New Books in Law

Latest Episodes:

Barak S. Cohen, "The Legal Methodology of Late Nehardean Sages in Sasanian Babylonia" (Brill, 2011) Apr 20, 2023

Show notes

Barak S. Cohen's The Legal Methodology of Late Nehardean Sages in Sasanian Babylonia (Brill, 2011) consists of a systematic analysis of the halakhic/legal methodology of fourth and fifth century Nehardean amoraim in Babylonia (as well as their identity and dating). The book uncovers various distinct characteristics present in the halakhic decision making and source interpretation, and demonstrates how certain amoraim can be characterized as portraying consistent interpretive and legal approaches throughout talmudic literature. Understanding the methodological characteristics that distinguish some amoraim from other amoraim can aid the talmudic interpreter/scholar in clarifying the legal foundations of their rulings, the proofs that they bring within talmudic discourse, as well as their disputes and interpretations. This allows a better understanding of the development of Jewish Law and the legal system in talmudic Babylonia.

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

Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights: A Conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali Apr 19, 2023

Show notes

Born in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a women’s rights activist, free speech advocate, and New York Times bestselling author. She joins the show to discuss her new book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights. [Note: This conversation includes discussion of sensitive topics related to sexual violence.]

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

Kaitlin Sidorsky and Wendy J. Schiller, "Inequality across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States" (Cambridge UP, 2023) Apr 16, 2023

Show notes

In the United States, one in four women will be victims of domestic violence each year. Despite the passage of federal legislation on violence against women beginning in 1994, differences persist across states in how domestic violence is addressed. Kaitlin Sidorsky and Wendy J. Schiller's bookInequality across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States (Cambridge UP, 2023) illuminates the epidemic of domestic violence in the U.S. through the lens of politics, policy adoption, and policy implementation. Combining narrative case studies, surveys, and data analysis, the book discusses the specific factors that explain why U.S. domestic violence politics and policies have failed to keep women safe at all income levels, and across racial and ethnic lines. The book argues that the issue of domestic violence, and how government responds to it, raises fundamental questions of justice; gender and racial equality; and the limited efficacy of a state-by-state and even town-by-town response. This book goes beyond revealing the vast differences in how states respond to domestic violence, by offering pathways to reform.

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

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality" (Pantheon Books, 2022) Apr 15, 2023

Show notes

With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hairdresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP’s Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality(Pantheon Books, 2022) captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions–how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

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

Abortion and the Law Apr 12, 2023

Show notes

Today’s Postscript focuses on abortion politics in the United States, with particular attention to the April 7, 2023 federal court decisions in Texas and Washington controlling access to mifepristone and the wider political forces at play. We have a slightly different format for today’s emergency podcast – spanning four time zones. First, legal historian Mary Ziegler, Martin Luther King Professor of Law at UC Davis, shares insights on the two cases – and why the Texas opinion is such a radical departure with regards to standing and legal language. Then Political Scientist Rebecca Kreitzer, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides a deep dive on the role of the Comstock Act of 1873 and why this 19th century law helps us understand 21st century reproductive politics. The podcast concludes with two scholars of politics and law Dr. Renée Ann Cramer, Professor of Law, Politics, and Society at Drake University and Dr. Joshua C. Wilson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver). They pull back the curtain on the cases to expose the ways in which those who oppose abortion have created parallel organizations to provide the false expertise relied upon in the Texas decision. We also talk about the wider implications of banning approved medications for trans people.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Mary Ziegler, The Texas Abortion-Pill Ruling Signals Pro-Lifers’ Next Push
New York Times graphic of the 100+ scholarly articles proving mifepristone safe
The opposing court opinions from the Texas and Washington courts
December 2022 Department of Justice Memo on Comstock, abortion, mifepristone, and misoprostol
Rep. Pat Schroeder’s 1996 speech calling for the part of Comstock regarding abortion to be overturned.

Rebecca J. Kreitzer and Candis Watts Smith, Washington Post, on Alito’s draft and research on women’s political power.

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

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

Nishant Kumar, "Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary" (Routledge, 2022) Apr 10, 2023

Show notes

Nishant Kumar's Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary (Routledge, 2022) analyzes the role of laws and the judiciary in the process of censorship in India. It examines the rationales and observations produced by the judiciary when demands for censorship are directed against publications that allegedly offend religious sentiments. Focusing on a micro-level analysis of censorship of publications, it presents a hard case to understand the limitations of freedom of expression and the role played by the judiciary in defining its boundaries. The volume traces the evolution of laws governing freedom of expression since the colonial period and the context in which these laws were amended after Independence. It also explicates how the legal process – the structural and functional aspects of working of judiciary – affects the fate of freedom of expression in India. Employing comparative legal analysis, it tries to understand and situate the Indian case within the larger discourse of censorship and freedom of expression around the world, thereby marking its similarities and differences. In unravelling the politics of censorship, the author also examines the interaction among different stakeholders like government, non-state actors and the judiciary.

A tract for our times, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of law, especially constitutional law and fundamental rights, politics, especially political theory and Indian politics, modern India and South Asian studies.

Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on Indigenous Religion and Christianity at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India.

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

Judge Amy Coney Barrett on "The Constitution as Our Story" Apr 08, 2023

Show notes

Amy Coney Barrett is a judge on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2019, Judge Barrett delivered the James Madison Program's Annual Walter F. Murphy Lecture in American Constitutionalism. The lecture was entitled "The Constitution as Our Story."

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

James J. Park, "The Valuation Treadmill: How Securities Fraud Threatens the Integrity of Public Companies" (Cambridge UP, 2022) Apr 07, 2023

Show notes

Public companies now face constant pressure to meet investor expectations. A company must continually deliver strong short-term performance every quarter to maintain its stock price. This valuation treadmill creates incentives for corporations to deceive investors. Published more than twenty years after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires all public companies to invest in measures to ensure the accuracy of their disclosures, The Valuation Treadmill: How Securities Fraud Threatens the Integrity of Public Companies(Cambridge University Press, 2022) shows how securities fraud became a major regulatory concern. Drawing on case studies of paradigmatic securities enforcement actions involving Xerox, Penn Central, Apple, Enron, Citigroup, and General Electric, the book argues that corporate securities fraud emerged as investors increasingly valued companies based on their future performance. Corporations now have an incentive to issue unrealistically optimistic disclosure to convince markets that their success will continue. Securities regulation must do more to protect the integrity of public companies from the pressure of the valuation treadmill.

James J. Park is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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

Abortion and the Pro-Life Movement: A Conversation with Alexandra DeSanctis Apr 05, 2023

Show notes

Alexandra DeSanctis is a Staff Writer for National Review and a Visiting Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She joins Madison's Notes to discuss abortion, the Pro-Life movement in America, the state of free speech in journalism, and more! You can read Bari Weiss's letter of resignation here.

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

Ronald Niezen, "The Memory Seeker" (Black Rose Writing, 2023) Apr 03, 2023

Show notes

The Memory Seeker is a novel that, drawing upon Professor Ronald Niezen's background in researching human rights, takes on the experiences of war violence and its aftermath, the vagaries of memory, and the incompleteness of courtroom justice.

When Dutch-Canadian Peter Dekker is hired as an investigator by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, he has no inkling of the war crimes that lie in his own family's history. His work takes him to Timbuktu, where he collaborates with Malian colleagues to document war crimes from a recent and only partly-ended civil war. While he is on assignment, his live-in girlfriend, Nora, gets to know Peter's estranged aunt living in The Hague, and uncovers a dark history of murder, revenge and collaboration with the Nazi occupiers. As the stories of his family under Nazi rule unfold and the intrigues multiply, Peter is confronted with a war crime in which he finds himself next-of-kin rather than an investigator.

A work of fiction that draws upon Niezen's ethnographic expertise, The Memory Seeker unsettles assumptions of past, present, and future for those engaging with the process of war crimes investigation.

Professor Ronald Niezen is a Professor of Practice in the Departments of Sociology and of Political Science /International Relations at the University of San Diego. Ron previously taught at McGill University for nearly 20 years and at Harvard for 10 years.

Dr. Rine Vieth is a researcher studying how the UK Immigration and Asylum Tribunals consider claims of belief, how claims of religious belief are evidenced, and the role of faith communities in asylum-seeker support.

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