• Books,  Featured,  Legal History & Biography

    Paul Pruitt’s powerful collection of young lawyers’ essays on Alabama legal history

    NEW FIELD, NEW CORN is an anthology of research papers that explore a range of topics from the rich legal history of the state of Alabama and its influential legal and judicial figures. Contemporary photography and mapwork are featured as well. “Alabama legal history can be surprising. Usually, this history is identified with dominant one-party politics, slavery, racial segregation, and limited social welfare. Paul Pruitt’s collection of young lawyers’ research reveals a new field. It extends out from legal subjects, embracing new perceptions of law in society across Alabama history. The collection rests on broad research. Lawyers working in diverse fields have produced Alabama legal history that sets a new…

  • Books,  Legal History & Biography

    Jews and the Law is a New Collection by Leading Scholars on the Legal Profession, Antisemitism, and Historical Insights

    Jews are a people of law, and law defines who the Jewish people are and what they believe. This anthology engages with the growing complexity of what it is to be Jewish — and, more problematically, what it means to be at once Jewish and participate in secular legal systems as lawyers, judges, legal thinkers, civil rights advocates, and teachers. The essays in this book trace the history and chart the sociology of the Jewish legal profession over time.

  • Books,  Legal History & Biography

    Mangum’s Classic Study The Legal Status of the Negro is Available as a New eBook

    An important and much-cited snapshot in time before World War II and its aftermath dramatically changed the lives and legal relations of African Americans in the United States. This classic book is now available in this quality ebook edition, part of the Legal History & Biography Series. Digital features include active Contents, linked notes, the original tables and references retained from the 1940 printing, and even a fully-linked Index pointing to the specific location in the book. First published in 1940, this book is famously considered to be the foundational treatise in examining the legal status of African Americans as applied and interpreted by U.S. courts and judges over several…

  • Books,  Legal History & Biography,  QP Blog

    Hirsch’s enduring The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter explores the contradictions of the influential jurist

    A recognized, fascinating, and much-cited classic of judicial biography and Supreme Court insight is now available in a quality ebook edition—featuring active contents, linked notes, proper formatting, and a fully-linked Index—as well as a new paperback reprint edition. Felix Frankfurter was perhaps the most influential jurist of the 20th century—and one of the most complex men ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Mysteries and apparent contradictions abound. A vibrant and charming friend to many, why are his diaries so full of vitriol against judicial colleagues, especially Douglas and Black? An active Zionist, why did he so zealously enjoy the company of Boston Brahmins, whose snobbery he detested? Most…

  • Books,  Legal History & Biography

    Mark Aaronson Examines Representing the Poor Against Governor Reagan’s Welfare Reforms

    An extended, multifaceted case study of a kind not much found in the literature on social cause lawyering. The narrative highlights the forceful presence of California Governor Ronald Reagan and the pivotal role in representing the welfare poor of Ralph Santiago Abascal, a government-funded legal aid attorney and social reform leader. To fight Reagan’s ambitious welfare policy initiatives, Abascal with other legal services lawyers effected meaningful legal change. In joint cause with recipient-led welfare rights organizations, he relied on court litigation not in isolation but as part of an overall strategy that also involved legislative and administrative actions. The empirical landscape of this book is the contentious political and legal…

  • Books,  Featured,  Legal History & Biography,  QP Blog

    Harry Scheiber’s classic study of Wilson and civil liberties is back in print … and in eBooks

    The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1917-1921, is a Digitally Remastered™ reprint of one of the classic works of legal and social history. Harry Scheiber’s much-cited study of Woodrow Wilson and his cabinet explores the suppression of speech and print publication during an era of world war, the Red Scare, anti-foreign fervor, and unionism. Wilson’s notable achievements in social leadership and the progressive movement are questioned in light of his failure to protect civil liberties amidst the tide of war fever, nationalism, racism, and a protection of corporate interests. Worse, his own administration, through the Justice Department and the Postmaster General, took ruthless and often spurious actions to repress liberties,…

  • Books,  Featured,  Legal History & Biography,  Legal Legends

    The annotated Common Law: Holmes Gets Decoded for a New Generation, in Hardcover, Paperback & eBook

    The only corrected and annotated version available of this foundational work on law and legal reasoning, read by generations of law students, scholars, and historians -- now in a 2010 edition with an explanatory Foreword, active contents, linked and numbered footnotes, and clarifying annotations throughout. In hardcover, paperback, and eight digital versions.

  • Books,  Featured,  Legal History & Biography

    Meltsner’s Cruel and Unusual: Inside Story of the NAACP Inc. Fund Lawyers Who Fought to Abolish the Death Penalty

    Michael Meltsner's inside account, accessible to a wide audience and reading like a novel, of a small band of Fund lawyers and their 9-year struggle to end the death penalty. New edition features a 2011 Foreword by death-penalty author Evan Mandery of CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as a new Preface by the author. In paperback and 9 ebook formats. The mission seemed as impossible then as going to the moon...

  • Books,  Legal History & Biography,  QP Blog

    Philip Schrag’s Counsel for the Deceived Goes Inside NYC’s First Consumer Protection Agency: Schemes, Humor and Insight

    Protect the consumer. Stop the schemes and ripoffs. Make law work for the little guy. All easier said than done. Memoirs and case studies of fraud schemes and consumer protection from an insider who helped to found New York City’s first consumer watchdog agency, Counsel for the Deceived is a funny, candid account of fraud and institutional paralysis written by a then-newby lawyer, the city’s Consumer Advocate. Philip Schrag was appointed by former Miss America Bess Myerson to defend consumer rights. In six case histories, he documents the schemes of the “commercial underworld” and the inability of courts and government agencies to respond in time. This 4oth anniversary edition of…