Product Description: The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society is an authoritative study of the relationship between law and social interaction. Thirty-two original essays by an international group of expert scholars examine a wide range of critical questions...read more

Surveys the history of the death penalty, describes different methods of execution, and discusses the legal and ethical ramifications using case histories

Product Description: Along with the right to make war, the death penalty is the ultimate measure of sovereignty and test of political power, and capital trials are today the moment when that sovereignty is most vividly on display. This volume brings together articles examining the death penalty process, with particular emphasis on capital trials...read more

Product Description: From 9/11 to Katrina, from Darfur to the Minnesota bridge collapse, ours is an age of catastrophe. In this era, catastrophic events seem to have a revelatory quality: they offer powerful reminders of the fragility of our social and institutional architectures, making painfully evident vulnerabilities in our social organization that were otherwise invisible...read more

Product Description: This volume brings together contextually sensitive, cross-cultural, and comparative research that analyzes the ways in which cause lawyering is influencing, and being influenced by, the disaggregation of state power associated with democratization and globalization. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Explores why children are driven to murder, the role of parents and society in influencing their behavior, and possible measures to prevent juvenile violence as evidenced in school shootings. (view table of contents)

Discusses some of the ways swindlers can take an honest person's money, describing various scams, con games, and hoaxes that have been perpetrated in the past (view table of contents)

Product Description: Volume 37 of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a special issue devoted to exploring humanistic perspectives on the subject of punishment. Drawing together a distinguished group of interdisciplinary scholars, it explores the way "deviant" subjects are constructed and made available for punishment, the philosophical context within which decisions about punishment are made, and the inner workings of the penal apparatus...read more

Describes the various ways in which children can be abused or neglected, details the changes in the way society has viewed the question of intervention in the family to protect children, including the ways in which the system itself can abuse, and discusses related issues.Describes how children can be abused or neglected, details the changes in the way society has intervened to protect children, and discusses related issues

Product Description: How does the way we think and feel about the world around us affect the existence and administration of the death penalty? What role does capital punishment play in defining our political and cultural identity?After centuries during which capital punishment was a normal and self-evident part of criminal punishment, it has now taken on a life of its own in various arenas far beyond the limits of the penal sphere...read more

This book seeks to illuminate what we call the cultural lives of cause lawyers by examining their representation in various popular media (including film, fiction, mass-marketed non-fiction, television, and journalism), the work they do as creators of cultural products, and the way those representations and products are received and consumed by various audiences. By attending to media representations and the culture work done by cause lawyers, we can see what material is available for citizens and others to use in fashioning understandings of those lawyers. This book also provides a vehicle for determining whether, how, and to what extent cause lawyering is embedded in the discourses and symbolic practice around which ordinary citizens organize their understanding of social, political, and legal life. This book brings together research on the legal profession with work that takes up the analysis of popular culture. Contributors to this work include scholars of popular culture who turn their attention to cause lawyers and experts on cause lawyering who in turn focus their attention on popular culture. This is a joining of perspectives that is both long overdue and fruitful for both kinds of scholarship.

Product Description: We are witnessing in the last decade of the twentieth century more frequent demands by racial and ethnic groups for recognition of their distinctive histories and traditions as well as opportunities to develop and maintain the institutional infrastructure necessary to preserve them...read more

Product Description: Unsurprisingly, much of the social science research agenda on the death penalty is centered in the United States, a country that permits federal government and state governments to use death as a punishment for homicide. Scholars designed the agenda to speak on issues thought to be important in the ongoing campaign against capital punishment...read more

Dissent in Dangerous Times presents essays by six distinguished scholars, who provide their own unique views on the interplay of loyalty, patriotism, and dissent.While dissent has played a central role in our national history and in the American cultural imagination, it is usually dangerous to those who practice it, and always unpalatable to its targets. War does not encourage the tolerance of opposition at home any more than it does on the front: if the War on Terror is to be a permanent war, then the consequences for American political freedoms cannot be overestimated."Dissent in Dangerous Times examines the nature of political repression in liberal societies, and the political and legal implications of living in an environment of fear. This profound, incisive, at times even moving volume calls upon readers to think about, and beyond, September 11, reminding us of both the fragility and enduring power of freedom."--Nadine Strossen, President, American Civil Liberties Union, and Professor of Law, New York Law School.Contributors to this volumeLauren BerlantWendy BrownDavid ColeHugh GustersonNancy L. RosenblumAustin Sarat

Product Description: Each year more than 2 million Americans get divorced, and most of them use a lawyer. In closed-door conversations between lawyers and their clients strategy is planned, tactics are devised, and the emotional climate of the divorce is established...read more

Describes the development of attitudes toward drug abuse in the United States, reasons for its criminalization, the connection between drugs and other crimes, drug policy, treatment options, and related questions.