BiblioVault - Books about Chief

Administering Justice

Placing the Chief Justice in American State Politics

Richard L. Vining Jr. and Teena Wilhelm

University of Michigan Press, 2023

Administering Justice examines the leadership role of chief justices in the American states, including how those duties require chief justices to be part of the broader state political environment. Vining and Wilhelm focus extensively on the power of chief justices as public spokespersons, legislative liaisons, and reform leaders. In contrast to much existing research on chief justices in the states, this study weighs their extrajudicial responsibilities rather than intracourt leadership. By assessing the content of State of the Judiciary remarks delivered over a period of sixty years, Vining and Wilhelm are able to analyze the reform agendas advanced by chief justices and determine what factors influence the likelihood of success. These analyses confirm that chief justices engage with state politics in meaningful ways and that reactions to their proposals are influenced by ideological congruence with other political elites and the scope of their requests. Administering Justice also examines the chief justice position as an institution, provides a collective profile of its occupants, and surveys growing diversity among court leaders.

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Born a Chief

The Nineteenth Century Hopi Boyhood of Edmund Nequatewa, as told to Alfred F. Whiting

Edmund Nequatewa

University of Arizona Press, 1993

"Extraordinary memoir. . . . His story will break your heart."—El Palacio

"This story was fascinating. . . . One worth the telling and one which will stay with the reader."—American Desert Magazine

"Recommended."—Choice

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From Princess to Chief

Life with the Waccamaw Siouan Indians of North Carolina

Priscilla Freeman Jacobs

University of Alabama Press, 2013

A collaborative life history of Priscilla Freeman Jacobs, From Princess to Chief tells the story of the first female chief (from 1986 to 2005) of the state-recognized Waccamaw Siouan Indian Tribe of North Carolina.

In From Princess to Chief, Priscilla Freeman Jacobs and Patricia Barker Lerch detail Jacobs’s birth and childhood, coming of age, education, young adulthood, marriage and family, Indian activism, and spiritual life. Jacobs is descended from a family of Indian leaders whose activism dates back to the early twentieth century. Her ancestors pressured the local county and state governments to fund their Indian schools, led the drive for the Waccamaw Sioux to be recognized as Indians in state and federal legislation, and finally succeeded in opening the long-awaited Indian schools in the 1930s.

Jacobs’s lasting legacies to her community include the many initiatives on which she collaborated with her father, Clifton Freeman, including the acquisition of common land for the tribe, initiation of a tribal board of directors, incorporation of a development association, and the establishment of a day care and many other social and educational programs. In the 1970s Jacobs served on the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs and was active in the Coalition of Eastern Native Americans.

Introducing the powwow as a way for young people to learn about the traditions of Indian people throughout the state of North Carolina, Jacobs taught many children how to dance and wear Indian regalia with pride and dignity. Throughout her life, Jacobs has worked hard to preserve the traditional customs of her people and to teach others about the folk culture that shaped and molded her as a person.

Told from the point of view of an eyewitness to the community’s effort to win federal recognition in 1950 and their lives since, From Princess to Chief helps preserve the story of Jacobs’s Indian community.

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The Search for Mabila

The Decisive Battle between Hernando de Soto and Chief Tascalusa

Edited by Vernon James Knight Jr.

University of Alabama Press, 2009

One of the most profound events in sixteenth-century North America was a ferocious battle between the Spanish army of Hernando de Soto and a larger force of Indian warriors under the leadership of a feared chieftain named Tascalusa. The site of this battle was a small fortified border town within an Indian province known as Mabila. Although the Indians were defeated, the battle was a decisive blow to Spanish plans for the conquest and settlement of what is now the southeastern United States. For in that battle, De Soto’s army lost its baggage, including all proofs of the richness of the land—proofs that would be necessary to attract future colonists. Facing such a severe setback, De Soto led his army once more into the interior of the continent, where he was not to survive. The ragtag remnants of his once-mighty expedition limped into Mexico some three years later, thankful to be alive. The clear message of their ordeal was that this new land, then known as La Florida, could not be easily subjugated.

But where, exactly, did this decisive battle of Mabila take place? The accounts left by the Spanish chroniclers provide clues, but they are vague, so lacking in corroboration that without additional supporting evidence, it is impossible to trace De Soto’s trail on a modern map with any degree of certainty. Within this volume, 17 scholars—specialists in history, folklore, geography, geology, and archaeology—provide a new and encouragingly fresh perspective on the current status of the search for Mabila. Although there is a widespread consensus that the event took place in the southern part of what is now Alabama, the truth is that to this day, nobody knows where Mabila is—neither the contributors to this volume, nor any of the historians and archaeologists, amateur and professional, who have long sought it. One can rightfully say that the lost battle site of Mabila is the predominant historical mystery of the Deep South.

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The Toddler in Chief

What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency

Daniel W. Drezner

University of Chicago Press, 2020

“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. . . . And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”—An anonymous senior administrative official in an op-ed published in a New York Times op-ed, September 5, 2018

Every president faces criticism and caricature. Donald Trump, however, is unique in that he is routinely characterized in ways more suitable for a toddler. What’s more, it is not just Democrats, pundits, or protestors who compare the president to a child; Trump’s staffers, subordinates, and allies on Capitol Hill also describe Trump like a small, badly behaved preschooler.

In April 2017, Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he’s collected more than one thousand tweets—a rate of more than one a day. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take readers through the different dimensions of Trump’s infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control to the possibility that the President has had too much screen time. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby? Quite a lot, Drezner argues, due to the winnowing away of presidential checks and balances over the past fifty years. In these pages, Drezner follows his theme—the specific ways in which sharing some of the traits of a toddler makes a person ill-suited to the presidency—to show the lasting, deleterious impact the Trump administration will have on American foreign policy and democracy.

The “adults in the room” may not be able to rein in Trump’s toddler-like behavior, but, with the 2020 election fast approaching, the American people can think about whether they want the most powerful office turned into a poorly run political day care facility. Drezner exhorts us to elect a commander-in-chief, not a toddler-in-chief. And along the way, he shows how we must rethink the terrifying powers we have given the presidency.

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