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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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Greg Berman Recounts Criminal Process Reforms and Successes in the new book Reducing Crime, Reducing Incarceration
A new collection of compelling and challenging essays from one of the nation’s leading voices on criminal justice reform, Reducing Crime, Reducing Incarceration makes the argument that sometimes small changes on the ground can add up to big improvements in the criminal justice system. How do you launch a new criminal justice reform? How do you measure impact? Is it possible to spread new practices to resistant audiences? And what’s the point of small-bore experimentation anyway? Greg Berman answers these questions (and more) by telling the story of successful experiments like the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, an experimental courthouse that has been documented to reduce both re-offending…
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Rosann Greenspan’s classic study of due process, criminal procedure & administrative ‘bypass’ is available as a new book
A classic study in law & society is now readily available to scholars, researchers, and others in the field of criminal justice, due process, policing, and administrative procedure. It adds a new Preface by the author and a new Foreword by Berkeley law professor Malcolm M. Feeley. As the author reflects: “I think it was my first day in the field that the police liaison to the district attorney’s probation revocation program exclaimed, ‘Forget rights! Forget right to jury! Forget right to bail! There are no rights!’ As Malcolm Feeley says in his Foreword, what I ‘discovered’ over the course of researching and writing this study was in plain view…
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David Crump’s 2014 Courtroom Thriller Pits Herrick Against a Drug Kingpin and its Bank
New from the author of CONFLICT OF INTEREST and MURDER IN SUGAR LAND: Law professor David Crump’s latest courtroom drama features Houston trial lawyer Robert Herrick, in a case that risks it all. Herrick is the lawyer for the little guy in Houston, Texas. His courtroom experiences have been realistically recounted in David Crump’s previous novels, seen here and here. Now Herrick faces an international enemy of unbridled arrogance and ruthlessness: the drug kingpin El Jefe, whose petty grudge against a local reporter was expressed in a family bloodbath. Can a civil lawsuit against El Jefe’s bank bring some measure of justice? And who’s really to blame here, after all?…
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John Logue’s Novel of Southern Change and Choices in the Sixties is Digitally Remastered™
Set in the tumultuous sixties, and published by Little, Brown in the eighties, this novel of a people’s governor and a Southern newspaperman still resonates with the moral choices that only strong people face. John Logue’s compelling fiction is available again, in a new digital edition. As Library Journal reviewed it, in its original release: The governor is on his deathbed; a black woman tries to have her son, a Vietnam War casualty, buried in a white cemetery; a prominent doctor is found dead, an apparent suicide. It is January 1967, and Jack Harris has returned to Alabama, after a seven-year absence, to be editor of the Montgomery Courant. As…
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Lawrence Friedman’s novel Who Killed Maggie Swift? Takes Reluctant Sleuth Frank May to the Dentist
Frank May practices law the safe, routine way: wills, trusts, business law. Books, forms, and documents. At least that’s the way he wants it…. But clients and life don’t always oblige. Frank avoids murder cases like most people avoid the dentist. That’s not so easy to do when a dead body shows up during his routine appointment for a teeth cleaning, and he is thrust into an investigation that bridges his law practice. He needs to get to the root of this death. That will take more than scraping the surface of a dental practice with deep secrets and suspicious characters — or the nearby, bizarre Xyloquex Corporation. If Frank…
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New England Law Review Joins Law Journal eBook Project with Volume 48, Issue 1
The New England Law Review now offers its issues in convenient and modern ebook formats for e-reader devices, apps, pads, smartphones, and computers. This first issue of Volume 48, Fall 2013, was published in 2014 and contains articles and presentations from leading figures of the academy, the judiciary, and the legal community. Contents of this issue include: • Commencement Address at New England Law: Boston, May 24, 2013, by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz Articles: • Creamskimming and Competition, by Jim Chen • “Give Me That Old Time Religion”: The Persistence of the Webster Reasonable Doubt Instruction and the Need to Abandon It, by Hon. Richard E. Welch, III •…
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Harvard Law Review, Feb. 2014, Explores Partisan Federalism, the Unnecessary Constitution, and State Action under Sebelius
The February 2014 issue (Volume 127, Number 4) features the following articles and essays: • Article, “Partisan Federalism,” by Jessica Bulman-Pozen • Book Review, “Never Mind the Constitution,” by Jeremy Waldron • Note, “NFIB v. Sebelius and the Individualization of the State Action Doctrine” In addition, student case notes explore Recent Cases on such diverse subjects as FDA limits on Plan B contraception, local zoning bans on medical marijuana sellers, a First Amendment defense to right-of-publicity claims, warrantless searches of cell-site data, copyright fair use and transformative artwork, undocumented alien workers as barred from backpay under labor law, international law and jurisdiction over the facilitator of piracy, juvenile life without…
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John Flood’s Study of the Corporate Law Firm Reveals a Side of Law Practice Often Ignored: Inside
A legal scholar and sociologist, John Flood spent years observing a large law firm from the inside—much like an embedded journalist, but with the perspective of a researcher on the theory and practice of legal organizations. What he found and analyzed resulted in a study that has been cited by many scholars over the years as the ultimate account of the inner workings of a corporate law firm, including its relations with clients, employees, and the broader profession. Further, using four detailed case studies, he showed how the construction of legal information and problems depended heavily on the role and specialization of the lawyer and the power of the client.…
