The DC@UB Law Faculty Book collection includes information on books published by all current and emeritus University at Buffalo School of Law faculty members. Links to purchase books are included where the books are still in print.
-
Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Criminal Law
Guyora Binder
- Reviews the development of American criminal law
- Explains its key concepts and persistent controversies in light of its past history
- Some key concepts include the retributive and preventive purposes of punishment, the requirements of a criminal act and a culpable mental state, and criteria of causal responsibility
-
Animals, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities
Irus Braverman
Typically, the legal investigation of nonhuman life, and of animal life in particular, is conducted through the discourse of animal rights. Within this discourse, legal rights are extended to certain nonhuman animals through the same liberal framework that has afforded human rights before it. Animals, Biopolitics, Law envisions the possibility of lively legalities that move beyond the humanist perspective. Drawing on an array of expertise—from law, geography, and anthropology, through animal studies and posthumanism, to science and technology studies—this interdisciplinary collection asks what, in legal terms, it means to be human and nonhuman, what it means to govern and to be governed, and what are the ethical and political concerns that emerge in the project of governing not only human but also more-than-human life.
-
The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don't Sue
David M. Engel
Why do Americans seem to sue at the slightest provocation? The answer may surprise you: we don’t! For every “Whiplash Charlie” who sees a car accident as a chance to make millions, for every McDonald’s customer to pursue a claim over a too-hot cup of coffee, many more Americans suffer injuries but make no claims against those responsible or their insurance companies. The question is not why Americans sue but why we don’t sue more often, and the answer can be found in how we think about injury and personal responsibility.
With this book, David M. Engel demolishes the myth that America is a litigious society. The sobering reality is that the vast majority of injury victims—more than nine out of ten—rely on their own resources, family and friends, and government programs to cover their losses. When real people experience serious injuries, they don’t respond as rational actors. Trauma and pain disrupt their thoughts, and potential claims are discouraged by negative stereotypes that pervade American television and popular culture. (Think Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad, who keeps a box of neck braces in his office to help clients exaggerate their injuries.) Cultural norms make preventable injuries appear inevitable—or the victim’s fault. We’re taught to accept setbacks stoically and not blame someone else. But this tendency to “lump it” doesn’t just hurt the victims; it hurts us all. As politicians continue to push reforms that miss the real problem, we risk losing these claims as a way to quickly identify unsafe products and practices. Because injuries disproportionately fall on people with fewer resources, the existing framework creates a social underclass whose needs must be met by government programs all citizens shoulder while shielding those who cause the harm.
It’s time for America to have a more responsible, blame-free discussion about injuries and the law. With The Myth of the Litigious Society, Engel takes readers clearly and powerfully through what we really know about injury victims and concludes with recommendations for how we might improve the situation.
-
Human Rights Standards: Hegemony, Law, and Politics
Makau wa Mutua
How are human rights norms made, who makes them, and why? In Human Rights Standards, Makau Mutua traces the history of the human rights project and critically explores how the norms of the human rights movement have been created. Examining key texts and documents published since the inception of the human rights movement at the end of World War II, he crafts a bracing critique of these works from the hitherto underutilized perspective of the Global South. Attention is focused on the deficits of the international order and how that order, which is defined by multiple asymmetries, defines human rights in a manner that exhibits normative gaps and cultural biases. Mutua identifies areas of further norm development and concludes that norm-creating processes must be inclusive and participatory to garner legitimacy across various cleavages and divides. The result is the first truly comprehensive critical look at the making of human rights norms and standards and, as such, will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars, activists, and policymakers interested in this important topic.
-
New York Legal Research
Elizabeth G. Adelman, Theodora Belniak, Courtney L. Selby, and Brian T. Detweiler
New York Legal Research provides an alternative to the excellent, but often lengthy, legal research books that take a bibliographic approach to this dynamic lawyering skill. The goal of the third edition is to explore concisely both the sources of New York state law and the process of conducting research using those sources. New to the third edition is a greater emphasis on online sources and performing online research. The book begins with an overview of the legal research process and an introduction to research techniques using online media. Then the book turns to secondary sources, recognizing these sources as the entry point for most new research projects. Next, New York Legal Research addresses primary authority, with chapters dedicated to case law, enacted law (statutes, constitutions, local law, and court rules), and administrative law. Additional chapters cover legislative history, free and commercial updating tools, legal ethics research, New York City law, and research strategies and organization. An appendix explains legal citation by New York courts following the New York Law Reports Style Manual. Most chapters contain outlines with step-by-step guidance for research in various types of legal resources. The book also includes short excerpts and screen shots from important sources. Discussions of legal analysis are brief but are included as necessary to show the crucial connection between research and analysis. While the concentration of New York Legal Research is state research, concise descriptions of federal resources are included throughout. This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.
-
New York Legal Research, 3d ed.: Teacher’s Manual
Elizabeth G. Adelman, Theodora Belniak, Courtney L. Selby, and Brian T. Detweiler
-
Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America
Samantha Barbas
Americans have long been obsessed with their images—their looks, public personas, and the impressions they make. This preoccupation has left its mark on the law. The twentieth century saw the creation of laws that protect your right to control your public image, to defend your image, and to feel good about your image and public presentation of self. These include the legal actions against invasion of privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. With these laws came the phenomenon of "personal image litigation"—individuals suing to vindicate their image rights. Laws of Image tells the story of how Americans came to use the law to protect and manage their images, feelings, and reputations. In this social, cultural, and legal history, Samantha Barbas ties the development of personal image law to the self-consciousness and image-consciousness that has become endemic in our media-saturated culture of celebrity and consumerism, where people see their identities as intertwined with their public images. The laws of image are the expression of a people who have become so publicity-conscious and self-focused that they believe they have a right to control their images—to manage and spin them like actors, politicians, and rock stars.
-
Wild Life : The Institution of Nature
Irus Braverman
Wild Life documents a nuanced understanding of the wild versus captive divide in species conservation. It also documents the emerging understanding that all forms of wild nature—both in situ (on-site) and ex situ (in captivity)—may need to be managed in perpetuity. Providing a unique window into the high-stakes world of nature conservation, Irus Braverman describes the heroic efforts by conservationists to save wild life. Yet in the shadows of such dedication and persistence in saving the life of species, Wild Life also finds sacrifice and death. Such life and death stories outline the modern struggle to define what conservation should look like at a time when the long-established definitions of nature have collapsed.
Wild Life begins with the plight of a tiny endangered snail, and ends with the rehabilitation of an entire island. Interwoven between its pages are stories about golden lion tamarins in Brazil, black-footed ferrets in the American Plains, Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia, Tasmanian devils in Australia, and many more creatures both human and nonhuman. Braverman draws on interviews with more than one hundred and twenty conservation biologists, zoologists, zoo professionals, government officials, and wildlife managers to explore the various perspectives on in situ and ex situ conservation and the blurring of the lines between them.
-
Filosofía del Derecho Constitucional: Cuestiones Fundamentales
Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Leonardo García Jaramillo
-
Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho Volúmen 3 [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory, Volume 3]
Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Ezequiel Spector
-
Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory]
Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Alvaro Núñez Vaquero
-
Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge
Jessica Owley and Keith H. Hirokawa
Has the concept of sustainability as we know it reached the end of its useful life? It is a term that means many things to many people, but it has been a positive driving force across all levels of society in a broad-based effort—either through laws and treaties or voluntary action—to keep our planet and our people healthy. But none of those efforts have managed to prevent climate change. It’s a reality that’s here to stay, and it’s bigger than we would have imagined even 20 years ago.
This volume presents a collection of papers from experts in the field articulating a wide range of thoughtful ways in which various conceptions of sustainability need to be re-examined, refined, or articulated in greater detail to address these challenges. The chapters reflect the kind of thoughtful and sophisticated thinking that is needed to accelerate the transition to sustainability in the face of a changing climate. As editors Jessica Owley and Keith Hirokawa note, one of the main challenges is the need for a better understanding of the issues and developing the proper means of communicating them.
The chapter authors demonstrate that sustainability provides a creative space within which to develop ideas and proposals to further social, economic, and environmental goals at the same time. Many propose new or modified laws and policies. All of them contribute to a constructive and helpful discussion about how to address what is easily one of the most difficult and important questions facing the planet.
-
Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho Volúmen 2 [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory, Volume 2]
Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco and Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora
-
Children and The Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice (American Casebook Series)
Douglas E. Abrams, Sarah H. Ramsey, and Susan Vivian Mangold
-
The Expanding Spaces of Law: a Timely Legal Geography
Irus Braverman, Nicholas Blomley, David Delaney, and Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar
The Expanding Spaces of Law presents readers with cutting-edge scholarship in legal geography. An invaluable resource for those new to this line of scholarship, the book also pushes the boundaries of legal geography, reinvigorating previous modes of inquiry and investigating new directions. It guides scholars interested in the law–space–power nexus to underexplored empirical sites and to novel theoretical and disciplinary resources. Finally, The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to think about the temporality and dynamism of legal spaces.
-
Substantive Criminal Law: Cases, Comments And Comparative Materials
Luis E. Chiesa
The strength of this casebook is the uniformity of each chapter’s structure, which makes it easier to approach the chapter’s topic systematically. Each chapter begins with several sections that discuss the applicable law, followed by a separate section that discusses the Model Penal Code’s approach to the topic. This is then followed by a “Comparative Perspectives” section that encourages students to think about alternative ways of approaching the topic. The richness of the comparative materials used in the casebook is unmatched by its competitors, as many of the materials have been translated by the author. Finally, each chapter ends with a section titled “Scholarly Debates” that introduces the student to some of the philosophical discussions related to the topic.
-
Preventing the Sexual Victimization of Children: Psychological, Legal, and Public Policy Perspectives
Charles Patrick Ewing
Sexual exploitation of children is a major social problem in the United States and around the world. Depending upon how such exploitation is defined and measured, divergent estimates indicate that in the U.S. between 3 and 37 percent of males, and between 8 and 71 percent of females are sexually abused in some manner during childhood or adolescence. In response, governments have passed strict laws, entered into international treaties, and established large bureaucracies aimed at curbing child sexual abuse.
Preventing the Sexual Victimization of Children is the first book to critically evaluate national and international efforts to reduce child sexual abuse (CSA) and ameliorate its effects. Until now, input from social science and mental health experts has been accepted for the most part uncritically, as have the programs and laws that have been developed in reliance upon that advice. Here Dr. Ewing utilizes empirical data, policy considerations, cost-benefit analyses, psychological theory, legal reasoning, and common sense to undertake the often difficult and sometimes controversial task of distinguishing prevention strategies that are likely to prevent CSA from those that are not. He concludes that the most expensive preventive strategies-such as sex offender registration, enhancing criminal penalties for such offenders, and civilly confining them-are not effective in preventing CSA and may actually increase its likelihood. However, he also concludes that many other strategies are or could be effective in preventing CSA, such as minimizing opportunities for such abuse, risk education, teaching children to protect themselves, encouraging bystander intervention, limiting the cultural sexualization of children, improving the investigation and prosecution of CSA allegations, using technology to stop child pornography and to rescue its victims, changing the culture in child-serving organizations, and more. This volume will be a unique and critical resource for lawyers, researchers, psychologists, social workers, public policy officials, students, and child advocates interested in preventing child sexual abuse.
-
Trade Agreements at the Crossroads
Susy Frankel and Meredith Kolsky Lewis
The book examines trade agreements in the context of the current world economic crisis and the uncompleted World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade negotiations. With economies shrinking and protectionism on the rise, many fear a protracted global recession. This raises important questions as to what role trade agreements – multilateral, plurilateral, and bilateral – should be playing in the current climate of uncertainty, and how best to plan for a more stable economic future. Previous assumptions are now being questioned, making this an opportune time to critically examine the WTO, free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties, and other international economic law instruments. Furthermore, participants in international agreements are concerned with emerging issues that have the potential to strengthen or weaken the global trading system, including matters of treaty interpretation; terms of new agreements; and effects of existing provisions.
-
Buddhism and Law: An Introduction
Rebecca Redwood French
As the first comprehensive study of Buddhism and law in Asia, this interdisciplinary volume challenges the concept of Buddhism as an apolitical religion without implications for law. Buddhism and Law draws on the expertise of the foremost scholars in Buddhist studies and in law to trace the legal aspects of the religion from the time of the Buddha to the present. In some cases, Buddhism provided the crucial architecture for legal ideologies and secular law codes, while in other cases it had to contend with a pre-existing legal system, to which it added a new layer of complexity. The wide-ranging studies in this book reveal a diversity of relationships between Buddhist monastic codes and secular legal systems in terms of substantive rules, factoring, and ritual practices. This volume will be an essential resource for all students and teachers in Buddhist studies, law and religion, and comparative law.
-
Filosofía de la Responsabilidad Extracontractual [Philosophy of Tort Law]
Carlos L. Bernal Pulido and Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora