Classics of Law & Society
This Series takes the best of classic law and society, legal history, and law works- often read by scholars, cited by students, and assigned to classes- and makes them easily available again, in a convenient form.
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Delmar Karlen’s classic comparison of appeals courts in US and UK is Digitally Remastered™ in print and ebook
Considered a classic of comparative law and legal systems, this book has been twice reprinted since its first appearance 50 years ago, and is now available in a high-quality digital edition. No work has so openly and extensively—using hands-on observations by the leading legal figures of the time—compared appellate courts in two common law countries. While much comparative work contrasts civil law systems with those of the common law, this study teased out substantial, impactful differences even within two traditional common law systems. The original project grew out of an intensive experiment in comparing the U.S. and English appellate courts, by which highly recognized American and English judges and lawyers…
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Kitty Calavita goes Inside the State, with the rise and fall of the Bracero INS Program
The classic study of the rise and demise -- among controversy and abuse -- of the INS farmworker program of Braceros is now Digitally Remastered™ and available for classrooms and other interested readers, with a new Foreword. Available in ebook formats for Kindle, Kobo, Nook & iBooks -- and in new paperback, including bulk sales.
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Lance Bennett & Martha Feldman Examine Juries and Narrative: What Makes People Believe a Witness?
Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom explains what makes stories believable and how ordinary people connect complex legal arguments and evidence presented in trials to assess guilt and innocence. The explanation takes the core elements of narrative—the who, what, where, when, how, why—and shows how average people who hear hundreds of stories every day use the connections between these elements to assess credibility. A series of simple experiments outside the courtroom provides evidence for the explanation, showing that there is little relationship between the actual truth of a story and the degree to which the story is believed to be true by an audience of random listeners not familiar with the…
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Sybille Bedford’s The Faces of Justice observes judging, personally, in five European countries
Novelist Sybille Bedford was a German-born writer of Jewish heritage who, as a refugee from Germany, lived and wrote in Italy, France, the United States, and England. In this compelling classic, she watched courts closely—and with remarkable insight—in England, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. There, she found stories of human frailty and impulse, even at the bench and bar. Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series, but written for a wide, U.S. audience.
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Frank Zimring’s The Changing Legal World of Adolescence is Digitally Remastered™ in eBooks & in paperback
This work attempts to explain changes in the legal conception of adolescence as a stage of life and as a transition to adulthood. The intended audience includes lawyers and others—such as parents, professionals, and kids—puzzled by trends labeled “children’s liberation” and “the revolution in juvenile justice.” Much cited and long recognized as an authority, it is considered a classic of law & society. Changes in legal conceptions of youth are interesting in their own right. They are also a useful way of examining important social, political, and economic changes. It is said that legal studies, “properly pursued, lead to a fuller understanding of the larger world of which the law…
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Malcolm Feeley’s classic Court Reform on Trial on Innovation & Failure in the Criminal Process, now Digitally Remastered™
COURT REFORM ON TRIAL is a recognized study of innovation in the process of criminal justice, and why it so often fails—despite the best intentions of judges, administrators, and reformers. The arc of innovation to disappointment is analyzed for such ideas as bail reform, pretrial diversion, speedy trials, and determinate sentencing. A much-maligned system of plea bargaining shifts power to prosecutors away from judges, as formal trials recede in importance—but is that really the problem? Perhaps it lies in unrealistic expectations, splintered systems and decisionmaking, waning political will, unempowered constituencies, and reformers’ hubris. Feeley analyzes the persistent failure and proposes insightful pathways out of the cycle. First commissioned as a…
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David Nelken adds new preface, and paperback and ebooks, to his award-winning study The Limits of the Legal Process
This classic and path-breaking study in the sociology of law has won multiple academic awards for its insight, clarity, and broad import in examining the UK’s Rent Acts and landlord behavior over a period of time in the 1960s and 1970s. Not just a revelation of the unintended consequences of well-meaning tenant reforms–though it certainly does lay bare the bizarre side-effects of a law presented as protecting tenants from unscrupulous landlords–the book is a deeper penetration into the very notion of reform legislation, class dominance, competing interests, and the counter-use of reformist law as a weapon by those intended to be regulated. The study even questions the very notion of…
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Jesse Choper’s powerful Judicial Review and the National Political Process available as an eBook
As constitutional scholar John Nowak noted when this classic book was first published, “Professor Choper’s Judicial Review and the National Political Process is mandatory reading for anyone seriously attempting to study our constitutional system of government. It is an important assessment of the democratic process and the theoretical and practical role of the Supreme Court.” That view is no less true today, as borne out by the countless citations to this landmark work over the decades. It is simply part of the foundational canon of constitutional law and political theory, an essential part of the library of scholars, students, and educated readers interested in considering the hard choices inherent in…
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Simon Roberts’ acclaimed legal anthropology Order and Dispute: now in Second Edition
A classic resource in the modern study of the anthropology of law, the much-cited and rare book is now widely available again. There are many societies that survive in a remarkably orderly fashion without the help of judges, courts and police. Roberts contends, however, that legal theory has become too closely identified with our own arrangements in western societies to help much in cross-cultural studies of order. Now in an updated edition, in paperback and eBook formats.
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4th edition of Jerome Skolnick’s Classic Justice Without Trial Explores Policing and Democratic Values from Inside
Available in multiple ebook formats and paperback: the acclaimed and foundational study of police culture and practice, political accountability, application of and obedience to the rule of law in stops and arrests, and the dilemma of law versus order in free societies -- by the renowned sociologist using innovative and influential research techniques in law and criminology. New preface by the author and Foreword by Candace McCoy.