New Books in Law

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Postscript: Protecting the Public? Guns, Intimate Partner Violence, and the US Supreme Court Aug 07, 2023

Show notes

Postscript invites scholars to react to contemporary political events and today’s podcast welcomes an expert on domestic violence and firearms law to analyze a controversial Second Amendment case that the United States Supreme Court will hear this Fall, United States v. Rahimi. Kelly Roskam, JD is the Director of Law and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy. She studies the constitutional implications of, advocates for, and works to improve the implementation of firearms laws. She has been writing about the practical implications of the Rahimi case since it came up through the 5th circuit (for example, “The Fifth Circuit’s Rahimi decision protects abusers’ access to guns. The Supreme Court must act to protect survivors of domestic violence” and “A Texas Judge Is Using Originalism to Justify Arming Domestic Abusers” (co-authored with Spencer Cantrell and Natalie Nanasi).

In the podcast, we discuss the specifics of this strange case (a man who assaulted a woman, shot in the air, and later threatened to kill her claims that his constitutional rights have been violated – and the 5th circuit agrees that Congress is the threat to liberty). Ms. Roskam explains how the legal regime Congress created in 1994 to protect survivors of intimate violence also protects the safety of the public at large. She presents some of the data (e.g., that the presence of a firearm increases the likelihood that domestic violence will escalate into a homicide). She explains what is at stake, the possible ways the Supreme Court might approach the case, and ways to combat firearm violence beyond the courts.

Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

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Sharon Thompson, "Quiet Revolutionaries: The Married Women's Association and Family Law" (Hart Publishing, 2022) Aug 06, 2023

Show notes

This book tells the untold story of the Married Women's Association. Unlike more conventional histories of family law, which focus on legal actors, it highlights the little-known yet indispensable work of a dedicated group of life-long activists.

Formed in 1938, the Married Women's Association took reform of family property law as its chief focus. The name is deceptively innocuous, suggesting tea parties and charity fundraisers, but in fact the MWA was often involved in dramatic confrontations with politicians, civil servants, and Law Commissioners. The Association boasted powerful public figures, including MP Edith Summerskill, authors Vera Brittain and Dora Russell, and barrister Helena Normanton. They campaigned on matters that are still being debated in family law today.

Sharon Thompson's Quiet Revolutionaries: The Married Women's Association and Family Law (Hart Publishing, 2022) sheds new light upon legal reform then and now by challenging longstanding assumptions, showing that piecemeal legislation can be an effective stepping stone to comprehensive reform and highlighting how unsuccessful bills, though often now forgotten, can still be important triggers for change. Drawing upon interviews with members' friends and family, and thousands of archival documents, the book is compulsory reading for lawyers, legal historians, and anyone who wishes to explore histories of law reform from the ground up.

Jeannette Cockroft is an associate professor of history and political science at Schreiner University.

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The Future of Space Travel: A Discussion with Douglas C. Ligor Aug 05, 2023

Show notes

The expansion of space travel is much discussed but always seems subject to delay. Why is that and when will it happen on a much larger scale? Douglas Ligor has been considering that issue for the Rand corporation – and he talks to Owen Bennett-Jones about the prospects for space travel. Ligor is co-author of Assessing the Readiness for Human Commercial Spaceflight Safety Regulations (Rand, 2023) and International Space Traffic Management: Charting a Course for Long-Term Sustainability (Rand, 2023).

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

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Cause Lawyering and Human Rights in Indonesia Aug 04, 2023

Show notes

Why have issues of human rights become so contentious in Indonesia, 25 years after the much-heralded post-Suharto democratic transition? What kind of role has the Indonesian Foundation of Legal Aid Institutes, or LBH, performed in this field? Should those working on human rights try to work with governments and power-holders, or adopt an oppositional stance towards them?

Timothy Mann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and recently completed his PhD on Indonesian human rights issues at the University of Melbourne. In this podcast, Tim discusses his research on LBH and the dilemmas faced by those campaigning for greater human rights in a rapidly-changing Indonesia.

Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk

Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast

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Talking Clarence Thomas: A Conversation with Amul Thapar Aug 01, 2023

Show notes

As the last few months of landmark Supreme Court decisions have showcased, Clarence Thomas is one of the most important men in America. To wrap up our Summer of Law series, Judge Amul Thapar discusses his recent book, The People's Justice: Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that Define Him (Regnery Publishing, 2023), digging into Justice Thomas's judicial legacy and some of his most interesting, influential, and surprising decisions.

Amul Thapar is serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He became the first South Asian Article III judge in American history when President George W. Bush nominate him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, where he then also served as the United States Attorney. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy his most recent speech at the Madison Program.

Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes.

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Mayur R. Suresh, "Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi's Courts" (Fordham UP, 2022) Jul 30, 2023

Show notes

In Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi's Courts (Fordham UP, 2022), Mayur Suresh shows how legal procedures and technicalities become the modes through which courtrooms are made habitable. Where India’s terror trials have come to be understood by way of the expansion of the security state and displays of Hindu nationalism, Suresh elaborates how they are experienced by defendants in a quite different way, through a minute engagement with legal technicalities.

Amidst the grinding terror trials—which are replete with stories of torture, illegal detention and fabricated charges—defendants school themselves in legal procedures, became adept petition writers, build friendships with police officials, cultivate cautious faith in the courts and express a deep sense of betrayal when this trust is belied. Though seemingly mundane, legal technicalities are fraught and highly contested, and acquire urgent ethical qualities in the life of a trial: the file becomes a space in which the world can be made or unmade, the petition a way of imagining a future, and investigative and courtroom procedures enable the unexpected formation of close relationships between police and terror-accused.

In attending to the ways in which legal technicalities are made to work in everyday interactions among lawyers, judges, accused terrorists, and police, Suresh shows how human expressiveness, creativity and vulnerability emerge through the law.

Shatakshi Singh is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on legal mobilization and claim-making within the context of dispossession and evictions of urban slums in India. Twitter. Email: ssing176@ucsc.edu.

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Alice E. Marwick, "The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media" (Yale UP, 2023) Jul 30, 2023

Show notes

Online privacy is under constant attack by social media and big data technologies. But we cannot rely on individual actions to remedy this—it is a matter of social justice.

In The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media (Yale UP, 2023), Alice E. Marwick offers a new way of understanding how privacy is jeopardized, particularly for marginalized and disadvantaged communities—including immigrants, the poor, people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, and victims of online harassment.

Marwick shows that there are few resources or regulations for preventing personal information from spreading on the internet. Through a new theory of “networked privacy,” she reveals how current legal and technological frameworks are woefully inadequate in addressing issues of privacy—often by design. Drawing from interviews and focus groups encompassing a diverse group of Americans, Marwick shows that even heavy social media users care deeply about privacy and engage in extensive “privacy work” to protect it. But people are up against the violation machine of the modern internet. Safeguarding privacy must happen at the collective level.

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

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Daisy Cheung and Michael Dunn, "Advance Directives Across Asia: A Comparative Socio-legal Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2023) Jul 28, 2023

Show notes

Advance Directives in Asia: A Socio-Legal Analysis(Cambridge UP, 2023) , edited by Daisy Cheung and Michael Dunn is the first book to consider the concept of advance directives in Asia. It is unique in its depth and breadth as it brings together an extensive number of Asian jurisdictions to draw out the ways that advance directives are regulated in law and practice across the region. In their analysis Cheung and Dunn provide overall observations towards a concept of "generative accomodation". As a concept, generative accomodation has the potential to foreground new explorations of bioethics in Asia and globally. It also seeks to understand the role of the family in medical decision making. These are key concerns that come through in this comprehensive and groundbreaking book. It will be useful for regulators, Asia scholars, students, and practitioners in the field of health-law and ethics, and end of life care. The book has wider application for scholars in law, ethics and healthcare.

Daisy Cheung is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at The University of Hong Kong.

Dr Michael Dunn is an Associate Professor and the Co-Director of Education at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK

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The Texas Two-Step and Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder Jul 26, 2023

Show notes

What’s safer than baby powder? Parents have been trusting Johnson & Johnson for over 100 years to powder their baby’s bottoms.

Yet, numerous studies have revealed the presence of trace amounts of asbestos in this talc-based powder. Thousands of parents now claim that this asbestos is responsible for their cancers. A Reuters investigation catalogued this evidence and the fact that J&J knew about the asbestos since the 1950s, yet continued to sell the powder.

Johnson & Johnson is proposing a $9 billion dollar settlement for the over 38,000 lawsuits brought and all claims into the future. However, it depends on the courts accepting a controversial bankruptcy procedure called “the Texas Two-Step.” This strategy is being used to address a raft of personal injury complaints against a number of companies, but critics call it nothing more than a ‘sham bankruptcy’ that is being used to let corporations off the hook.

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Postscript: Is it Unconstitutional to Take Guns Away from Domestic Abusers? Jul 24, 2023

Show notes

The Supreme Court recently wrapped up their term – and announced that they will hear a very controversial case about domestic abuse, the power of Congress, and the right to keep and bear arms called United States v. Rahimi. The Court will decide whether a Texas man who assaulted his girlfriend in a parking lot and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone has been deprived of his Second Amendment rights. When the assaulted woman later obtained a restraining order against Mr. Zackey Rahimi, federal law made illegal for him to possess a firearm or ammunition while under that order.

In 2019, Mr. Zackey Rahimi had an argument with his girlfriend in a parking lot. Mr. Rahimi knocked the woman to the ground. As he dragged her back to his car, she hit her head on the car’s dashboard. Later, in a telephone call. Mr. Rahimi threatened the woman that he would shoot her if she told anyone about the assault. Later, a Texas state court entered a domestic violence restraining order against Rahimi. The order also barred Rahimi from possessing a gun based on a part of a federal statute: the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Mr. Rahimi claims that the statute violates his Second Amendment rights.

Postscript invites authors to react to contemporary events that engage their scholarship and we have two experts on the Second Amendment to unpack the case. Joseph Blocher, Lanty L. Smith ’67 Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law co-authored The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (Cambridge University Press, 2018) with Darrell Miller and has a forthcoming article in the Yale Law Review (co-authored with Eric Ruben) entitled Originalism-by-Analogy and Second Amendment Adjudication. In addition to his numerous influential law review articles and nuanced public facing scholarship in print, radio, and tv, he was one of the attorneys who helped write the brief for the District of C in Heller and he contributed an important brief to New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

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