New Books In Law

Bianca Premo’s award-winning book The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, makes a powerful yet seemingly simple claim: during the eighteenth century, illiterate ordinary litigants in colonial Spanish America created enlightened ideas and practices by suing their social superiors in higher numbers and with novel claims. By focusing on civil suits undertaken by women, indigenous groups, and the enslaved, Premo demonstrates a gradual shift from a justice-oriented system—focused on extralegal outcomes and casuistic jurisprudence—to a Enlightened law-oriented system—where ordinary litigants based their claims on natural rights, merit, and freedom. Such a transformation expanded through varied and diverse geographies; from metropolitan cities such as Mexico City and Lima, to rural indigenous regions of Oaxaca, and smaller, ethnically diverse, provincial cities such as Trujillo in Peru. As listeners will hear, The Enlightenme

Marijuana. Weed. Cannabis. Pot. Whatever term you use, this intoxicant and medical product leads to long discussions. Emily Dufton visits the podcast to talk about the ups and downs and highs and lows of cannabis in the United States, all detailed in her book Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). She sheds light on the pro-marijuana activism in the 1970s and anti-marijuana parents' movement in the 1980s. Overall, she recounts a fascinating story about the acceptance of demonization of weed and what this suggests about the present moment.Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent scholarship locates the origins of mass incarceration in national anticrime policy from 1960 to 1990, and has drastically reframed the “punitive turn” in American politics as bipartisan. But how then, do we reckon with the fact that most police policy and funding is determined locally? In his new book, Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago From Red Summer to Black Power (UNC Press, 2019), Simon Balto argues that local police department policies and procedures left black Chicagoans “overpoliced and underprotected” far before mass incarceration began. Machinations in municipal politics is therefore essential to understanding how and why Chicago has been a flashpoint in national conversations about police.Building a picture of the carceral state from the bottom up, Balto shows that it was not Lyndon Johnson’s War on Crime, or Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs that turned the Chicago Police into an abusive and racist institution, but rather city and police officials’ response to the Great Migrations. Polic

In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Paul Finkelman, President of Gratz College, about his book Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court(Harvard University Press, 2018). Finkelman is a specialist on the history of slavery and the law. He is also the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than fifty books on a broad range of topics including American Jewish history, American legal history, constitutional law, and legal issues surrounding baseball.The three most important Supreme Court Justices before the Civil War―Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney and Associate Justice Joseph Story―upheld the institution of slavery in ruling after ruling. These opinions cast a shadow over the Court and the legacies of these men, but historians have rarely delved deeply into the personal and political ideas and motivations they held. In Supreme Injustice, the distinguished legal historian Pa

Kevin Baron’s new book, Presidential Privilege and the Freedom of Information Act (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), is a fascinating analysis of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and how this act, passed in the 1960s and signed by President Lyndon Johnson, has changed the ways that both the Executive Branch and the Legislature operate and engage with each other. Baron dives into the history of information and the role that access to information plays in supporting democracy. He explains much of the debate over freedom of information from the time of the Founding to the contemporary disputes about executive privilege and Congress’s right to information. By tracing the evolution of presidential privilege through the post-World War II period, the Cold War, the Red Scare, and the Watergate scandal, Baron examines the ways in which presidents and administrations have protected information, often in the name of national security, and the ways in which the Legislative branch has pursued access to that same inf

Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic, published by New York University Press in 2019. Vagrants and Vagabonds focuses on the control over poor migrants’ mobility and how their movement shaped ideas of class, race, and status in the United States. Examining how local and state government’s criminalized vagrancy, O’Brassill-Kulfan illustrates that the vagrant, whether real of a figment of people’s imaginations, were crucial to the development of the state and ideas about community.Dr. O’Brassill-Kulfan is an instructor of public history at Rutgers University. She specializes in early American social and legal history, as well as public history.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his book, De-Moralizing Gay Rights: Some Queer Remarks on LGBT+ Rights Politics in the US(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Cyril Ghosh interrogates three arenas of debate over LGBT+ rights in the contemporary American landscape—debates over and critiques of pinkwashing, the recent US Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and Kenji Yoshino’s concept of gay covering. Ghosh is associate professor of political science at Wagner College and was the original host of the New Books in Political Science podcast.In each case, Ghosh identifies a tension in the promotion of LGBT+ rights, from both liberal and radical perspectives, demonstrating that these discourses often (re/)produce their own assimilationist logics. Drawing on queer theoretical frameworks, Ghosh ultimately argues for an approach to theorizing rights that takes seriously the project of resisting and dismantling assimilationist demands.The podcast is co-hosted by Heath Brown and Emily Crandall.Heath Brown is associate professor of public polic

In 1970s America, politicians began "getting tough" on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America (Princeton University Press, 2017) sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period.When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The arc

Are we in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance? If so, what can we learn about the present moment through the history of psychedelic experiments in the past? Matt Oram discusses contemporary debates about LSD and MDMA and brings much-needed context with his new book, The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Oram talks about the role of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry as well the field of drug regulation. He underlines, too, that the history of psychedelics is a lot more complicated than researchers have previously suggested. Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

How the rise of the car, the symbol of American personal freedom, inadvertently led to ever more intrusive policing-with disastrous consequences for racial equality in our criminal justice system. 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: How Cars Transformed American Freedom (Harvard University Press, 2019) makes clear, this radical transformation in the nature and meaning of American freedom has had far-reaching political and legal consequences. Before the twentieth century, most Americans rarely came into contact with police officers. But with more and more drivers behind the wheel, police departments rapidly expanded their forces and increased officers' authority to stop citizens who violated traffic laws. The Fourth Amendment-the constitutional protection against unreaso

Cynthia Nicoletti is the author of Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Secession on Trial examines the post-Civil War United States as its people attempted to navigate a world where one question continued to loom overhead: Was secession constitutional? Nicoletti illustrates how the lead up to the treason trial for former Confederate President Jefferson Davis gripped the nation, as Americans debated law, war, and the Constitution.Nicoletti is the Class of 1966 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cynthia Nicoletti is the author of Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Secession on Trial examines the post-Civil War United States as its people attempted to navigate a world where one question continued to loom overhead: Was secession constitutional? Nicoletti illustrates how the lead up to the treason trial for former Confederate President Jefferson Davis gripped the nation, as Americans debated law, war, and the Constitution.Nicoletti is the Class of 1966 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jessica Lowe is the author of Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Murder in the Shenandoah follows the criminal case against John Crane, a member of a prominent Virginian family, for the murder of a harvest worker employed by a neighbor. Lowe’s book looks at the pressing debates of the time over what equality before the law meant. By telling the story through the eyes of those involved in the case, Lowe illustrates how revolutionary debates about law became a central issue in the early years of the United States.Dr. Lowe teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, and specializes in 18th and 19th-century American legal history.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Erman is the author of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Almost Citizens recounts the story of how Puerto Rico came to be part of the United States empire at the turn of the 20th Century. More specifically, Erman looks at how Puerto Ricans, U.S. legislators, presidents, judges, and a bevy of other people debated how Puerto Rico would be incorporated into the United States. The nexus for this debate centered on whether or not Puerto Ricans would be full citizens of the United States. Erman’s study illustrates the myriad of ways in which constitutional change occurs outside of the judiciary, showing how everyday people contributed to a radical shift in constitutional meanings of terms such as citizenship, alien, territory, and empire. The debates he shows within his book had a long lasting impact for the island and its people; an impact which is still felt today.Sam Erman is Professor of Law at the University of Southern Califor

Anne Twitty is the author of Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Before Dred Scott looks at numerous freedom suits filed in the St. Louis circuit court in order to examine the legal history of slavery and freedom. In this area, known as the American Confluence, a unique legal culture developed characterized by a sophisticated and widespread knowledge of formal law. From enslaved people to slaveholder, Twitty illustrates the many ways people in this area were deeply enmeshed in law.Twitty is Associate Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. She studies 19th century American social and cultural history. More specifically, Twitty works on legal and labor history, slavery and freedom, gender and women’s history, and the history of the South and Midwest.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kimberly Welch is the author of Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Welch is Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Her book explores the history of free and enslaved black Americans use of local courts in the Cotton South. Largely focused on unpublished and unexplored lower court records from the Natchez district of Mississippi and Louisiana between 1800 and 1860, Dr. Welch’s study highlights the many ways black Americans were able to utilize a system, which was stacked against them, for their own benefit.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide (University of Minnesota Press, 2019),Benjamin Meiches takes a novel approach to the study of genocide by analyzing the ways in which ideas, concepts, and understandings about what genocide is and how it is to be prevented have become entrenched politically and intellectually. At the center of this analysis is what Meiches refers to throughout his text as the hegemonic understanding of genocide. Using what Michel Foucault describes as genealogy, Meiches set out to evaluate the process by which the concept of genocide has become intelligible. In doing so, Meiches offers significant evidence in support of many of the emerging critiques of the field of genocide studies. Meiches also inspires reflective and introspective thinking regarding the ways in which genocide scholarship contributes to the maintenance of a hegemonic understanding of genocide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

Bourbon whiskey has been around since nearly the beginning of the United States. Given that longevity, it has been part of the corporate law of the United States since the beginning of the corporate law of the United States.My guest today Brian Haara traces that interconnection in his new book Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America (Potomac Book, 2018). “Bourbon,” Haara writes, “is responsible for the growth and maturation of many substantive areas of the law, such as trademark, breach of contract, fraud, governmental regulation and taxation, and consumer protection.” As Brian traces the influence of bourbon on American legal history, and of litigation on the history of American bourbon, he also provides tasting notes for bourbons with connection to the cases he’s discussing. It’s an especially nice touch in a very nice book. Cheers!Al Zambone is a historian and the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. You can subscribe to Historically Thinking on Apple Podcasts.Learn more about your ad choices

Focusing on six major Supreme Court cases during the 1960s and 1970s, Marc Stein's book Sexual Injustice (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) examines the generally liberal rulings on birth control, abortion, interracial marriage, and obscenity in Griswold, Eisenstadt, Roe, Loving, and Fanny Hill alongside a profoundly conservative ruling on homosexuality in Boutilier. In the same era in which the Court recognized special marital, reproductive, and heterosexual rights and privileges, it also upheld an immigration statute that classified homosexuals as "psychopathic personalities." Stein shows how a diverse set of influential journalists, judges, and scholars translated the Court's language about marital and reproductive rights into bold statements about sexual freedom and equality.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Louis Wilken, the William R. Kenan Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, has written an intellectual history of the ideas surrounding freedom of religion.  Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom (Yale University Press, 2019) offers a revisionist history of how the ideas of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion originated in the writings of the Christian fathers of the early Church, such as Tertullian and Lactantius, during the period when Christians were a persecuted sect of the Roman Empire.  Wilken argues that it was not the political theorists of the Enlightenment who invented religious freedom in response to the wars of the Reformation, but rather the participants of the Reformation itself, including both Protestant and Catholic thinkers, who recovered ideas from the Roman-era Church fathers and used them to develop arguments about religious liberty for both individuals and faith communities.  Wilken demonstrates t