New Books in Law

Latest Episodes:

Lindsay M. Chervinsky, "The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution" (Harvard UP, 2020) Jul 30, 2020

Show notes

In her new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution(Harvard University Press, 2020), historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky traces the origins of the President’s cabinet in American government. Chervinsky combines the history of the American Revolution with studies of early American political institutions to illustrate how the cabinet developed. Exploring the cabinet’s inception, Chervinsky argues that traditional narratives about the cabinet don’t tell the whole story and, in fact, that the cabinet itself is a rather under-researched aspect of the American presidency.

While George Washington did build the cabinet and, even more importantly, made use of the cabinet in developing policy and seeking input and advice, Chervinsky reveals that it was not until well into Washington’s first term that the cabinet really came into full usage, and this was only after Washington had experimented with other options. The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution traces how the cabinet evolved in a kind of organic fashion, as Washington needed more input and, in an interesting comparative context, as the Senate provided less engaged advice and consent than had been anticipated at the Constitutional Convention.

Chervinsky highlights how Washington’s inaugural cabinet established and protected executive authority setting a precedent for future cabinets and helping to define the scope of executive power in the new constitutional system. Chervinsky’s book takes a chronological approach, starting in the revolutionary period and working forward through Washington’s two administrations. She begins by exploring Washington’s military experience, especially his leadership of the military, and explains how this experience informed his decisions around creating and using the cabinet while president. Chervinsky describes how, during the American Revolution, Washington relied on councils of war to provide advice and help him to make key decisions. He designed the cabinet to advise him in a similar fashion. Chervinsky also discusses the first cabinet secretaries—figures who were themselves quite well known, like Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Knox—and how their individual experiences shaped the offices they held. The Cabinet notes that the way in which the first ministers debated issues created a model for the president’s cabinet as an enduring institution. Chervinsky concludes her chronological study looking at how the cabinet became permanent in response to crises including the Neutrality Crisis of 1793, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, and Jay Treaties of 1795-1796 (which also involved the development of executive privilege).

Finally, Chervinsky considers the ramifications of Washington’s creation and use of the cabinet. She explains how the public came to think about Washington’s cabinet and his secretaries, while also comparing Washington’s cabinet practices to more contemporary ones. The Cabinet weaves together a fascinating history of the institution itself while providing an understanding of how it evolved as an institution within the new constitutional system and, in particular, how it operates with the president, carving out a space for a more authoritative executive.

Adam Liebell-McLean assisted with this podcast.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Nadine El-Enany, "Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire" (Manchester UP, 2020) Jul 30, 2020

Show notes

How can we understand the legacy of colonialism within contemporary society?

In Bordering Britain Law, Race and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2020), Nadine El-Enany, a senior lecturer in law at Birkbeck School of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law, historicises immigration law and ideas of citizenship in Britain, connecting the project of building a nation after the end of empire to whiteness, colonial violence, and racism.

The book analyses legislation and case law, along with the social and historical context of immigration in Britain, to demonstrate the continued, systemic, violence at the heart of the British state.

The book is essential reading across law, history, and the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding contemporary society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Paulo Drinot, "The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s-1950s" (Cambridge UP, 2020) Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

Paulo Drinot’s The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s-1950s (Cambridge University Press, 2020), studies the interplay of sexuality, society, and the state in Peru in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drinot analyzes the rules and norms that governed prostitution and venereal disease in this period, and tracks how regulation of prostitution was implemented in the early twentieth century, and then seemingly abandoned in the 1950s. Drinot’s story foregrounds the many agents that intervened in this process: prostitutes––or sex workers as we may call them today––but also government officials, physicians, journalists, feminists, among others.

Set in a global and comparative framework, this book centers on Peru, a country that came “late” to the regulation of prostitution, and did so under arguments that combined concerns about public health and ideas about proper female and male sexuality. The Sexual Question goes beyond the history of prostitution for it also sheds light on broader processes such as the medicalization of society and the construction of the nation-state in Latin American societies. Race figures prominently in this story: throughout this period, the regulation of prostitution was accompanied by the racialization of disease, and the policing of certain groups deemed especially dangerous or in need of protection (Afro-Peruvians and indigenous groups for example). This is a timely book, not only for those listeners concerned with Latin American history, but also for those who are interested in sexuality, the state, race, and medical history more generally. A must for our listeners!

Lisette Varón-Carvajal is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. You can tweet her and suggest books at @LisetteVaron

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Jan Doering, "Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods" (Oxford UP, 2020) Jul 28, 2020

Show notes

With such high levels of residential segregation along racial lines in the United States, gentrifying neighborhoods present fascinating opportunities to examine places with varying levels of integration, and how people living in them navigate the thorny politics of race. Among the many conflicts revolving around race under gentrification is crime and its relationship with the displacement and marginalization of a neighborhood’s existing low-income minority groups.

Contributing to this conversation is sociologist Jan Doering, whose new book Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods (Oxford University Press, 2020) examines the strategic practices of two groups in that city’s Rogers Park and Uptown neighborhoods: “public safety” advocates, or people who were very concerned with crime and active in a variety of local initiatives to address it; and “social justice” advocates, or people who were more concerned with resisting gentrification and keeping their neighborhood racially and socioeconomically diverse.

In documenting their efforts and clashes through three years of fieldwork, Doering focuses on two forms of racial claims-making each camp of residents uses to make its case: racial challenges, or charges of racially problematic behavior, and racial neutralizations, or any defensive or reparative responses to racial failings. Revealing links between how anticrime initiatives can amplify gentrification and contribute to marginalization through the invocation of race as they negotiate the politics of crime and gentrification, the book provides a highly nuanced, and quite timely, analysis of everyday battles over racial meanings with great resonance for today’s political climate.

Richard E. Ocejo is associate professor of sociology at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press, 2017), Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City (Princeton University Press, 2014), and editor of Urban Ethnography: Legacies and Challenges (Emerald, 2019) and Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge, 2012).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Mary Kathryn Nagle, "Sovereignty" (Northwestern UP, 2020) Jul 28, 2020

Show notes

In Sovereignty (Northwestern University Press, 2020) playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle weaves together two stories separated by 170 years but joined by a common dilemma: how can Cherokee people fight for justice under an unjust colonial legal framework? In present-day Oklahoma, Sarah Ridge Polson attempts to bring her abuser to justice using the Violence Against Women Act. In 1835, her ancestors try to defend the inherent jurisdiction of the Cherokee Nation against the encroachments of the state of Georgia. Nagle combines her art as a playwright with her training as a lawyer to craft a taught legal drama that illuminates the complexities of these issues. This is a play about how history is always with us, even when that history has been repressed for generations.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA program at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

M. C. Stevenson et al. (eds.), "The Legacy of Racism for Children: Psychology, Law and Public Policy" (Oxford UP, 2020) Jul 28, 2020

Show notes

When children become entangled with the law, their lives can be disrupted irrevocably. When those children are underrepresented minorities, the potential for disruption is even greater.

The Legacy of Racism for Children: Psychology, Law and Public Policy (Oxford University Press) examines issues that arise when minority children's lives are directly or indirectly influenced by law and public policy.

Uniquely comprehensive in scope, this trailblazing volume offers cutting-edge chapters on the intersections of race/ethnicity within the context of child maltreatment, child dependency court, custody and adoption, familial incarceration, school discipline and the "school-to-prison pipeline," juvenile justice, police/youth interactions, and jurors' perceptions of child and adolescent victims and defendants.

The book also includes chapters focused on troubling situations that are less commonly researched, but growing in importance, including the role of race and racism in child sex trafficking and US immigration law and policy. Thus, individual chapters explore myriad ways in which law and policy shape the lives of marginalized children and adolescents - racial and ethnic minorities - who historically and presently are at heightened risk for experiencing disadvantageous consequences of law and policy.

In so doing, The Legacy of Racism for Children can help social scientists to understand and work to prevent the perpetuation of racial discrimination in American laws and public policies.

Margaret C. Stevenson is Associate Professor at the University of Evansville. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and an edited volume related to jury decision-making.

Bette L. Bottoms is Professor of Psychology and Dean Emerita of the Honors College at The University of Illinois at Chicago. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a past president of APA's Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice and Section on Child Maltreatment.

Kelly C. Burke is a doctoral candidate in the Social Psychology Program at The University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research on the influence of prejudice and case evidence (e.g., body-worn camera footage) on juror decision making has been published in peer-reviewed journals and books and funded by the American Psychology-Law Society's Diversity Research Award and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Grant-in-Aid Award.

Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

R. K. Jefferson and H. B. Johnson, "Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (NYU Press, 2020) Jul 27, 2020

Show notes

Before Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, nine highly qualified women were on the shortlist. What do the stories of these women tell us about the judiciary? Gender? Feminism? Race?

In Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court(NYU Press, 2020), Renee Knake Jefferson (professor at the University of Houston Law Center) and Hannah Brenner Johnson (Vice Dean and a law professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego) demonstrate how highly (and often overly) qualified woman are shortlisted by presidents -- from Herbert Hoover to Donald Trump -- to create the appearance of diversity before a (white) man is selected to preserve the status quo. Short-listing isn’t success but symptom of a problem.

Jefferson and Johnson’s research in presidential libraries, private papers, oral histories, the Nixon tapes, and biographies reveals that presidents as early as Herbert Hoover began discussing female candidates – though presidents set aside overly qualified women for decades. The first half of this nuanced book explores the first woman considered (Florence Allen), five judges who were on the short lists of JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Ford, and female judges who were short-listed alongside Sandra Day O’Connor (including the first Black female judge, Amalya Lyle Kearse). The histories of each candidate map onto the waves of feminism, reflect on the role of marriage, motherhood, and sexuality, and allow the authors to identify the harms of short-listing.

The details are revealing about both past and present and the second half of the book addresses how to apply the lessons learned from these decades of paying lip-service to diversity. How can candidates transition from shortlisting to selection? Jefferson and Johnson discuss tokenism, the burdens of being a gender spokesperson, racism, ageism, and the binds of femininity and “respectability.” The authors demonstrate how the selection of women for the Supreme Court impacts other aspects of the legal system and beyond. Although the number of men and women entering law school and entry-level legal positions are equal, the rate at which men reach leadership positions is considerably faster than women. This phenomenon can be seen in many fields where there is a pursuit of professional advancement. The authors conclude with strategies such as “collaborating to compete” to reform the American legal system.

Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast.

Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, "Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) Jul 27, 2020

Show notes

Verónica Martínez-Matsuda about her book Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program(University of Pennsylvania Press).

Migrant Citizenship exams the Farm Security Administration’s Migratory Labor Camp Program, and its role in the daily lives of a diverse number of farmworker families. Martínez-Matsuda thoroughly investigates the way public policy was used to intervene in the lives of migrant workers, and how these workers sought to transform their own lives and the country around them through appealing to American democratic principles and forming movements to pursue social justice and civil rights.

Martínez-Matsuda’s study showcase the many ways that the FAS’s history, and these migrant workers, is integral to understanding both historical and modern struggles in farm labor relations.

Verónica Martínez-Matsuda is an Associate Professor at Cornell University’s ILR School.

Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Patricia Zavella, "The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism" (NYU Press, 2020) Jul 24, 2020

Show notes

In The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism (NYU Press, 2020), Pat Zavella shows how reproductive justice organizations' collaborative work across racial lines provides a compelling model for other groups to successfully influence change.

In the context of the war on women's reproductive rights and its disproportionate effect on women of color, and increased legal violence toward immigrants, The Movement for Reproductive Justice demonstrates that a truly intersectional movement built on grassroots organizing, culture shift work, and policy advocating can offer visions of strength, resiliency, and dignity for all.

Dr. Pat Zavella is Professor Emerita in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also the author of I’m Neither Here nor There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty and coauthor of Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios.

Dr. Isabel Machado is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Department of History of the University of Memphis.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Laurie M. Wood, "Archipelago of Justice: Law in France’s Early Modern Empire" (Yale UP, 2020) Jul 23, 2020

Show notes

Historians have long treated the Atlantic and Indian Ocean routes of early modern French empire separately. But, early modern people understood France as a bi-oceanic empire, connected by vast but strong pathways of commercial, intellectual, and legal exchange. Laurie M. Wood’s Archipelago of Justice: Law in France’s Early Modern Empire(Yale UP, 2020) recasts our view of France’s empire by evaluating the interwoven trajectories of the people, like itinerant ship-workers and colonial magistrates, who built France’s first empire in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the long eighteenth century. Imperial subjects like these sought political and legal influence via law courts, with strategies that reflected local and regional priorities, especially in regards to slavery, war, and trade. Courts became liaisons between France and new colonial possessions.

Byline: Dr. Julia M. Gossard is assistant professor of history and distinguished assistant professor of honor’s education at Utah State University. A historian of 18th-century France, Julia’s manuscript, Young Subjects, examines children as important actors in social reform, state-building, and imperial projects across the early modern French world. Dr. Gossard is active on Twitter. To learn more about her teaching, research, and experience in digital humanities, visit her website.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected