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The disenchantment of secular discourse
Steven D. Smith
Prominent observers complain that public discourse in America is shallow and unedifying -- This debased conditions often attributed to, among other things, the resurgence of religion in public life. Steven D. Smith argues that this diagnosis has the matter backwards: it is not primarily religion but rather the strictures of secular rationalism that have drained our modern discourse of force and authenticity. Thus Rawlsian public reason filters appeals to religion or other comprehensive doctrines out of public deliberation. But these restrictions have the effect of excluding our deepest normative commitments, virtually assuring that the discourse will be shallow. Furthermore, because we cannot defend our normative positions without resorting to convictions that secular discourse deems inadmissible, we are frequently forced to smuggle in those convictions under the guise of benign notions such as freedom and equality. Smith suggests that this sort of smuggling is pervasive in modern secular discourse. He shows this by considering a series of controversial, contemporary issues, including the Supreme Court's assisted-suicide decisions, the harm principle, separation of church and state, and freedom of conscience. He concludes by suggesting that it is possible and desirable to free public discourse of the constraints associated with secularism and public reason.
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Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law
Larry Alexander, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, and Stephen J. Morse
This book presents a comprehensive overview of what the criminal law would look like if organized around the principle that those who deserve punishment should receive punishment commensurate with, but no greater than, that which they deserve. Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan argue that desert is a function of the actor's culpability and that culpability is a function of the risks of harm to protected interests that the actor believes he is imposing and his reasons for acting in the face of those risks. The authors deny that resultant harms, as well as unperceived risks, affect the actor's desert. They thus reject punishment for inadvertent negligence as well as for intentions or preparatory acts that are not risky. Alexander and Ferzan discuss the reasons for imposing risks that negate or mitigate culpability, the individuation of crimes, and omissions. They conclude with a discussion of rules versus standards in criminal law and offer a description of the shape of criminal law in the event that the authors' conceptualization is put into practice
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Racial Justice in the Age of Obama
Roy L. Brooks
With the election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States, the issue of racial justice in America occupies center stage. Have black Americans finally achieved racial justice? Is government intervention no longer required? Racial Justice in the Age of Obama considers contemporary civil rights questions and theories, and offers fresh insights and effective remedies for race issues in America today. While there are now unprecedented opportunities for talented African Americans, Roy Brooks shows that lingering deficiencies remain within the black community. Exploring solut
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Labor and Employment Law and Economics
Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Seth D. Harris, and Orly Lobel
The economic analysis of labor and employment law is a bold effort to apply economic theory to explain important empirical facts about the regulation of the employment relationship and to provide positive predictions and normative analyses that are useful to policy-makers. This book draws together 24 chapters, by leading scholars in the field, summarizing the important theoretical and empirical work that has been done to date on a wide spectrum of labor and employment law topics including: regulating employment contracts, unions, collective bargaining, minimum wages, health insurance, executive pay, workers’ compensation, unemployment, occupational health and safety, discrimination, needs of families, training and slave labor, to name but a few.
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The Little White Book of Baseball Law
John H. Minan and Kevin Cole
From free agency and scalping tickets, to the infamous Bartman Ball, this book has it all. The game of baseball has often resulted in brawls, both on the field and in the courtroom, and from the 1890's on, much of what baseball is today has been shaped by the law. In eighteen chapters, this eye-opening book discusses cases that involved rules of the game, new stadium construction, ownership of baseball memorabilia, injured spectators, television contracts, and much more.
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Polyphonic Federalism: Toward the Protection of Fundamental Rights
Robert Schapiro
The relationship between the states and the national government is among the most contested issues in the United States. And questions about where power should reside, how decisions should be made, and how responsibility should be allocated have been central to the American experiment in federalism. In Polyphonic Federalism, Robert A. Schapiro defends the advantages of multiple perspectives in government, arguing that the resulting “polyphony” creates a system that is more efficient, democratic, and protective of liberties.
This groundbreaking volume contends that contemporary views of federalism are plagued by outmoded dualist notions that seek to separate state and federal authority. Instead, Schapiro proposes a polyphonic model that emphasizes the valuable interaction of state and federal law, one that more accurately describes the intersecting realities of local and national power. Through an analysis of several legal and policy debates, Polyphonic Federalism demonstrates how a multifaceted government can best realize the potential of federalism to protect fundamental rights.
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Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundations of Liberalism
Horacio Spector
Moral and political theorists who espouse egalitarianism and Marxism tend to assume that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to put forward an original and plausible moral justification of classical liberalism. Horacio Spector is concerned to build just such a justification. He reconstructs and then criticizes a familiar approach to the moral foundations of classical liberalism which rests on the maximization of negative freedom, and then frames an alternative theory centered in the obligation to protect positive freedom. In so doing, he parts company not only with utilitarianism and contractarianism, but also with the theory of natural rights. Among the topics he discusses are the concepts of negative and positive freedom, the notion of a moral right, the connection between positive freedom and personal autonomy, the axiological uniqueness of each human being, and the agent-relativity of moral reasons.
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Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations
Roy L. Brooks
Roy Brooks reframes one of the most important, controversial & misunderstood issues of modern times in this reassessment of the debate on black reparation. He shifts the focus from the backward-looking question of compensation for victims to a more forward-looking opportunity for racial reconciliation
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Teacher's manual to accompany international business transactions: a problem-oriented coursebook
Ralph H. Folsom, Michael W. Gordon, and John A. Spanogle
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Civil Rights Litigation: Cases and Perspectives
Roy L. Brooks, Gilbert Paul Carrasco, and Michael Selmi
The third edition of Civil Rights Litigation retains the basic organization and many distinctive features of the previous editions, including its broad coverage and diversity of viewpoints. Brooks, Carrasco, and Selmi expose students to many different forms of discrimination, including education, housing, employment, voting, disability, language and ethnicity, police activities, and affirmative action. The book’s opening chapter offers a historic overview of civil rights litigation and raises several recurring themes in civil rights theory, including race versus class, the identity question, civil rights perspectives, and “anti-civil rights” perspectives.
As in the previous editions, cases are presented with a minimum amount of editing to facilitate sophisticated class discussion or role-playing in which students argue the cases in class. Principal changes in the third edition include the usual updating of cases and secondary material as well as the restructuring of sections in several chapters.
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NAFTA and free trade in the Americas: a problem-oriented coursebook
Ralph H. Folsom, Michael W. Gordon, and David A. Gantz
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The Rule of Rules: Morality, Rules, and the Dilemmas of Law
Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin
Rules perform a moral function by restating moral principles in concrete terms, so as to reduce the uncertainty, error, and controversy that result when individuals follow their own unconstrained moral judgment. Although reason dictates that we must follow rules to avoid destructive error and controversy, rules—and hence laws—are imperfect, and reason also dictates that we ought not follow them when we believe they produce the wrong result in a particular case. In The Rule of Rules Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin examine this dilemma. Once the importance of this moral and practical conflict is acknowledged, the authors argue, authoritative rules become the central problems of jurisprudence. The inevitable gap between rules and background morality cannot be bridged, they claim, although many contemporary jurisprudential schools of thought are misguided attempts to do so. Alexander and Sherwin work through this dilemma, which lies at the heart of such ongoing jurisprudential controversies as how judges should reason in deciding cases, what effect should be given to legal precedent, and what status, if any, should be accorded to “legal principles.” In the end, their rigorous discussion sheds light on such topics as the nature of interpretation, the ancient dispute among legal theorists over natural law versus positivism, the obligation to obey law, constitutionalism, and the relation between law and coercion
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