenon and it occurs in many contexts. This book contains a general account of punishment which overcomes the difficulties of competing accounts. Recognizing punishment's manifoldness is valuable not merely in contributing to conceptual clarity, but in that this recognition sheds light on the complicated problem of punishment's justification. Insofar as they narrowly presuppose that punishment is criminal punishment, most apparent solutions to the tension between consequentialism and retributivism are rather unenlightening if we attempt to apply them in other contexts. Moreover, this presupposition has given rise to an unwieldy variety of accounts of retributivism which are less helpful in contexts other than criminal punishment. Treating punishment comprehensibly helps us to better understand how it differs from similar phenomena, and to carry on the discussion of its justification fruitfully.
Criminal Law: Case Studies & Controversies eschews traditional reliance on judicial opinions in favor of an innovative and dynamic method of criminal law instruction centered on statutory interpretation and case studies. Examination of real-world problems allows first-year law students to not only develop familiarity with the criminal law doctrine necessary for potential careers as prosecutors or defense attorneys but also hone crucial skills for lawyering generally. Provocative case studies provide background for engaging class discussion and challenge students to tackle applying doctrine in real-world situations. When useful, the book provides actual cases from a variety of jurisdictions t...
Fiercely committed to the separation of church and state, thoroughly pluralistic, largely secular: Where does a society like ours find common terms for conducting a moral debate? In view of the crises surrounding the issue of abortion, it is tempting to answer: nowhere. In this timely and provocative book, Elizabeth Mensch and Alan Freeman urge that we challenge the extremes of both the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" views of the abortion issue and affirm the moral integrity of compromise. Attempting to restore a level of complexity to the discussion and to enrich public debate so that we may move beyond our current impasse, the authors argue that it is essential to understand how issues of leg...