New Books in Law

Latest Episodes:

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025) Mar 09, 2026

Show notes

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by the women's liberation movement after 1970, marked a deep shift, transforming public discourses. Yet this principle remained fiercely contested, and moderate and conservative actors responded by foregrounding notions of 'reproductive responsibility', or the expectation that individuals perform the 'right' sexual and family-making behaviour, benefiting not only themselves and their families, but the nation at large. Such responsibilisation underpinned the legal reforms of the 1960s-70s, framing a notion of reproductive citizenship based on a tension between individual rights and social norms. Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980(Oxford UP, 2025) breaks new ground by taking an intersectional approach to the defining moments of this period: the legalisation of contraception (the laws of 1967 and 1974) and the liberalisation of abortion (1975, 1979). Drawing on a wide range of sources and actors - including feminist and family planning movements, government actors, demographers, medical-professional organisations, disability rights groups, and key actors in the overseas departments - Maud Bracke demonstrates how the discourse of responsibilisation allowed actors to distinguish between citizens 'worthy' of reproductive rights and those seen as less worthy. Bracke analyses the distinct regulations regarding contraception in the overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, framed by racialised anti-natalism. The book also demonstrates that disability rights organisations contributed to the discrediting of the notion of 'eugenic abortion', used among experts and policy-makers until the early 1970s. Furthermore, Bracke goes on to highlight the silence in the feminist movement around both disability rights and race as part of its universalisation of women's conditions of oppression, and analyses the emergence of Black Feminism in late-1970s France. In so doing, the book offers a major contribution to the history of sex, gender, family life, healthcare, demography, and political debate in post-war France, and more generally.

Guest Dr. Maud Bracke is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Glasgow, and is also the author of Which Socialism? Whose Detente? West European Communism and the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968 in 2007 and Women and the Reinvention of the Political: Feminism in Italy (1968-1983) in 2014, as well as the co-editor of Translating Feminism: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Text, Place and Agency in 2021. In addition to authoring numerous journal articles and book chapters and co-editing several special issues of academic journalsb she is also an editor at the Journal of Modern European History and sits on various other editorial boards.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript in progress on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Amy Littlefield, "Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights" (Legacy Lit, 2026) Mar 06, 2026

Show notes

In Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights(Legacy Lit, 2026) reporter Amy Littlefield investigates the secret killers and hidden motives behind the death of abortion rights. They are going to kill people, investigative reporter for The Nation Littlefield knew, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As a journalist covering abortion for more than a decade, she had already chronicled many near-death experiences caused by anti-abortion policy. After the anti-abortion movement's staggering defeat of Roe, she became fascinated with their victory and why they seemed so much better organized than the pro-choice movement. She set out to investigate the murderers of Roe. Killers of Roe chronicles Littlefield's journey into the unexplored corners of the most successful social movement of our time. As in every good murder mystery, the killers turn out to be the people you least suspect, like a disgraced former Congressman obsessed with offshore tax evasion and an unknown suburban bureaucrat who wrote America's most diabolical anti-abortion policy. She reports from a sweaty presidential tour bus in DC, a chaotic Michigan courtroom where a former fetus thief is on trial, and a Texas town that rejects an abortion travel ban. She encounters surprising characters who shed light on how we got to this moment of authoritarian rule: from the pro-choice superfans she meets at the Reagan library to the Senator who couldn't stop kissing every woman he met. Along the way, Amy draws upon the stories of women who have died from anti-abortion policies and on her own experience as a mother to reveal the life-and-death stakes of America's abortion wars. At once clever and poignant reportage, this abortion whodunnit uncovers the deeper story of how we lost Roe--and how we can win back so much more.

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David L. Eng, "Reparations and the Human" (Duke UP, 2025) Mar 03, 2026

Show notes

The Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invoked in graphic terms the specter of total human destruction. In response, a new international order of reparations and human rights arose from the ashes of World War II. This legal regime sought to subrogate the sovereignty of the nation-state in order to defend the sovereignty of the human being. While the Holocaust’s history is settled—Nazis were perpetrators and Jews were victims—there remains little historical consensus as to the victims and perpetrators of the atomic bombings. In Reparations and the Human (Duke UP, 2025), David L. Eng investigates a history of reparations across the Transpacific. He analyzes how concepts of reparation established during colonial settlement and the European Enlightenment shape contemporary configurations of the human and human rights, determining who can be recognized as victims, who must be seen as perpetrators, and who deserves repair. As demands for reparations now occupy center stage in debates concerning unresolved legacies of dispossession and Transatlantic slavery, Eng considers how the Cold War Transpacific provides a limit case for the politics of repair and definitions of the human. This book is a sweeping genealogical investigation that moves from seventeenth-century land dispossession in the Americas to the irradiated histories of the Cold War Transpacific, asking a fundamental question: who is considered deserving of repair?

Deep Acharya is a PhD student and a George L. Mosse fellow of Modern European Cultural History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on the history of fatherhood in 20th century Germany.

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Zev Eleff et al. eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law" (Oxford UP, 2025) Feb 27, 2026

Show notes

Jewish law, known as halakhah, is a unique legal system that has developed over a period of nearly two millennia, across multiple continents, and in innumerable different contexts. Dealing not only with ritual, Jewish law extends to virtually every aspect of life including ethics, business, war, and sex. This Handbook highlights foundational questions about the nature of Jewish law, emphasizing what distinguishes it from other legal systems and illuminating its vitality throughout history. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law (Oxford UP, 2025) navigates core issues such as halakhah's authority, its interpretation, and the meaningfulness of an ancient legal system in a modern period. With contributions from an interdisciplinary cast of authors, the Handbook spans law, history, sociology, and religion. Its chapters draw from a wide range of sources, including traditional texts such as Mishnah and Talmud, rabbinical codes, and legal opinions known as responsa. Moreover, chapters addressing pressing modern issues cover the material from diverse denominational perspectives. As halakhah remains deeply woven into the fabric of Jewish life and scholarship, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law offers readers an in-depth understanding of this rich and enduring legal tradition.

Zev Eleff is President and Professor of American Jewish history at Gratz College.

Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor at DePaul University College of Law.

Chaim Saiman is Chair in Jewish Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.

Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

Mentioned in this episode:

Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel (Brandeis University Press, 2024).
Shari Rabin and Michael R. Cohen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Jewish History (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World (‎Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022).
Chaim N. Saiman, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Princeton University Press, 2018).
Benjamin Steiner, Translating the Ketubah: The Jewish Marriage Contract in America and England (University Alabama Press, 2025).

Essays from the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law:

Chapter 15: Chaim Saiman, “Formalism in Jewish Law.”
Chapter 19: Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, “Lawmaking in the Conservative Movement: A Balance of Law and Norms.”
Chapter 21: Arye Edrei, “The Impact of Zionism on Jewish Law.”
Chapter 24: Rachel Levmore and Steven Gotlib, “Divorce and Agunah: Halakhic Responses to Modernity.”
Chapter 30: Zev Eleff, “Judaism and the Modern Family.”

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Jamila Michener and Mallory E. Sorelle, "Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power" (Princeton UP, 2026) Feb 25, 2026

Show notes

Each year, as many as 250 million Americans face civil legal problems like eviction, debt collection, and substandard housing. These problems are disproportionately shouldered by racially and economically marginalized people, particularly women of color. Civil courts and legal aid organizations are supposed to protect their rights, yet more than 90 percent of low-income people receive inadequate or no legal assistance. Instead, access to justice is reserved for those who can afford its high price. For those who can’t, the repercussions can be devastating, from homelessness and loss of public benefits to broken families and diminished health. Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power (Princeton UP, 2026) looks at the US civil justice system through the eyes of the people whose very citizenship is indelibly shaped by it. Jamila Michener and Mallory SoRelle show how civil legal problems, and the institutions meant to address them, greatly erode trust in the legal system among marginalized communities, undermining their broader sense of democratic citizenship and political standing. While legal representation offers vital protections, increased access to justice through an ever-growing supply of lawyers does not address the structural problems that generate demand for lawyers in the first place. Looking at cases involving unfair evictions and substandard housing, Michener and SoRelle demonstrate how community groups such as tenants’ unions can fill this justice gap and provide the means to build political power that transforms the conditions that create precarity. Drawing on eye-opening qualitative evidence and a wealth of historical and survey data, Uncivil Democracy explains why collective organizing holds the greatest promise for altering the systems that create civil legal problems and exercising the political power necessary for meaningful change.

Host Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the US. A former British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, she is the author of the award-winning book,America’s Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Jamila Michener is Professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University and inaugural director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures. She is the author of the award-winning book, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Mallory SoRelle is the Tony and Teddie Brown Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is the author of Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection (University of Chicago Press, 2020), based on her award-winning doctoral dissertation.

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Andrea Mansker, "Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France" (Cornell UP, 2024) Feb 24, 2026

Show notes

Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France (Cornell UP, 2024) gives an historical account of the evolution of the matchmaking business during the Second Empire in France. The book explores how the matchmaking industry at the Postrevolutionary France was shaped by commodified stories of hope and fantasy, including democratization of the matchmaking business, which aroused the interest of democratized French audience, including lower-middle-class individuals, through exaggerated advertisements in the media productions. The book also gives an exposition on the period of French Revolution and how it significantly altered family legislation and marriage practices, leading to increased freedom in spouse selection and the rise of professional matchmakers like Claude Viome. The book highlights how the revolutionary reforms impact on marriage of the French populace, including the age reduction policy for the majority and lifting of parental consent for marriage, as well as introducing divorce by mutual consent in 1792.

According to Andrea Mansker, the changes in age and divorce policy, combined with increased mobility and changing social patterns in Paris, encouraged young people across classes to demand more freedom in spouse selection, leading Claude Viome to market his services as a way to bypass traditional family negotiations in courtship. The book relates the1804 Civil Code, explaining how it preserved revolutionary reforms like equality before the law but restored traditional family structures by treating married women and children as legal minors under their husband's authority. It exposes how divorce became less common and eventually outlawed in 1816, and detailed the French Supreme Court's 1855 ruling against matchmaker contracts, which viewed marriage as a sacred agreement distinct from commercial transactions.

Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ | LinkedIn here | ORCID here | Meta here |

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Allison Powers, "Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law" (Oxford UP, 2024) Feb 23, 2026

Show notes

Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law (Oxford UP, 2024) by Dr. Allison Powers offers a new history of the emergence of the United States as a global power-one shaped as much by attempts to insulate the US government from international legal scrutiny as it was by efforts to project influence across the globe. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and the United Kingdom, the book traces how thousands of dispossessed residents of US-annexed territories petitioned international Claims Commissions between the 1870s and the 1930s to charge the United States with violating international legal protections for life and property.
Through attention to the consequences of their unexpected claims, Dr. Powers demonstrates how colonized subjects, refugees from slavery, and migrant workers transformed a series of tribunals designed to establish the legality of US imperial interventions into sites through which to challenge the legitimacy of US colonial governance. One of the first social histories of international law, the book argues that contests over meanings of sovereignty and state responsibility that would reshape the mid-twentieth-century international order were waged not only at diplomatic conferences, but also in Arizona copper mines, Texas cotton fields, Samoan port cities, Cuban sugar plantations, and the locks and stops of the Panama Canal.
Arbitrating Empire uncovers how ordinary people used international law to hold the United States accountable for state-sanctioned violence during the decades when the nation was first becoming a global empire-and demonstrates why State Department attempts to erase their claims transformed international law in ways that continue to shield the US government from liability to this day.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Sally Frances Low, "Colonial Law Making: Cambodia Under the French" (NUS Press, 2023) Feb 22, 2026

Show notes

In 1863 the French established a protectorate over the kingdom of Cambodia. The protectorate, along with Vietnam and Laos, later became part of the colonial state of French Indochina. Part of the French ‘civilizing mission’ in Cambodia involved reforming Cambodian law and legal processes.

Sally Low’s pioneering study, Colonial Law Making: Cambodia under the French(NUS Press, 2023), tells the story of the encounter between what she calls two different legal and social ‘cosmologies’: Cambodia’s indigenous legal tradition and modern French legal thinking. While the French claimed they were modernizing Cambodian law, in fact they imposed many elements of French law. Initially, they dispossessed the king of much of his judicial authority. But ironically, the French reform of Cambodian law retained the monarchy as the semi-divine source of law, and royal power was subsequently legally embedded into new national institutions, the law, and the constitutions. At independence in 1953, 90 years after the French began their protectorate, Cambodia’s King Sihanouk inherited this legal apparatus which had done so much to enhance the power of the executive over the judiciary.

Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au.

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Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026) Feb 18, 2026

Show notes

From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture came to govern the lives of enslaved and free people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent. She also illuminates the important role played by these populations in the development of the empire, from Louisiana to Guadeloupe, Senegambia, Madagascar, Isle Bourbon, and India.

The early French Empire has often been portrayed as a fragmented conglomerate of isolated colonies or regions. Yet Lamotte shows that racial policies issued by the metropole, as well as by officials in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, significantly influenced one another. Rather than focusing on the actions of administrators, however, Lamotte also reveals the extensive influence of people on the ground—especially those of non-European descent. Through their sexuality and their labor, along with their socio-economic and political endeavors, they played a critical role in building the empire and setting its limits. As they sought justice for themselves, strove to protect their kin, and aimed to improve their social conditions, these individuals also pushed against the advancement of white dominion in unexpected ways.

Archivally rich and rigorously documented, By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire (Harvard UP, 2026) illuminates the transoceanic connections that united the French colonial world—and recasts people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent as key actors in the story of empire-building.

This interview is conducted by Dr Lewis Wade, a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg. He is the author of the prize-winning Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France and can be found on Bluesky @wadehistory.bsky.social.

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Trump, the UN Charter, and the Strange Politics of International Law Feb 17, 2026

Show notes

International law scholars are often among the sharpest critics of the Trump administration—but what if the usual story misses something essential? In this episode, RBI interim director Eli Karetny speaks with NYU international law professor Robert Howse about Trump’s complicated relationship with the UN Charter system, from Gaza to Venezuela and Iran. The conversation also turns to political theory: Leo Strauss’s reputation as a neoconservative godfather, the shadow of Carl Schmitt, and how today’s MAGA New Right recycles older anxieties about liberalism, virtue, and masculinity.

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