New Books in Law

Latest Episodes:

Sarah Seo, "Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom" (Harvard UP, 2019) Aug 01, 2019

Show notes

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 unreasonable searches and seizures-did not effectively shield individuals from government intrusion while driving. Instead, jurists interpreted the amendment narrowly. In a society dependent on cars, everyone-the law-breaking and law-abiding alike-would be subject to discretionary policing. Seo overturns prevailing interpretations of the Warren Court's due process revolution. The justices' efforts to protect Americans did more to accommodate than to limit police intervention, and the new criminal procedures inadvertently sanctioned discrimination by officers of the law. Constitutional challenges to traffic stops largely failed, and motorists "driving while black" had little recourse to question police demands. Seo shows how procedures designed to safeguard us on the road ultimately undermined the nation's commitment to equal protection before the law.

Stephen Colbrook is a graduate student at University College London, where he is researching a dissertation on the interaction between HIV/AIDS and state policy-making. This work will focus on the political and policy-making side of the epidemic and aims to compare the different contexts of individual states, such as California, Florida, and New Jersey. Stephen can be contacted at stephencolbrook@gmail.com.

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Cynthia Nicoletti, "Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis" (Cambridge UP, 2017) Jul 31, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Cynthia Nicoletti, "Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis" (Cambridge UP, 2017) Jul 31, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Jessica Lowe, "Murder in the Shenandoah: Making Law Sovereign in Revolutionary Virginia" (Cambridge UP, 2019) Jul 29, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Sam Erman, "Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2018) Jul 25, 2019

Show notes

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 California, where he studies constitutional law, legal history, and the Supreme Court.

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Anne Twitty, "Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857" (Cambridge UP, 2016) Jul 23, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Kimberly Welch, "Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South" (UNC Press, 2018) Jul 18, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Benjamin Meiches, "The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Brian Haara, "Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America" (Potomac Books, 2015) Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

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.

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Marc Stein, "Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe" (UNC Press, 2013) Jul 12, 2019

Show notes

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.

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