New Books in Law

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Johanna Neuman, “Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote” (NYU Press, 2017) Aug 29, 2017

Show notes

In the late 19th century New York socialites enjoyed a newfound celebrity status thanks to their conspicuous wealth and the attention of the rapidly expanding newspaper industry. Many of these women sought to use their status to promote causes important to them, most notably the suffrage movement. Johanna Neuman‘s Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote (New York University Press, 2017) describes the role they played in the suffrage campaigns in fin-de-siecle America, one that saw social rank exploited to advance a radical cause. As Neuman explains, their efforts in support of the enfranchisement of women were the most dramatic example of their growing degree of involvement in public affairs, as elite women worked to advance a variety of causes dear to them. Coming at a time when the suffrage movement was becalmed by setbacks and disagreements over goals, their participation gave the effort much-needed resources and energy. By organizing rallies, raising funds, and even campaigning personally on behalf of suffrage measures and against anti-suffrage politicians, their contributions played a vital role in winning for women the right to vote, both in New York and nationally.

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Patricia Sloane-White, “Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace” (Cambridge UP, 2017) Aug 29, 2017

Show notes

The relationship between religion and economic activity has attracted generations of scholars working in myriad settings. In recent years, many have turned to questions of how Islamic ideas are generative of economic activity, to Islamic finance and capital, and to the relationship between contemporary Islam and capitalism more broadly. In Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Patricia Sloane-White builds on this work by asking “not only how the spread of global capitalism transforms the lives of Muslims… but how capitalism empowers the spread of Islam.” Drawing from interviews and ethnographic fieldwork over a seven-year period, and a wealth of knowledge from over two decades of research in Malaysia, Sloane-White argues that the “sharia space” of the today’s corporate Islamic workplace is a third domain between the public and the private in which employees must submit to the guidance of their professional and personal lives by men who insist that their businesses can and must be both profitable and pious.

Patricia Sloane-White joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to talk about Malaysia’s self-styled men of the mosque and the market; the new nexus between Islamic scholars and CEOs; the decline of the bumiputera generation; sexuality, gendered divisions of labour, and the problem of patriarchy in the capitalist workplace everywhere.

Listeners of this episode may also be interested in:

Iza Hussin, The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority and the Making of the Muslim State

Meredith Weiss, Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow

Nick Cheesman is a fellow in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au

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Mengia Hong Tschalaer, “Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India” (Cambridge UP, 2017) Aug 27, 2017

Show notes

In her inspiring new book, Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mengia Hong Tschalaer charts the strivings and creative struggles of Muslim women’s organizations in contemporary North India for gender justice. Carefully historicized and brimming with nuanced analysis, this book shows the discursive and political strategies through which overlapping and at times competing women’s organizations navigate a contested and complicated public sphere, as they seek to curate a gender emancipatory understanding of Islam. The major strength of this book is the way it presents a vivid picture of the quest for gender justice on the ground, leavened by such critical processes as the composition of gender-just nikah-namas. This important book will engage the interests of a range of scholars and courses on Islam, gender, South Asia, and Islamic law and society.

SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at stareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome.

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Daniel Bennett, “Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement” (U. Press of Kansas, 2017) Aug 21, 2017

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This week on the podcast, Daniel Bennet joins us to talk about his new book, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (University Press of Kansas, 2017). Bennett is assistant professor of political science at John Brown University. From Hobby Lobby to Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court has ruled on controversial social policy issues. At the center of many of these cases are a set of legal organizations, what Bennett calls Christian Conservative Legal Organizations or CCLOs, including the American Center for Law and Justice and Alliance Defending Freedom. In his book, he explains how CCLOs advocate for issues central to Christian conservatives, highlights the influence of religious liberty on the CLM’s broader agenda, and reveals how the Christian Right has become accustomed to the courts as a field of battle in today’s culture wars. Bennett studies these groups as a type of interest group and legal advocacy the primary strategy to fulfill their interests.

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Timothy LaPira, “Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests” (U Press of Kansas, 2017) Aug 14, 2017

Show notes

Timothy LaPira and Herschel Thomas are the authors of Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests (University Press of Kansas, 2017). LaPira is associate professor of political science at James Madison University; Thomas is assistant professor of political science at University of Texas, Arlington.

What is the consequence of the rapid spin of the revolving door in Washington? Once a rarity, today nearly half of members of Congress join a lobbying firm after their time on the Hill ends. In Revolving Door Lobbying, the authors show that they are not alone. Former aides join the ranks of lobbyists and generate massive amounts of revenue for lobbying and law firms. These patterns have changed the political economy of Washington politics. LaPira and Thomas mine a decade of new Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) data to show the way the rise of revolving door lobbying has made representation less equal and enhanced private influence.

The host of this week’s podcast is Heath Brown, associate professor of public policy at the City University of New York, John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

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Riki Wilchins, “TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media, and Congress…and Won!” (Riverdale Avenue Books, 2017) Jul 26, 2017

Show notes

Before Transgender actors entered popular culture, and before the “T” was included in LGBT, Transgender activism was a small and marginalized movement. However, though courage and perseverance, Transgender rights began to enter the public consciousness. Drawing on her own life story, Riki Wilchin’s newest book TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress…and Won! (Riverdale Avenue Books, 2017) traces the origins of the Transgender movement. From the backwoods of rural Michigan to the nation’s capital, the movement challenged not only conservative politicians and worldviews but also challenged the boundaries of gender, sex, and sexuality within more progressive movements. How do Trans issues and concerns intersect with notions of masculinity and femininity? What was the relationship between the Trans movement and the Gay movement? How do movements transcend the local and become national? Wilchins offers answers to these (and many more) questions within the pages of TRANS/gressive.

In addition to TRANS/gressive, Wilchins is also author to three other books on topics of gender and sexuality: Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion & the End of Gender, Queer Theory/Gender Theory: An Instant Primer, and Voice from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Wilchins’ works has been featured in many periodicals, and Riki has held many trainings on gender norms and nonconformity for audiences that include the White House, Centers for Disease Control, and the office on Women’s Health. Continuing her activism as well as her authorship, Wilchins expects another forthcoming book in the near future.

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Jon Kukla, “Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty” (Simon and Schuster, 2017) Jul 24, 2017

Show notes

To remember Patrick Henry for his defiant declaration “Give me liberty or give me death!” is to overlook a long career spent as an advocate for the rights of Americans, first as colonists and then as citizens. In Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty (Simon and Schuster, 2017), Jon Kukla describes the course of Henry’s eventful life and how he developed his views on individual rights and other matters. The son of Virginia planters, as a young man Henry turned to the law to earn his living. His arguments in the famous “Parson’s Cause” legal case foreshadowed his case for colonial rights during the Stamp Act crisis, which cemented his standing as one of the leading opponents of Britain’s efforts to impose taxes upon the colonies. Henry was at the forefront of Virginia’s move towards independence in 1775, and as its first elected governor he led the commonwealth during years of crisis and turmoil. This experience, as Kukla explains, helped define his opposition to ratifying the Constitution in 1787-8, an opposition which the documents proponents addressed by agreeing to include the Bill of Rights which it possesses today.

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Sarah Eltantawi, “Shari’ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution” (U. California Press, 2017) Jul 12, 2017

Show notes

Few images attached to Islam and to the Islamic legal tradition (the Sharia) in particular are more often and more disturbingly sensationalized than that of the stoning punishment. In her riveting new book Shari’ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution (University of California Press, 2017), Sarah Eltantawi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Religion at Evergreen State College, offers a dazzlingly nuanced and lucid account of the past and present of the stoning punishment in Northern Nigeria. Effortlessly moving between pre-modern and contemporary archives and contexts, Eltantawi traces the shifting meanings and political projects that have been invested into the stoning punishment over time. Historically grounded, theoretically exciting, and lucidly composed, this book is sure to spark important conversations and debates in multiple fields. It will also make a wonderful text for undergraduate and graduate seminars for courses on Islam, Islamic Law, Gender and Sexuality, and on Islam in Africa.

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William Davenport Mercer, “Diminishing the Bill of Rights: Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2017) Jul 06, 2017

Show notes

William Davenport Mercer‘s Diminishing the Bill of Rights: Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) argues that if we want to understand how Americans in the early Republic viewed the sources of their rights, we need look no further than the mud at the bottom of Baltimore harbor. In the early nineteenth century, two men, John Barron, Jr. and John Craig, decided to buy a Baltimore wharf on credit. They were hoping to capitalize on rapidly-expanding commercial growth in city in the wake of the War of 1812. Instead, the city diverted water into the harbor, leaving Barron and Craig’s wharf silted up and the pair with a pile of debt. The men sued, and eventually their case was argued before the Supreme Court. The decision in Barron v. Baltimore, as William Davenport Mercer shows, marked a key development in the history of American constitutionalism. In arguing that the Bill of Rights (and thus, the Fifth Amendment) applied only at the Federal level, the court rejected a multi-sourced view of liberties. The contentious politics of the era, Dr. Mercer argues, precipitated our modern turn toward locating the sources of rights exclusively in documents. Dr. Mercer teaches history and law at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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David R. Mayhew, “The Imprint of Congress” (Yale UP, 2017) Jul 03, 2017

Show notes

This week on the podcast we have a true political science legend. David R. Mayhew is the author of such political science greats as Congress: The Electoral Connection, Divided We Govern, and Partisan Balance. He is the Sterling Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Yale University.

In his recent book, Mayhew examines the job America’s most routinely disparaged branch of government has actually done? The Imprint of Congress (Yale University Press, 2017) gives a deep historical analysis of the U.S. Congress’s performance since the late eighteenth century. He tracks major policy challenges addressed by Congress. In the end, Mayhew argues that Congress has actually accomplished a lot and, in doing so, balanced the presidency in a surprising variety of ways. In the podcast, Mayhew also discusses our current debate on polarization and the early Trump administration.

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