New Books in Law

The debate about whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed is one that is highly charged and to which there are no easy solutions. In Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform? (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr Kay Wilson does not shy away from these controversial debates. Examining the work that dignity can do, she makes the case for an holistic interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In thinking about mental health reform, she provides a core framework which may guide support and intervention in a way that compels respect for the dignity of the person. This book makes an important contribution to the literature. Its nuanced approach and fearlessness in delving into the hard issues should be required reading for policy makers, lawyers and mental health practitioners.  Dr Kay Wilson is a postdoctoral fellow at the convenor of The Disability Law Network at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She is also a co-editor of The Future of Mental Health, Disability and Criminal Law, (Routledge, 2023). Jane Richards is a Lecturer in Law at York Law School, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? Why does the UN appear at times to be so impotent in the face of it? Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice (Bristol University Press, 2023) by Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really happening around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to bring about change.The author draws on over ten years’ experience as Chair of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to give a frank account of the remarkable capacities of this system, what it has achieved in practice, or not been able to achieve – and most importantly, why.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Kicking off our new monthly series on freedom of speech, Keith Whittington and Donald Downs discuss the Princeton Principles for a Campus of Free Inquiry. These principles, outlined by a group of scholars convened by Professor Robert P. George here at the James Madison Program in March 2023, expand on the well-known Chicago Principles in ensuring campus free speech and institutional neutrality.Professors Whittington and Downs are both among the original fifteen participants and endorsers of the Princeton Principles, and played significant roles in drafting the document. Keith Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, and the author of Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech (Princeton UP, 2019). He specializes in public law and American Politics, and will soon join the faculty of Yale Law School. Donald Downs is the Alexander Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His areas of specialty include freedom of speech, academic freedom, and American politics. Since retiring, Downs has been the lead faculty advisor to the Free Speech and Open Inquiry Project of the Institute for Humane Studies in Washington, D.C.Princeton's governing document, Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities, referenced during the episode. The James Madison Program's Initiative on Freedom of Thought, Inquiry, and Expression.Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies Over Borders and Borders Over Bodies (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) tracks the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North—where it originated—along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two. The term 'transgender' transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. This study centres on the experiences and narratives of people that can be usefully termed 'gender refugees', gathered through a series of life story interviews. It is the argument of this book that the departures, border crossings, arrivals and perceptions of South Africa for gender refugees have been both enabled and constrained by the contested meanings and politics of this emergence of transgender. This book explores, through these narratives, the radical constitutional-legal possibilities for 'transgender' in South Africa, the dissonances between the possibilities of constitutional law, and the pervasive politics/logic of binary ‘sex/gender’ within South African society. In doing so, this book enriches the emergent field of Transgender Studies and challenges some of the current dominant theoretical and political perceptions of 'transgender'. It offers complex narratives from the African continent regarding sex, gender, sexuality and notions of home concerning particular geo-politically situated bodies.B Camminga (they/them) received a PhD from the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape Town, in 2016. They have since held a postdoctoral fellowship at the African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University, and several visiting fellowships, including at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. They work on issues relating to gender identity and expression on the African continent with a focus on transgender migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.Clayton Jarrard is a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts. His scholarly engagement spans the subject areas of Cultural Anthropology, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, and Religious Studies. Clayton is also a host for the Un/Livable Cultures podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Luke Froeb joins the podcast to talk about his career in economics, what it's like to be the chief economist at the FTC and DOJ antitrust division, how these agencies make decisions about merger cases, the history of the Chicago School consumer welfare standard and the types of analytical tools and modeling that underlies the approach, along with the rise of the New Brandeisians and their failures thus far.Jon Hartley is an economics researcher with interests in international macroeconomics, finance, and labor economics and is currently an economics PhD student at Stanford University. He is also currently a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a research associate at the Hoover Institution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Our data-intensive world is here to stay, but does that come at the cost of our humanity in terms of autonomy, community, dignity, and equality? In We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023), Wendy H. Wong argues that we cannot allow that to happen. Exploring the pervasiveness of data collection and tracking, Wong reminds us that we are all stakeholders in this digital world, who are currently being left out of the most pressing conversations around technology, ethics, and policy. This book clarifies the nature of datafication and calls for an extension of human rights to recognize how data complicate what it means to safeguard and encourage human potential.Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs.Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Cancel culture is something all academics are aware of and some are concerned about.  Certainly that’s true of Greg Lukianoff who was the co-author (with Jonathan Haidt) of The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin, 2018) and who has now co-authored (with Rikki Schlott) of The Canceling of the American Mind (Simon and Schuster, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones.Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

This book is a tour de force. In The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (Bloomsbury, 2022), Dr Paolo Sandro explores the assumed unproblematic tension between the creation and application of law, and the way that this guides constitutional democracy. Crossing both jurisdictional borders and legal traditions, the author draws out the intrinsic relation between law, power and politics, to reveal law's authority. Ten years in the writing, the work is truly interdisciplinary. It integrates jurisprudential methodology, history, anthropology, political science, philosophy of language and philosophy of action. It will be of use to anyone who is serious about becoming a better scholar. It compels reflection on the assumptions that scholars make in writing, in practice, in scholarship and study. All the while Sandro breaks new ground in legal theory and in the study of constitutional democracy. Dr Paolo Sandro is a lecturer in law at The University of Leeds. The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law is available open access.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018.In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials (Simon & Schuster, 2023), Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant trials to tell the global history of witchcraft and witch-hunts. As well as exploring the origins of witch-hunts through some of the most famous trials from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, it takes us in new and surprising directions. It shows us how witchcraft was reimagined by lawyers and radical historians in France, how suspicions of sorcery led to murder in Jazz Age Pennsylvania, the effects of colonialism and Christian missionary zeal on ‘witches’ in Africa, and how even today a witch trial can come in many guises.Professor Gibson also tells the stories of the ‘witches’ – mostly women like Helena Scheuberin, Anny Sampson and Joan Wright, whose stories have too often been overshadowed by those of the powerful men, such as King James I and ‘Witchfinder General’ Matthew Hopkins, who hounded them.Once a tool invented by demonologists to hurt and silence their enemies, witch trials have been twisted and transformed over the course of history and the lines between witch and witch-hunter blurred. For the fortunate, a witch-hunt is just a metaphor, but, as this book makes clear, witches are truly still on trial.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Addressing the relationship between law and the visual, this book examines the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show trials.The dispensation of justice during communist rule in Albania, East Germany, and Poland was reliant on legal propaganda, making the visual a fundamental part of the legitimacy of the law. Analysing photographs of trials, Agata Fijalkowski's Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial (Routledge, 2023) examines how this message was conveyed to audiences watching and participating in the spectacle of show trials. The book traces how this use of the visual was exported from the Soviet Union and imposed upon its satellite states in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. It shows how the legal actors and political authorities embraced new photographic technologies to advance their legal propaganda and legal photography. Drawing on contemporary theoretical work in the area, the book then challenges straightforward accounts of the relationship between law and the visual, critically engaging entrenched legal historical narratives, in relation to three different protagonists, to offer the possibility of reclaiming and rewriting past accounts. As its analysis demonstrates, the power of images can also be subversive; and, as such, the cases it addresses contribute to the discourse on visual epistemology and open onto contemporary questions about law and its inherent performativity.Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. Twitter: @batesmith. LinkedIn. His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products’: International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat’s Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law