New Books in Law

Property rights are important for economic exchange, but many governments don't protect them. Private market organizations can fill this gap by providing an institutional structure to enforce agreements, but with this power comes the ability to extort group members. Under what circumstances, then, will private organizations provide a stable environment for economic activity? Based on market case studies and a representative survey of traders in Lagos, Nigeria, this book argues that threats from the government can force an association to behave in ways that promote trade. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that private good governance in developing countries thrives when the government keeps its hands off private group affairs. Instead, the author argues, leaders among traders behave in ways that promote trade primarily because of the threat of government intrusion.Shelby Grossman is a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Dr. Grossman's primary research interests are in comparative politics and sub-Saharan Africa. She was previously an assistant professor of political science at the University of Memphis and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Dr. Grossman earned her PhD in Government from Harvard University in 2016.Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. His primary research interest is in the political economy of governance and development, particularly in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Welcome to Cover Story, a podcast by New Books Network devoted to long form journalism. Today, we are talking to Texas-based writer Sarah Hepola. Hepola is most known from her brave writing about drinking and the 2015 bestselling memoir Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget.She's appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air and published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, Salon and Texas Monthly, where she is a writer-at-large. Today we are talking about her recent story “In Mobile City Everybody Knows Your Name” from August 2021 Texas Monthly. A very fresh piece.Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Interested in everything, with a particular weakness for literature and foreign relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

We often talk as if individuals have entitlements to certain kinds of information: medical test results, political representatives’ voting records, crime statistics, and the like. We also talk as if these entitlements entail duties on the part of others to provide the relevant information. Moreover, we talk as if the individual’s entitlement to information also entails a range of protections against misinformation, deception, and the like.Despite the fact that these ideas are common, there is surprisingly little in the philosophical literature about the nature and contours of the relevant entitlements. In her new book, The Right to Know: Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them (Routledge, 2021), Lani Watson seeks to remedy this. She develops a conception of epistemic rights – a distinct class entitlements which nonetheless fits neatly into the existing landscape of rights theory. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (Oxford UP, 2021) helps us think about the complexity of the American political system that has grown up over the past 200 years, and how this system functions (or, at times, misfunctions) given the demands and pressures on the governmental system and the American constitutional framework. Stephen Skowronek, John Dearborn, and Desmond King focus on the concept of the deep state, a term that was frequently used during the Trump Administration, with different meanings to different audiences and citizens. The deep state has also been more clearly revealed, in certain regards, by presidential inclinations towards the unitary executive. The phantoms of the title refer to the shadows of both the deep state and the unitary executive as embedded in the original constitutional arrangement crafted in Philadelphia in 1787, through the vesting clause in Article II, Congress’s capacity to expand the republic and create more and diverse aspects of government, and the way in which congressional legislation establishes both legal regulations and norms with which the executive branch and the president are expected to cooperate. A key contention by the authors is that this uneasy tension has been in the shadows of our constitutional system since the beginning, but during other periods, elected officials finessed some of these difficulties through the presidential nominating/selection process, and with attention from the parties and the roles that the parties played in managing the system itself. With the evolution of the selection system, particularly with the shift to direct primaries and caucuses, and with parties now operating as extensions of the presidency and the president, the unitary executive has become more entrenched within the system. This beleaguered republic may be moving towards the form and function of a presidential democracy, often leaning into populism, and away from the contours and structure of the original republic.The unitary executive can operate more freely because of the system’s commitment to separation of powers, with all executive power in the hands of the president. Parallel to these developments has been the slow growth of the administrative state in the U.S., derogatorily referred to as “the deep state.” As discussed in Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic, the state is deep in a number of directions. The reach of the national government works its way to individuals, localities, and states through a host of different means and paths. The administrative state also extends horizontally, across the dimensions of the national government itself, with layers of civil servants, policy experts, political appointees, administrative judges, staff, all doing the work they are entrusted with by elected officials and led by the president. Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic dives into these dual dimensions of our political system—the potential for unified power in the president and presidency, and the substantive capacity of the administrative state— bringing forward the tensions between this strengthened Executive and the national state the president leads as head of the executive branch.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

In 2017, Myanmar's military launched a campaign of widespread targeted violence against its Rohingya minority. The horrific atrocities was later described by United Nations experts as genocide. This had been building since 2012, when earlier ethnic violence erupted between Buddhists and Muslims in Western Myanmar. These very grave incidents leading to the deaths and also the flight of thousands of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh was the most concentrated exodus of people since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. In Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of the Muslim 'Other' (Zed Books, 2017, 2019), Francis Wade identifies the underlying causes which flamed division, segregation and resulted in a horrific loss of life and violence. Wade explores how the manipulations by a ruling elite turned prompted neighbours to take up arms against neighbour, by politicising ethnic identity. The crisis is contextualised in the legacy of British colonialism which calcified the previously fluid dynamics of cultural groups across the country.The military junta is shown to have exploited these divisions in its campaign which targeted the Rohingya minority. In the period of extreme violence, Wade draws out how the U.N., and more broadly, how Western backers of the apparent political transition to democratisation contemporaneously ignored the unfolding situation. Through his on-the-ground accounts, Wade explores how citizens experiencing rights and freedoms unseen for half a century, under a much lauded civilian leaders such as Aung San Suu Kyi, became complicit in this humanitarian catastrophe. Francis Wade is a journalist specialising in Myanmar and Southeast Asia. He began reporting on Myanmar in 2009 and went on to cover in-depth the transition from military rule and the violence which accompanied it. He has reported for The Guardian, The London Review of Books, TIME, New York Review of Books and more. Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Constitutional Investigations is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Linda Colley, the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. Linda Colley is a leading expert on British, imperial and global history since 1700. After inspiring insights about Linda Colley’s teachers and professors who had a strong impact on her future career as a historian, this wide-ranging conversation provides a detailed examination of the global history and present state of constitutions and their impact.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

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270), known in English as Nahmanides and by the acronym the Ramban, was one of the most creative kabbalists, one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters, and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced.Join us as we talk with Moshe Halbertal about his recent book: Nahmanides: Law and Mysticism (Yale UP, 2020), where he provides a broad, systematic account of Nahmanides’s thought, exploring his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, as well as the relationship between Nahmanides’s kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them.Moshe Halbertal is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University and Gruss Professor of Law at NYU Law School. He has also written Maimonides: Life and Thought.Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption(IVP Academic, 2020). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Jeffrey Jenkins and Justin Peck’s new book Congress and the First Civil Rights Era, 1861-1918 (U Chicago Press, 2021) explores how Congressional Republicans enacted laws aimed at establishing an inclusive, multiracial democracy. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, Congress crafted a civil rights agenda -- including laws, strict enforcement mechanisms, and Constitutional amendments that (for a brief time) enabled Black Americans to vote, sit on juries, and exercise other civil rights. Using a rich collection of data, the book documents how the Republican coalitions that passed and enforced civil rights weakened because of GOP political weakness in the South, shifts in the political preferences of Northern voters, and lack of GOP unity over core assumptions. Jenkins and Peck offer a Congress-centered American political development perspective to understand how Republicans built civil rights yet subsequently undermined the nascent multiracial democracy that their civil rights agenda helped make possible. The book focuses on the conflict within the Republican Party and electoral trends to argue that “policy enactments are a consequence of, and a window into, evolving attitudes about civil rights.” The book’s granular political history demonstrates how legal institutions -- created by majoritarian bodies like Congress -- liberated and protected an oppressed class of citizens but also reasserted the power of the white majority.Dr. Jeffery A. Jenkins is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise, Director of the Bedrosian Center, and Director of the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.Dr. Justin Peck is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University. In addition to his work on Congress and Civil Rights, he is engaged in a project that seeks to understand how the United States’ role in international affairs leads to the production of new political ideas and to the reform of domestic political institutions.Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “BLM versus #BLM:The Dangers of the New Armed Rebellion Narrative” was recently published as part of the Brennan Center for Justice’s series on Protest, Insurrection, and the Second Amendment and “Sensitive Places: Originalism, Gender, and the Myth Self-Defense in District of Columbia v. Heller” appeared in July 2021’s Polity. Email her comments at sliebell@sju.edu or tweet to @SusanLiebell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is sometimes described as “the most important governmental office no one has ever heard of” and it certainly occupies a very important position and role in the functioning of the American presidency and the way that the Executive branch operates. Political Scientists Meena Bose (Hofstra University) and Andrew Rudalevige (Bowdoin College) have edited an excellent primer on OMB, not just in terms of exploring what it does and how it works, but also integrating a host of perspectives examining the history, function, and details of OMB. The book begins with a Forward and an introductory chapter by the Honorable Jacob J. Lew, who served as OMB Director during both the Clinton and Obama Administrations. Lew’s chapter sets up the rest of the work inExecutive Policymaking: The Role of the OMB in the Presidency (Brookings Institution Press, 2020), since he discusses OMB as an insider and a leader of the agency, as well as from the position as a cabinet secretary who also needed to work with OMB and as President Obama’s chief of staff, a position that requires a similar kind of broad understanding of the functioning and structure of the entire Executive branch. The rest of the chapters in Executive Policymaking follow Lew’s lead, with analysis from academics who study and research the presidency and the Executive branch and bureaucracy along with co-authored chapters that bring in the perspectives from other current and former OMB employees.The Office of Management and Budget has evolved from the Bureau of the Budget (BOB) that was put into place in 1921, a century ago. Over time, the BOB was moved to the Department of Treasury, but OMB was given more the responsibilities that provide it with the capacity to essentially manage the workings of the Executive branch, which is no small undertaking. The president’s budget is the way that the Executive branch can broadly manage the priorities of the bureaucracy, and OMB is the centralizing actor in the way that this essentially operates. Bose and Rudalevige, both experts on the presidency and the bureaucracy, have brought together authors who examine OMB from important and distinct perspectives. The first section of Executive Policymaking explains the role that OMB plays in the federal budget process. This section also includes a chapter that specifically looks at the president’s budget powers during the Trump Era, since abuse of these powers also led to the first of President Donald Trump’s two impeachments. The next part of the book explores Executive Orders, Central Clearance, and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), all of which are key components of the role that OMB plays in regard to the Executive branch agencies and departments. The final section of the book shifts the focus a bit from the budget to management, looking at the role that OMB plays in terms of managing the entirety of the Executive branch and also managing itself. The authors in this section also include OMB employees, who speak to their own experiences working inside this complex and important agency and the role and position that OMB holds in relation to the president, the presidency, and the Executive branch. This is a fascinating and useful examination of the many dimensions of the Office of Management and Budget, placing the agency in historical, political, and institutional context.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

According to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) 'Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.' Connecting the politics of abolition to wider emancipatory struggles for liberation and social justice, David Scott's book For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics (Waterside Press, 2020) argues that penal abolitionism should be understood as an important public critical pedagogy and philosophy of hope that can help to reinvigorate democracy and set society on a pathway towards living in a world without prisons. For Abolition draws upon the socialist ethics of dignity, empathy, freedom and paradigm of life to systematically critique imprisonment as a state institution characterised by 'social death'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law