Disputing systems are products of the societies in which they operate—they originate and mutate in response to disputes that are particular to specific social, cultural, and political contexts. Disputing procedures, therefore, are an important medium through which fundamental beliefs, values, and symbols of culture are communicated, preserved, and sometimes altered. In Law, Culture, and Ritual , Oscar G. Chase uses interdisciplinary s ...
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a two-ton truck bomb that felled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On June 11, 2001, an unprecedented 242 witnesses watched him die by lethal injection. In the aftermath of the bombings, American public commentary almost immediately turned to “closure” rhetoric. Reporters and audiences alike speculated about whether victim’s fami ...
Why do killers deserve punishment? How should the law decide? These are the questions Samuel H. Pillsbury seeks to answer in this important new book on the theory and practice of criminal responsibility. In an argument both traditional and fresh, Pillsbury holds that persons deserve punishment according to the evil they choose to do, regardless of their psychological capacities. Using real case examples, he offers concrete proposals for legal re ...
Law, politics, and society in the modern West have been marked by the increasing power of the judge: the development of constitutional justice, the evolution of international judiciaries, and judicial systems that extend even further into social life. Judges make decisions that not only enforce the law, but also codify the values of our times.In the summer of 2000, an esteemed group of judges and legal scholars met in Provence, France, to consid ...
Both the courts and the public seem confused about sexual harassment—what it is, how it functions, and what sorts of behaviors are actionable in court. Theresa M. Beiner contrasts perspectives from social scientists on the realities of workplace sexual harassment with the current legal standard. When it comes to sexual harassment law, all too often courts (and employers) are left in the difficult position of grappling with vague legal ...
Can theories of evolution explain the development of our capacityfor moral judgment and the content of morality itself?If bad behavior punished by the criminal law is attributableto physical causes, rather than being intentional or voluntaryas traditionally assumed, what are the implications for rethinkingthe criminal justice system? Is evolutionary theoryand “nature talk,” at least as practiced to date, inherentlyconservativ ...
Throughout history obscenity has not really been about sex but about degradation. Sexual depictions have been suppressed when they were seen as lowering the status of humans, furthering our distance from the gods or God and moving us toward the animals. In the current era, when we recognize ourselves and both humans and animals, sexual depiction has lost some of its sting. Its degrading role has been replaced by hate speech that distances groups ...
Since the fall of communism, laissez-faire capitalism has experienced renewed popularity. Flush with victory, the United States has embraced a particularly narrow and single-minded definition of capitalism and aggressively exported it worldwide. The defining trait of this brand of capitalism is an unwavering reverence for the icons of the market. Although promoted as a laissez-faire form of capitalism, it actually reflects the very evils of self ...
"This is anextraordinary and ground-breaking book, a wonderfully creative mix of fact andtheory, imagination and drama. Anyone with an interest in law, history, or, forthat matter, great storytelling will fall in love with A Death at Crooked Creek. The startling origin of the complex'intention exception' to the hearsay evidence rule becomes canvas on which agrand and marvelously detailed tale is told. This is modern narrative at i ...
