Showing titles in History

The Electoral College that governs America has been with us since 1804, when Thomas Jefferson's supporters redesigned it for his re-election. The Jeffersonians were motivated by the principle of majority rule. Gone were the days when a president would be elected by acclamation, as George Washington had been. Instead, given the emergence of intense two-party competition, the Jeffersonians wanted to make sure that the Electoral College awarded the presidency to the candidate of the majority, rather than minority, party. 

Clarence Darrow is the most celebrated criminal trial lawyer in American history. In the spring of 1911, organized labor implored Darrow to represent the McNamara brothers, two union iron workers charged with the murder of 20 employees arising out of the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building. Darrow and his wife Ruby's trip west quickly became a fight for survival.

Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.

Historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court's race record - a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. For nearly a century, the Court ensured that the 19th-century Reconstruction Amendments would not truly free and enfranchise African Americans. And the 21st century has seen a steady erosion of commitments to enforcing hard-won rights.

New York Times Bestseller Nr.1. Ausgezeichnet als Buch des Jahres von New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Esquire und Time. "Bryan Stevenson ist Amerikas junger Nelson Mandela" - Desmond Tutu "Ohne Gnade" ist eine kraftvolle, wahre Geschichte, die Rassismus und Diskriminierung einer Gesellschaft anprangert - ein aktuelles Problem nicht nur in den USA, sondern auch in Europa. Tausende Menschen in den USA sowie in der gesamten EU sind weiterhin mit Ungleichbehandlung, Polizeigewalt und Diskriminierung aufgrund der Rasse, Hautfarbe oder ethnischen Herkunft konfrontiert.

Since America's founding, the US Supreme Court had issued a vast number of decisions on a staggeringly wide variety of subjects. And hundreds of judges have occupied the bench. Yet as Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and best-selling co-author of Nudge, points out, almost every one of the Justices fits into a very small number of types regardless of ideology: the hero, the soldier, the minimalist, and the mute.

Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500.

A withering and witty examination of how the American legal system, burdened by complexity and untrammeled growth, fails Americans and threatens the rule of law itself, by the acclaimed author of A Generation of Sociopaths. Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do...

Racial hatred is one of the ugliest of human emotions. And the United States not only once condoned it, it also mandated it?wove it right into the fabric of American jurisprudence. Federal and state governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years and then denied blacks equal...

When Americans think of freedom, they often picture the open road. Yet nowhere are we more likely to encounter the long arm of the law than in our cars. Sarah Seo reveals how the rise of the automobile led us to accept - and expect - pervasive police power. As Policing the Open Road makes clear, this radical transformation in the nature and meaning of American freedom has had far-reaching political and legal consequences.

A concise, accessible, and engaging guide to the law of treason, written by the nation’s foremost expert on the subject The only crime defined in the United States Constitution, treason is routinely described by judges as more heinous than murder. Today the term is regularly thrown around by...

Varför hade Timbuktu noll kronor på sitt konto när det borde ha varit minst fem miljoner, och vart tog "The Cardigans" förmögenhet egentligen vägen? Flera band visade sig snart vara inblandade i det som kom att kallas Tambourinehärvan: "The Ark", "Weeping Willows", "Europe" och framför allt - "The Hives".

Os quilombos são muito mais do que histórias de resistência do passado; eles são a alma viva de uma luta por justiça que atravessa séculos e reverbera nos dias de hoje. Atualmente, segundo o Censo do IBGE de 2022, o Brasil abriga cerca de 7.666 comunidades quilombolas – e, com elas, um movimento que sustenta séculos de luta. Quilombolas estão na linha de frente em pautas essenciais como as mudanças climáticas, a educação e a justiça social, transformando diálogos sobre igualdade e antirracismo no país e no cenário internacional.

The first authorized biography of Soli Sorabjee ‘A gripping life story of a Goliath who strode the Indian legal canvass for nearly seventy years.’ – Mukul Rohatgi, former Attorney General of India ‘Superbly researched, this book by Abhinav Chandrachud is a must read. ‘ – Madhavi...

In 1974, Pan American Flight 806 was hoping to land safely in Pago Pago, Samoa, but instead plummeted at 140 miles per hour into the jungle floor. The 101 passengers and crew members all survived this devastating crash. Unfortunately, only four of them escaped the wreckage before the ensuing fire that followed and lived to tell their story. After the disaster, Pan American was found guilty of "willful misconduct" after the longest and most expensive trial in aviation history.

The strife and horrors of the Civil War in America were raw with the wounds of the war lasting for decades; and affecting those who lived in both the North and the South. As the nation struggled to find unity, the forces of darkness and of those who wished to rule through intimidation and terror, spread their wicked ways under the cover of white sheets. This is the story of the Ku Klux Klan and their chief brand: Lynchings, as told in the original newspaper stories from journals across the nation.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was the country's bloodiest civil disturbance of the century. Thirty city blocks were burned to the ground, perhaps 150 died, and the prosperous black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, was turned to rubble. Alfred L. Brophy draws on his own extensive research into contemporary accounts and court documents to chronicle this devastating riot, showing how and why the rule of law quickly eroded.

When a police officer stood at his bedroom door on August 3, 1982, Michael Hardwick had no idea that he would become an avatar of the gay rights movement. Arrested for sodomy, Hardwick sued for his right to privacy all the way to the Supreme Court, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic spiraled. When he lost, his era-defining case inspired a half-million people to protest against the Court. Today Bowers v. Hardwick continues to reverberate as the rights of privacy underpinning abortion, contraception, and same-sex relationships come under fire.

Even the most die-hard atheist would consent that justice was lacking in the trial of Jesus Christ. There was absolutely no appearance of compliance with the laws that were in place in any of Jesus' six separate trials.

Stan Moody's meticulous examination of the Brandon Drewry case serves as a stark reminder of the disparities in our criminal justice system. Through Drewry's story, Moody unveils the systemic failures that lead to unjust convictions and disproportionately harsh sentences. Joshua D'Alessio, MHA LADC CCS, Executive Director, Health Equity Alliance A poignant, in-depth study of an individual's struggle for justice. Should be required reading for judges, attorneys, and students of the law.