From animal rights to anti-abortion, from tax resistance to anti-poverty, activists from across the political spectrum often deliberately break the law to further their causes. While not behaviors common to hardened or self-seeking criminals, the staging of civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, and direct action can nevertheless trigger a harsh response from law enforcement, with those arrested risking jail time and criminal records. Crimes of Dissent features the voices of these...
Defining the Family: Law, Technology, and Reproduction in an Uneasy Age provides a sweeping portrait of the family in American law from the nineteenth century to the present. The family today has come to be defined by individuality and choice. Pre-nuptial agreements, non-marital cohabitation, gay and lesbian marriages have all profoundly altered our ideas about marriage and family. In the last few years, reproductive technology and surrogacy have accelerated this process of change at a...
Inthis innovative and exhaustive study, Steven A. Ramirez posits that thesubprime mortgage crisis, as well as the global macroeconomic catastrophe itspawned, is traceable to a gross failure of law. Therule of law must appropriately channel and constrain the exercise of economicand political power. Used effectively, it ensures that economic opportunityisn’t limited to a small group of elites that enjoy growth at the expense ofmany, particularly those in vulnerable economic situations....
In this concise and detailed work, Salim Lamrani addresses questions of media concentration and corporate bias by examining a perennially controversial topic: Cuba. Lamrani argues that the tiny island nation is forced to contend not only with economic isolation and a U.S. blockade, but with misleading or downright hostile media coverage. He takes as his case study El País, the most widely distributed Spanish daily. El País (a property of Grupo Prisa, the largest Spanish media...
“Patrolling the neighborhoods of central Fort Worth, sorting through trash piles, exploring dumpsters, scanning the streets and the gutters for items lost or discarded, I gathered the city's degraded bounty, then returned home to sort and catalogue the take.”—From the IntroductionIn December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and, with a place to live but no real income, began an eight-month...
Since its founding, the United States has defined itself as the supreme protector of freedom throughout the world, pointing to its Constitution as the model of law to ensure democracy at home and to protect human rights internationally. Although the United States has consistently emphasized the importance of the international legal system, it has simultaneously distanced itself from many established principles of international law and the institutions that implement them. In fact, the American...
When Ezra Chipman brought fellow Canadian George Sternaman to board at his Buffalo home, he set in motion a nightmarish chain of events. Within months, Ezra was dead of a mysterious ailment. Then, shortly after marrying Ezra's widow Olive, George developed similar symptoms. Impoverished by George's long illness, the family moved to his mother's farm in Haldimand County, Ontario. There, in August 1896, 24-year-old George Sternaman died. After his funeral, Olive returned to Buffalo...
When a child-abuse scandal is uncovered at an unlicenced daycare in small-town Saskatchewan, it polarizes the community. Frann Harris, a rookie court reporter assigned to the trial the longest in Saskatchewan history starts to wonder if the scope of the alleged crimes is dwarfed by something even more startling: a botched police investigation and inappropriate courtroom procedures. Harris' narrative alternates between the stories of child sexual abuse and whimsical recollections of her own...
It has been said many times that the human future is clouded by multiple and mutually interacting problems. While in the 19th century we had the luxury of believing in almost automatic progress – an «onward and upward» assumption – that belief has been shattered by two world wars, more than 150 smaller ones, the invention of weapons of mass destruction, increasing degradation of the environment, both by pollution and resource exhaustion (i.e. adding «bads» and subtracting «goods» from our...