Results by title

1917 books match the query 'Law' and 65 start with m

cover of More or Less Afraid of Nearly Everything: Homeland Security, Borders, and Disasters in the Twenty-First Century

More or Less Afraid of Nearly Everything

Homeland Security, Borders, and Disasters in the Twenty-First Century

Benjamin Rohrbaugh

University of Michigan Press, 2020

Migration, borders, cybersecurity, natural disasters, and terrorism: Homeland security is constantly in the news. Despite ongoing attention, these problems seem to be getting bigger even as the political discussion grows more overheated and misleading. Ben Rohrbaugh, a former border security director at the White House’s National Security Council, cuts through the noise to provide an accessible and novel framework to understand both homeland security and the thinking around how to keep civilians safe.

Throughout the twentieth century, the United States did not experience national security domestically; it defended its borders by conducting military, foreign policy, and intelligence operations internationally, and then separated these activities from domestic law enforcement with bright legal lines. In the twenty-first century, U.S. national security no longer occurs exclusively outside of the nation. The U.S. government is beginning to respond to this change, and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security is merely the first step in an organizational and strategic realignment that will be a long, difficult, and mistake-filled process. More or Less Afraid of Nearly Everything is an accessible and engaging guide to homeland security, particularly migration and border security, that makes innovative arguments about the American government and keeping citizens safe, and provides practical solutions to real-world problems.
 
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cover of Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks

Mountains Without Handrails

Reflections on the National Parks

Joseph L. Sax

University of Michigan Press, 1980

Focusing on the long-standing and bitter battles over recreational use of our national parklands, Joseph L. Sax proposes a novel scheme for the protection and management of America's national parks. Drawing upon the most controversial disputes of recent years---Yosemite National Park, the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and the Disney plan for California's Mineral King Valley---Sax boldly unites the rich and diverse tradition of nature writing into a coherent thesis that speaks directly to the dilemma of the parks.

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cover of Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks

Mountains Without Handrails

Reflections on the National Parks

Joseph L. Sax

University of Michigan Press, 2018

Beloved by academic and general readers alike, Mountains Without Handrails, Joseph L. Sax’s thought-provoking treatise on America’s national parks, remains as relevant today as when first published in 1980. Focusing on the long-standing and bitter battles over recreational use of our parklands, Sax proposes a novel scheme for the protection and management of America's national parks. Drawing upon still controversial disputes—Yosemite National Park, the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and the Disney plan for California's Mineral King Valley—Sax boldly unites the rich and diverse tradition of nature writing into a coherent thesis that speaks directly to the dilemma of the parks.

In a new foreword, environmental law scholar Holly Doremus articulates this book’s enduring importance and reflects on what Sax, her former teacher, might have thought about the encroachment of technology into natural spaces, the impact of social media, and growing threats from climate change. At this moment of great uncertainty for the national parks, Mountains Without Handrails should be read (and re-read) by anyone with a stake in America’s natural spaces.

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cover of Movies, Censorship, and the Law

Movies, Censorship, and the Law

Ira H. Carmen

University of Michigan Press, 1966

Who decides what movies we should see? In some of the nation's largest cities motion pictures are screened by review boards meeting in secret. Their files are seldom open to inspection, and they often wield a nearly absolute power over what the public is shown.This is the story of motion-picture censorship in America. It begins in 1915 when the Supreme Court denied freedom of the press to movies. In a fast-moving account of court cases and behind-the-scenes skirmishes, Ira Carmen follows the history of movie censorship to the present day. He shows how very recent court decisions reflect new thinking on censorship and the nature of obscenity.Today, forty-seven states and countless cities and towns have obscenity laws on their statute books. Are the censors stout guardians of the public morality . . . or witch-hunters? In a series of dramatic interviews with film censors in major cities, Carmen captures the flavor of the struggle between censor and exhibitor. The interviews reveal how censors think—what kinds of films they suppress and for what reasons, how they feel about foreign films as opposed to American, how they are influenced by court decisions, and how well they abide by those decisions.This pioneering book reveals what effect court decisions really have at the grassroots level. It examines the role of the constitution in the censorship debate and asks how effective the American political and judicial systems have been in coping with the problem. Finally, it offers a challenging analysis of what kind of censorship, if any, is needed in a free society.
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cover of Mr. Justice Black and His Critics

Mr. Justice Black and His Critics

Tinsley E. Yarbrough

Duke University Press, 1988

Many jurists give lip service to the idea that judicial interpretation of constitutional provisions should be based on the intent of the framers. Few, if any, have been as faithful to that conception as Hugo Black. As U.S. senator from Alabama, Black was a vigorous critic of the Supreme Court's use of the Constitution as a weapon against the Roosevelt New Deal. Once on the court he played a leading role in overturning those decisions and in attempting to establish for freedom of speech and other guarantees the interpretation he (and others) believe was warranted by the language and intent of the framers.
Late in his career, however, Black's commitment to literalism and intent led him to assume apparently conservative positions in civil liberties cases. In an era characterized by growing acceptance of the belief that judges should adapt the Constitution to changing social and ethical perceptions, many came to regard Black's position as unrealistic and irrelevant.
Tinsley E. Yarbrough analyzes Black's judicial and constitutional philosophy, as well as his approach to specific cases, through the eyes of Black's critics (such as Justices Frankfurter and Harlan) and through an assessment of scholarly opinion of his jurisprudence. The result is a stimulating and provocative addition to the study of Justice Black and the Supreme Court.
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cover of Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists

Mrs. Shipley's Ghost

The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists

Jeffrey Kahn

University of Michigan Press, 2014

Today, when a single person can turn an airplane into a guided missile, no one objects to rigorous security before flying. But can the state simply declare some people too dangerous to travel, ever and anywhere? Does the Constitution protect a fundamental right to travel? Should the mode of travel (car, plane, or boat) or itinerary (domestic or international) make a constitutional difference? This book explores the legal and policy questions raised by government travel restrictions, from passports and rubber stamps to computerized terrorist watchlists.

In tracing the history and scope of U.S. travel regulations, Jeffrey Kahn begins with the fascinating story of Mrs. Ruth Shipley, a federal employee who almost single-handedly controlled access to passports during the Cold War. Kahn questions how far national security policies should go and whether the government should be able to declare some individuals simply too dangerous to travel. An expert on constitutional law, Kahn argues that U.S. citizens’ freedom to leave the country and return is a fundamental right, protected by the Constitution.

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cover of Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition

Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition

Sora Y. Han

Duke University Press, 2024

In March 2020, Sora Y. Han learned her father was dying of cancer just as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived on California's shores. These two events led Han to introspection: “Who have I been writing to?” and “Who have I been writing for?” In her observance of the 49 days of mourning in Buddhist tradition, answers come in the form of mu – no thing, nothingness. Han’s poetic meditations on freedom struggle come alive in the empty spaces between words, letters, and pictograms spanning her many languages—English, Korean, Chinese, jazz, law, and poetry. Transliterating and dystranslating the writings of Fred Moten, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Jacques Lacan, Frantz Fanon, and others through the Korean alphabet, Han weaves the DMZ, Betty’s Case, the Thirteenth Amendment, Afro-pessimism, and psychoanalytic desire together into the open field of Bay Area radicalism. Mu is both a loving homage to and a playful subversion of political inheritances and the unsayable beyond law.
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cover of Multiple InJustices: Indigenous Women, Law, and Political Struggle in Latin America

Multiple InJustices

Indigenous Women, Law, and Political Struggle in Latin America

R. Aída Hernández Castillo

University of Arizona Press, 2016

The last two decades have witnessed two political transformations that have deeply affected the lives of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. First, a discourse on indigeneity has emerged that links local struggles across the continent with transnational movements whose core issues are racism and political and cultural rights. Second, recent constitutional reforms in several countries recognize the multicultural character of Latin American countries and the legal pluralism that necessarily follows.

Multiple InJustices synthesizes R. Aída Hernández Castillo’s twenty-four years of activism and research among indigenous women’s organizations in Latin America. As both feminist and critical anthropologist, Hernández Castillo analyzes the context of legal pluralism wherein the indigenous women of Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia struggle for justice. Through ethnographical research in community, state, and international justice, she reflects on the possibilities and limitations of customary, national, and international law for indigenous women.

Colonialism, racism, and patriarchal violence have been fundamental elements for the reproduction of capitalism, Hernández Castillo asserts. Only a social policy that offers economic alternatives based on distribution of wealth and a real recognition of cultural and political rights of indigenous peoples can counter the damage of outside forces such as drug cartels on indigenous lands.

She concludes that the theories of indigenous women on culture, tradition, and gender equity—as expressed in political documents, event reports, public discourse, and their intellectual writings—are key factors in the decolonization of Latin American feminisms and social justice for all.
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cover of Murder Was Not a Crime: Homicide and Power in the Roman Republic

Murder Was Not a Crime

Homicide and Power in the Roman Republic

By Judy E. Gaughan

University of Texas Press, 2009

Embarking on a unique study of Roman criminal law, Judy Gaughan has developed a novel understanding of the nature of social and political power dynamics in republican government. Revealing the significant relationship between political power and attitudes toward homicide in the Roman republic, Murder Was Not a Crime describes a legal system through which families (rather than the government) were given the power to mete out punishment for murder.

With implications that could modify the most fundamental beliefs about the Roman republic, Gaughan's research maintains that Roman criminal law did not contain a specific enactment against murder, although it had done so prior to the overthrow of the monarchy. While kings felt an imperative to hold monopoly over the power to kill, Gaughan argues, the republic phase ushered in a form of decentralized government that did not see itself as vulnerable to challenge by an act of murder. And the power possessed by individual families ensured that the government would not attain the responsibility for punishing homicidal violence.

Drawing on surviving Roman laws and literary sources, Murder Was Not a Crime also explores the dictator Sulla's "murder law," arguing that it lacked any government concept of murder and was instead simply a collection of earlier statutes repressing poisoning, arson, and the carrying of weapons. Reinterpreting a spectrum of scenarios, Gaughan makes new distinctions between the paternal head of household and his power over life and death, versus the power of consuls and praetors to command and kill.

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cover of Murder and Its Consequences: Essays on Capital Punishment in America

Murder and Its Consequences

Essays on Capital Punishment in America

Leigh B Bienen

Northwestern University Press, 2010

The essays in Murder and Its Consequences span several periods in the history of capital punishment in America and the professional career of Leigh Bienen, a leading researcher on the death penalty. “A Good Murder” describes the subtle relationship between high-profile murders and the death penalty, while “The Proportionality Review of Capital Cases” places the well-known study of proportionality in New Jersey within a nationwide context.

“Anomalies” suggests that the arcane protocols written for lethal injection have little to do with insuring humane executions, but rather are concerned with protecting the sensibilities of witnesses and the liability of corrections officials. Other essays address the groundbreaking developments surrounding the death penalty in Illinois, and take a retrospective look at the evolution of her own and the country’s thinking about this complex, divisive topic.

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cover of Murder and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts

Murder and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts

Alan Rogers

University of Massachusetts Press, 2008

For more than 300 years Massachusetts executed men and women convicted of murder, but with a sharp eye on “due proceeding” and against the backdrop of popular ambivalence about the death penalty's morality, cruelty, efficacy, and constitutionality. In this authoritative book, Alan Rogers offers a comprehensive account of how the efforts of reformers and abolitionists and the Supreme Judicial Court's commitment to the rule of law ultimately converged to end the death penalty in Massachusetts.

In the seventeenth century, Governor John Winthrop and the Massachusetts General Court understood murder to be a sin and a threat to the colony's well-being, but the Puritans also drastically reduced the crimes for which death was the prescribed penalty and expanded a capital defendant's rights. Following the Revolution, Americans denounced the death penalty as “British and brutish” and the state's Supreme Judicial Court embraced its role as protector of the rights extended to all men by the Massachusetts Constitution. In the 1830s popular opposition nearly stopped the machinery of death and a vote in the Massachusetts House fell just short of abolishing capital punishment.

A post–Civil War effort extending civil rights to all men also stimulated significant changes in criminal procedure. A “monster petition” begging the governor to spare the life of a murderer convicted on slight circumstantial evidence and the grim prospect of executing nine Chinese men found guilty of murder fueled a passionate debate about the death penalty in the decade before World War I.

The trials and executions of Sacco and Vanzetti focused unwanted international and national attention on Massachusetts. This was a turning point. Sara Ehrmann took charge of the newly formed Massachusetts Council Against the Death Penalty, relentlessly lobbied the legislature, and convinced a string of governors not to sign death warrants. In the 1970s the focus shifted to the courts, and eventually, in 1980, the Supreme Judicial Court abolished the death penalty on the grounds that it violated the Massachusetts Constitution.

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cover of Murder, Courts, and the Press: Issues in Free Press/Fair Trial

Murder, Courts, and the Press

Issues in Free Press/Fair Trial

Peter E. Kane. Foreword by Franklyn S. Haiman

Southern Illinois University Press, 1992

When murder is the crime, the clash in the courts is likely to be between two constitutionally enshrined rights—freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial.

Peter E. Kane shows what happened in seven famous court cases when First Amendment rights (concerning freedom of speech) conflicted with Sixth Amendment rights (concerning fair trial). He reports the circumstances of each crime, the court proceedings, and the conduct of the press in the trials of Sam Sheppard, Charles Manson and his followers, John Paul Stevenson, Claus von Bülow, and Arthur Shawcross and the cases involving the Kellie family and the Wayne Clapp murders. Kane’s narrative and analytical approach illuminates legal principles and shows the roles of actual human beings underlying the abstractions of court opinions.

In this revised and expanded edition, Kane considers two new topics stemming from recent court cases: cameras in the courtroom and a code of ethics for crime reporting. Kane explores the issue of cameras through the famous Claus von Bülow retrial, which featured live television broadcasts; regarding a journalistic code, Kane examines the massive pretrial reporting of the serial murders of Arthur Shawcross. Kane notes that sensational crime stories serve the interests of many people: the public wants to read them; journalists want to write them because they can make a reporter’s fortune and reputation; and editors and publishers want to sell papers. The sensational crime story serves everyone’s purpose except that of the accused.

In addition to exploring journalistic ethics and the proper procedures for trial judges in guaranteeing a fair trial, these cases also provide an introduction to the operation of the courts in criminal justice. "The trial court is the arena in which the conflicts between a free press and a fair trial are played out," Kane writes. "This play is described here as are the subsequent evaluations of that play by the appellate courts. Thus the legal process is considered from its beginning with the original crime to the final resolution of the case in the United States Supreme Court."

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cover of Music and Cultural Rights

Music and Cultural Rights

Edited by Andrew N. Weintraub and Bell Yung

University of Illinois Press, 2009

Framing timely and pressing questions concerning music and cultural rights, this collection illustrates the ways in which music--as a cultural practice, a commercial product, and an aesthetic form--has become enmeshed in debates about human rights, international law, and struggles for social justice. The essays in this volume examine how interpretations of cultural rights vary across societies; how definitions of rights have evolved; and how rights have been invoked in relation to social struggles over cultural access, use, representation, and ownership. The individual case studies, many of them based on ethnographic field research, demonstrate how musical aspects of cultural rights play out in specific cultural contexts, including the Philippines, China, Hawaii, Peru, Ukraine, and Brazil.

Contributors are Nimrod Baranovitch, Adriana Helbig, Javier F. Leon, Ana María Ochoa, Silvia Ramos, Helen Rees, Felicia Sandler, Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman, Ricardo D. Trimillos, Andrew N. Weintraub, and Bell Yung.

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cover of Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy, and Law in Northern Nigeria

Muslims Talking Politics

Framing Islam, Democracy, and Law in Northern Nigeria

Brandon Kendhammer

University of Chicago Press, 2016

For generations Islamic and Western intellectuals and policymakers have debated Islam’s compatibility with democratic government, usually with few solid conclusions. But where—Brandon Kendhammer asks in this book—have the voices of ordinary, working-class Muslims been in this conversation? Doesn’t the fate of democracy rest in their hands? Visiting with community members in northern Nigeria, he tells the complex story of the stunning return of democracy to a country that has also embraced Shariah law and endured the radical religious terrorism of Boko Haram.
           
Kendhammer argues that despite Nigeria’s struggles with jihadist insurgency, its recent history is really one of tenuous and fragile reconciliation between mass democratic aspirations and concerted popular efforts to preserve Islamic values in government and law. Combining an innovative analysis of Nigeria’s Islamic and political history with visits to the living rooms of working families, he sketches how this reconciliation has been constructed in the conversations, debates, and everyday experiences of Nigerian Muslims. In doing so, he uncovers valuable new lessons—ones rooted in the real politics of ordinary life—for how democracy might work alongside the legal recognition of Islamic values, a question that extends far beyond Nigeria and into the Muslim world at large. 
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cover of Muslims in Kenyan Politics: Political Involvement, Marginalization, and Minority Status

Muslims in Kenyan Politics

Political Involvement, Marginalization, and Minority Status

Hassan J. Ndzovu

Northwestern University Press, 2014

Muslims in Kenyan Politics explores the changing relationship between Muslims and the state in Kenya from precolonial times to the present, culminating in the radicalization of a section of the Muslim population in recent decades. The politicization of Islam in Kenya is deeply connected with the sense of marginalization that shapes Muslims’ understanding of Kenyan politics and government policies.

Kenya’s Muslim population comprises ethnic Arabs, Indians, and black Africans, and its status has varied historically. Under British rule, an imposed racial hierarchy affected Muslims particularly, thwarting the development of a united political voice. Drawing on a broad range of interviews and historical research, Ndzovu presents a nuanced picture of political associations during the postcolonial period and explores the role of Kenyan Muslims as political actors.

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