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Rabbi David Kasher’s ParshaNut explores the Torah with insight and joy
In the spirit of Nechama Leibowitz’s classic, New Studies in the Weekly Parsha, Rabbi David Kasher offers 54 essays exploring the vast but understudied genre of Jewish literature known as parshanut, or Torah commentary. From the masters of midrash who began the tradition, to the medieval commentators who defined the style, on down to the scholars of the modern age, Kasher leads an impassioned and engaging tour through the history of Jewish Biblical interpretation. “With engaging clarity and vivacity, Kasher presents a wide range of traditional commentaries on the biblical text. In each chapter, he poses a central question which then becomes a field for vigorous discussion, pursued in a contemporary conversational…
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Raskin explores the Yin and Yang of Short Films
In the first book to study the short film using the yin yang complementarity, Raskin proposes a new paradigm – describing major forms of yin and yang, redefined as ungendered, freed of patriarchal bias. Yin evokes such properties as holding back and an openness to interpretation while yang promotes structure, causality, and control. Ten exemplary short films show how the model illuminates their storytelling. Features richly illustrated, shot-by-shot breakdowns – many in color – and links. “Richard Raskin changed my way of thinking about short films twenty years ago with his marvelous book The Art of the Short Fiction Film. And now he manages to do it again! The Yin and Yang of Short Film Storytelling offers a totally new approach to analyzing…
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Legal Realism to Law in Action recounts the tradition of innovative courses at Wisconsin Law
This is a book of papers and interviews about innovative law school courses developed by faculty of the Wisconsin Law School from 1950 to 1970 that forged a path from legal realism to law and social science. These courses took a “law in action” approach to the study of law which became a signature feature of the school’s tradition from that time to the present day. “The Legal Realists of the 1920s and 30s taught that the law that mattered was the law in action, as applied by ordinary officials and experienced by ordinary people. But they mostly failed to get their program adopted as part of professional education alongside…
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A Simplified Summary of the Louisiana Notary Public Study Guide
The Louisiana Notary Public exam is based on a 722-page study guide, Fundamentals of Louisiana Notarial Law and Practice. But the official book is famously difficult and organized in a complex way. Readers often need help—including classes and Facebook groups—just to unwind it. This book is, at last, directly aimed at simplifying and outlining the study guide itself. Such a resource offers a better chance of passing the notoriously difficult notary exam. Law school classes and bar exam prep have long given law students the advantage of complete outlines, nutshells, and bar review materials authored by experts in their subjects. It’s time for this concept to be used for notary…
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David Garland’s classic Punishment and Welfare is Digitally Remastered,™ adding new preface by the author
First published in 1985, this classic of law and society scholarship continues to shape the research agenda of today’s sociology of punishment. It is now republished with a new Preface by the author. Punishment and Welfare explores the relation of punishment to politics, the historical formation and development of criminology, and the way in which penal reform grew out of the complex set of political projects that founded the modern welfare state. Its analyses powerfully illuminate many of the central problems of contemporary penal and welfare policy, showing how these problems grew out of political struggles and theoretical debates that occurred in the first years of the 20th century. In…
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Barbara Babcock’s memoir Fish Raincoats recounts a woman lawyer’s “firsts”
The life and times of a trailblazing feminist in American law. The first female Stanford law professor was also first director of the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, one of the first women to be an Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and the biographer of California’s first woman lawyer, Clara Foltz. Survivor, pioneer, leader, and fervent defender of the powerless and colorful mobsters alike, Barbara Babcock led by example and by the written word — and recounts her part of history in this candid and personal memoir. “For woman lawyers, Barbara Babcock has led the way. How? By being smarter and tougher than the men; also, more…
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Michael Meltsner pens compelling novel of death and secrets in the civil rights-era South
A life-changing crime story, Mosaic brings to life the compelling story of the 60s murder of a charismatic woman doctor who courted danger trying to dismantle a racially segregated healthcare system in a large southern city. The search for who ordered the killing takes civil rights lawyer Christopher North to the centers of power, where a government intervention goes deadly wrong. It also forces him to confront the meaning of revenge—she wasn’t just a client to him—for a crime that occurs at the intersection of hate and greed. . “Michael Meltsner’s hot exploration of a cold murder case is a gripping who-done-it, accompanied by brilliant insights into racial neuroses of…
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David Crump’s courtroom novel The Plaintiff’s Lawyer takes Robert Herrick into the world of trade secrets and terrorism
An Ayatollah grins at the successful launch of a new Kharramshar missile in the foothills of southern Iran. Downrange, the U.S. Navy’s newest warship tracks and recovers its two stages. In Quantico, Virginia, the FBI takes the missile apart. How did the Iranians produce the key rollover mechanism so that it mimicked an American component made by Nova Aerospace Company? Nova asks Robert Herrick, the famous “Lawyer for the Little Guy,” to find out. It’s way outside his usual practice. And a possible culprit, the shadowy company known as Dravos Corporation, hires a street fighter named Jimmy Coleman to defend it. He’s the head of litigation at the megafirm of…
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Harvard Law Review’s June 2018 Issue: Harmless Error; Presidential Norms; and Abstention after Ferguson
The contents of the June 2018 issue of the Harvard Law Review include: • Article, “Harmless Errors and Substantial Rights,” by Daniel Epps • Article, “Presidential Norms and Article II,” by Daphna Renan • Article, “Abstention in the Time of Ferguson,” by Fred O. Smith, Jr. • Book Review, “Facts, Values, Justification, Democracy,” by Don Herzog • Note, “How Crime Pays: The Unconstitutionality of Modern Civil Asset Forfeiture as a Tool of Criminal Law Enforcement” • Note, “RCRA as a Tool for Environmental Justice Communities and Others to Compel Climate Change Adaptation” • Note, “The Presumption of Regularity in Judicial Review of the Executive Branch” The issue includes In Memoriam…
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Harvard Law Review‘s May 2018 Issue: Music as a Matter of Law?
The contents of the May 2018 issue (Number 7) of the Harvard Law Review include: • Article, “Music as a Matter of Law,” by Joseph P. Fishman • Article, “The Morality of Administrative Law,” by Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule • Book Review, “The Black Police: Policing Our Own,” by Devon W. Carbado & L. Song Richardson • Note, “Section 230 as First Amendment Rule” In addition, the issue features extensive student commentary on Recent Cases, including such subjects as: a recent ruling that bystanders have a First Amendment right to record police but granting qualified immunity to police officers involved; whether a local (Massachusetts) drone ordinance is preempted…
