Interviews with Scholars of the Law about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law
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Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 59 days 8 hours 39 minutes
Adam R. Shapiro, “Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Anti-Evolution Movement in American Schools” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
During the 1924-25 school year, John Scopes was filling in for the regular biology teacher at Rhea County Central High School in Dayton, Tennessee. The final exam was coming up, and he assigned reading from George W.
David Garland, “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition” (Harvard UP, 2010)
Why is it that the United States continues to enforce the death penalty when the rest of the Western world abolished its use a little over three decades ago? That question, along with many other equally important questions, is at the heart of Dr.
Michael F. Armstrong, “They Wished they were Honest: The Knapp Commission and New York City Police Corruption” (Columbia Press, 2012)
Anyone who studies police corruption will be aware of the Knapp Commission that examined allegations of police corruption in New York City in the 1970s. Not only was this famous because of the movie Serpico,
Thane Rosenbaum, “Payback: The Case for Revenge” (Chicago UP, 2013)
All humans have an emotionally-driven sense of fairness. We get treated unfairly and we get mad. It’s no wonder, then, that our laws–and those of almost everyone else–are intended to assure that people are treated fairly.
Steven J. Harper, “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis” (Basic Books, 2013)
A friend of mine who had just graduated from law school said “Law school is great. The trouble is that when you are done you’re a lawyer.” Steven J. Harper would, after a fashion, agree (though he would probably add that law schools are not that great)...
James Q. Whitman, “The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War” (Harvard UP, 2012)
James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrain...
Andrew Koppelman, “The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that had the potential to affect the economy in the near term more than any court case ever had.
Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez, “Math on Trial” (Basic Books, 2013)
You may well have seen “Numb3rs,” a TV show in which mathematicians help solve crimes. It’s fiction. But, as Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez show in their eye-opening new book Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Court Room (Basic Boo...
Daniel McCool, “The Most Fundamental Right: Contrasting Perspectives on the Voting Rights Act” (Indiana UP, 2012)
Daniel McCool, professor of political science at the University of Utah, is the editor of The Most Fundamental Right: Contrasting Perspectives on the Voting Rights Act (Indiana University Press, 2012). The VRA was one of the center pieces of the civil ...
Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help” (Basic Books, 2012)
In their book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It (Basic Books, 2012), Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr. present the following big idea: race preferences in higher education har...