New Books in Law

Nada Moumtaz’s God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State (University of California Press, 2021) is an ethnography anchored in deep study of the Muslim scholarly tradition, the urban landscape, and Lebanon across the Ottoman, Mandate, and post-independence periods. At the center of the book is the waqf, often translated as “pious endowment.” An act and a practice exhibiting or embodying both change and stability since the nineteenth century, the waqf allows Moumtaz to reinterpret major categories in anthropology, Islamic legal studies, and history, including charity, family, the economy, the public and private, and the state. This is the second New Books Network interview devoted to this much-anticipated book, a careful, wide-ranging, and ambitious work poised to influence conversations in multiple disciplines.Interviewers: Janna Aladdin and Julian Weideman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In Re-Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States (Cornell UP, 2021), David Madland explores how labor unions are essential to all workers. Yet, union systems are badly flawed and in need of rapid changes for reform. Madland's multilayered analysis presents a solution--a model to replace the existing firm-based collective bargaining with a larger, industry-scale bargaining method coupled with powerful incentives for union membership.These changes would represent a remarkable shift from the norm, but would be based on lessons from other countries, US history and current policy in several cities and states. In outlining the shift, Madland details how these proposals might mend the broken economic and political systems in the United States. He also uses three examples from Britain, Canada, and Australia to explore what there is yet to learn about this new system in other developed nations.Madland's practical advice in Re-Union extends to a proposal for how to implement the changes necessary to shift the current paradigm. This powerful call to action speaks directly to the workers affected by these policies--the very people seeking to have their voices recognized in a system that attempts to silence them.David Madland is Senior Fellow and Strategic Director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress. He is author of Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t work without a strong middle class. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Dr. Robert J. Spitzer’s classic text, The Politics of Gun Control: 8th Edition (Routledge, 2020), has been revised based on new data on gun ownership and use. Dr. Spitzer insightfully interrogates the impact of gun politics on the 2018 elections, new research on the history of American gun laws, and controversies over the geography of guns -- where and when they can be carried and whether they can be concealed. The podcast conversation digs into new findings on elections, public opinion, single-issue voting, the parallel histories of gun rights/regulations, and the changing profiles and strategies of gun safety groups. Dr. Spitzer provides insights on the upcoming midterm elections, forecasts what is at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court case, NYS Gun & Pistol v. Bruen, and provides a reminder that federalism can never be far from any case analysis in American politics.Dr. Robert J. Spitzer is a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Cortland. Trained by Theodore Lowi, Dr, Spitzer has published books on the presidency, the right to life mov, and the constitution -- with several works focused on the right to bear arms, gun control, and gun rights. The Supreme Court will hear its first Second Amendment case since 2010 and Robert’s article “Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights” is cited by the Solicitor General of the US in his amicus brief.Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Hate speech can happen anywhere - in Charlottesville, Virginia, where young men in khakis shouted, "Jews will not replace us"; in Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to target the Muslim Rohingya; in Cape Town, South Africa, where a pastor called on ISIS to rid South Africa of the "homosexual curse." In person or online, people wield language to attack others for their race, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or other aspects of identity. Caitlin Ring Carlson's Hate Speech (MIT Press, 2021) examines hate speech: what it is, and is not; its history; and efforts to address it.Marci Mazzarotto is an Assistant Professor of Digital Communication at Georgian Court University in New Jersey. Her research interests center on the interdisciplinary intersection of academic theory and artistic practice with a focus on film and television studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Mental Health: Policies, Laws and Attitudes is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Elyn Saks, Orrin B. Evans Distinguished Professor of Law, and Professor of Law, Psychology and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at USC. During this wide-ranging conversation Elyn Saks candidly shares her personal experiences with schizophrenia and discusses the intersection of law, mental health and ethics: the legal and ethical implications surrounding mental health. Further topics include psychotropic medication and the law, criminalization and mental illness, and an exploration of which countries are more progressive with respect to important mental health policies, laws and procedures, and more.Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Political Scientist John Dearborn’s new book, Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation (U Chicago Press, 2021), weaves together three connected threads in the course of his analysis: the role and capacity of ideas to make political change, the evolution of the position and understanding of the President of the United States as a representative of the citizens of the United States, and the way in which congressional legislation also works to shift the constitutional or institutional relationship between Congress and the President. This is a propulsive book, which is not necessarily the norm for academic publications, and Dearborn keeps the reader engaged through fascinating details about legislation that Congress passes in the midst of the 20th century that not only sets up policy outcomes but also provides the president with the power to create those outcomes. Dearborn then traces the ways, in the latter part of the 20th century, in which Congress attempts to wrangle some of that power back from the president, or to develop its own power to rival or parallel the president’s power.Power Shifts focuses on this concept of the president as a national representative, which was not necessarily the idea that the Founders had for the president at the time of the Constitutional Convention. Some thought was given to how this national office would operate, but because of the way that the president is elected, at a remove from the people, the idea that the president was the voice or tribune of the people was not the key concept in the design of the presidency. Dearborn takes the reader through the evolution of this concept during the 19th and 20th century, highlighting how the presidents made claim to this particular role, while noting that it became clear that the veto power was not sufficient to reflect the voice of the people. During a number of decades in the midst of the 20th century, Congress builds up the presidency as an institution, formalizing presidential agenda-setting capacities and giving the presidency the organizational capacity to function as the center of the governmental structure and as the representative of all of the people. In examining several congressional acts, including the Budget Act of 1921, the Reorganization Act of 1939, and other particular constructions by Congress, Power Shifts examines how these creations centered presidential representation as the key to the design for these legislative moves. In the second part of the book, Dearborn explores the period of congressional resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s, and how Congress created connected legislation that sought to pull some of these powers away from the president, or at least provide Congress with sufficient capacity to challenge the president in a number of different arenas. And again, the arguments around the legislation dive into the question of whether the president is operating as a national representative, with a focus on the best interests of the people and the country.Shaina Boldt assisted with this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Dilek Kurban’s Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict (Cambridge UP, 2020) considers the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) engagement with Turkey’s ongoing Kurdish conflict. Tracing the legal mobilization of Kurdish people alongside legal and political histories, Kurban’s work highlights the factors enabling ongoing violence in the Kurdish region. As Kurban argues, considering the effectiveness of supranational courts, like the ECtHR, in cases like that of Turkey invokes difficult questions about international human rights regimes. Limits of Supranational Justice contributes to studies of supranational courts and legal mobilization—as well as broader conversations about human rights—by pointing to new avenues of sociolegal inquiry alongside the broader sociohistoral context in the case of Turkey.Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at McGill University, where they research the how UK asylum tribunals consider claims of belief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Christine Schwöbel-Patel's Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a critical study of efforts to 'sell' global justice. The book offers a new reading of the rise of international criminal law as the dominant institutional expression of global justice, linking it to the rise of branding. The political economy analysis employed highlights that a global elite benefit from marketised global justice whilst those who tend to be the 'faces' of global injustice - particularly victims of conflict - are instrumentalised and ultimately commodified. The book is an invitation to critically consider the predominance of market values in global justice, suggesting an 'occupying' of global justice as an avenue for drawing out social values.Margot Tudor is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter, based in the Politics department. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

The American media has been focused on the Supreme Court’s upcoming abortion cases but a decision in a critical Second Amendment case could overturn public safety laws for 25% of Americans. Next week, the Court will hear arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a challenge to a 1911 New York State law that limits carrying guns outside the home. New York is a “may issue” state in which applications for concealed carry are not automatically granted but reviewed to determine if the person has “proper cause” to conceal a gun. We’ve not seen a Second Amendment case since Heller v. District of Columbia in 2008 and McDonald v. City of Chicago in 2010 -- and this case will be heard by a Court that now has 3 conservative appointments made by former President Donald Trump. Two Second Amendment scholars join the podcast to go wide and deep on the astonishing implications for our laws.Joseph Blocher is the Lanty L. Smith ’67 Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law and one of the attorneys who helped write the brief for DC in Heller. He co-authored Free Speech Beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment (NYU, 2017) with Mark Tushnet and Alan K. Chen and The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (Cambridge University Press, 2018) with Darrell Miller in 2018 (New Books interview here). His recent “When Guns Threaten the Public Sphere: A New Account of Public Safety Regulation Under Heller” (Northwestern University Law Review, Vol 116, 2021) with Reva Siegel interrogates the impact of gun rights on free speech.Jacob D. Charles, the Executive Director & Lecturing Fellow at the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law. His work on the Second Amendment has appeared in numerous law journals and his public-facing scholarship includes work with CNN, NPR, Politifact, NewsWeek, and Mother Jones. “Securing Gun Rights By Statute: The Right To Keep and Bear Arms Outside the Constitution,” (forthcoming, University of Michigan Law Review) interrogates the non-constitutional gun rights that create broad powers for gun owners beyond the Second Amendment.Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast. Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

European Decadence, a controversial artistic movement that flourished mainly in late-nineteenth-century France and Britain, has inspired several generations of Chinese writers and literary scholars since it was introduced to China in the early 1920s. Translated into Chinese as tuifei, which has strong hedonistic and pessimistic connotations, the concept of Decadence has proven instrumental in multiple waves of cultural rebellion, but has also become susceptible to moralistic criticism. Many contemporary scholars have sought to rehabilitate Chinese Decadence but have found it difficult to dissociate it from the negative connotations of tuifei. More importantly, few have reconnected Decadence with its steadfast pursuit of intellectual pleasure and unique paradoxes or explored the specific socio-historical conditions and cultural dynamics that gave rise to Decadence.Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture: A Comparative and Literary-Historical Reevaluation (Cambria Press, 2020) is the first comprehensive study of Decadence in Chinese literature since the early twentieth century. Standing at the intersection of comparative literature and cultural history, it transcends the framework of tuifei by locating European Decadence in its sociocultural context and uses it as a critical lens to examine Chinese Decadent literature and Chinese society. Its in-depth analysis reveals that some Chinese writers and literary scholars creatively appropriated the concept of Decadence for enlightenment purposes or to bid farewell to revolution. Meanwhile, the socialist system, by first fostering strong senses of elitism among certain privileged groups and then rescinding its ideological endorsement and material support, played a crucial role in the emergence of Chinese Decadent literature in the European sense.Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture is an important book for scholars and students interested in Decadence, modern Chinese literature and cultural history, Asian studies, and comparative literature.This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series headed by Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania).Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law