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.
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Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress
Anne Bloom, David M. Engel, and Michael McCann
This book addresses some of the most difficult and important debates over injury and law now taking place in societies around the world. The essays tackle the inescapable experience of injury and its implications for social inequality in different cultural settings. Topics include the tension between physical and reputational injuries, the construction of human injuries versus injuries to non-human life, virtual injuries, the normalization and infliction of injuries on vulnerable victims, the question of reparations for slavery, and the paradoxical degradation of victims through legal actions meant to compensate them for their disabilities. Authors include social theorists, social scientists and legal scholars, and the subject matter extends to the Middle East and Asia, as well as North America.
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Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink
Irus Braverman
In recent years, a catastrophic global bleaching event devastated many of the world’s precious coral reefs. Working on the front lines of ruin, today’s coral scientists are struggling to save these important coral reef ecosystems from the imminent threats of rapidly warming, acidifying, and polluted oceans. Coral Whisperers captures a critical moment in the history of coral reef science. Gleaning insights from over one hundred interviews with leading scientists and conservation managers, Irus Braverman documents a community caught in an existential crisis and alternating between despair and hope. In this important new book, corals emerge not only as signs and measures of environmental catastrophe, but also as catalysts for action.
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Children and The Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice (American Casebook Series)
Douglas E. Abrams, Susan Vivian Mangold, and Sarah H. Ramsey
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Newsworthy: the Supreme Court's Battle Over Privacy and Freedom of the Press
Samantha Barbas
In 1952, the Hill family was held hostage by escaped convicts in their suburban Pennsylvania home. The family of seven was trapped for nineteen hours by three fugitives who treated them politely, took their clothes and car, and left them unharmed. The Hills quickly became the subject of international media coverage. Public interest eventually died out, and the Hills went back to their ordinary, obscure lives. Until, a few years later, the Hills were once again unwillingly thrust into the spotlight by the media—with a best-selling novel loosely based on their ordeal, a play, a big-budget Hollywood adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart, and an article in Life magazine. Newsworthy is the story of their story, the media firestorm that ensued, and their legal fight to end unwanted, embarrassing, distorted public exposure that ended in personal tragedy. This story led to an important 1967 Supreme Court decision—Time, Inc. v. Hill—that still influences our approach to privacy and freedom of the press. Newsworthy draws on personal interviews, unexplored legal records, and archival material, including the papers and correspondence of Richard Nixon (who, prior to his presidency, was a Wall Street lawyer and argued the Hill family's case before the Supreme Court), Leonard Garment, Joseph Hayes, Earl Warren, Hugo Black, William Douglas, and Abe Fortas. Samantha Barbas explores the legal, cultural, and political wars waged around this seminal privacy and First Amendment case. This is a story of how American law and culture struggled to define and reconcile the right of privacy and the rights of the press at a critical point in history—when the news media were at the peak of their authority and when cultural and political exigencies pushed free expression rights to the forefront of social debate. Newsworthy weaves together a fascinating account of the rise of big media in America and the public's complex, ongoing love-hate affair with the press.
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Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing
Mark Bartholomew
Advertising is everywhere. By some estimates, the average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements each day. Whether we realize it or not, "adcreep"—modern marketing's march to create a world where advertising can be expected anywhere and anytime—has come, transforming not just our purchasing decisions, but our relationships, our sense of self, and the way we navigate all spaces, public and private.
Adcreep journeys through the curious and sometimes troubling world of modern advertising. Mark Bartholomew exposes an array of marketing techniques that might seem like the stuff of science fiction: neuromarketing, biometric scans, automated online spies, and facial recognition technology, all enlisted to study and stimulate consumer desire. This marriage of advertising and technology has consequences. Businesses wield rich and portable records of consumer preference, delivering advertising tailored to your own idiosyncratic thought processes. They mask their role by using social media to mobilize others, from celebrities to your own relatives, to convey their messages. Guerrilla marketers turn every space into a potential site for a commercial come-on or clandestine market research. Advertisers now know you on a deeper, more intimate level, dramatically tilting the historical balance of power between advertiser and audience.
In this world of ubiquitous commercial appeals, consumers and policymakers are numbed to advertising's growing presence. Drawing on a variety of sources, including psychological experiments, marketing texts, communications theory, and historical examples, Bartholomew reveals the consequences of life in a world of non-stop selling. Adcreep mounts a damning critique of the modern American legal system's failure to stem the flow of invasive advertising into our homes, parks, schools, and digital lives.
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Gene Editing, Law, and the Environment: Life Beyond the Human
Irus Braverman
Technologies like CRISPR and gene drives are ushering in a new era of genetic engineering, wherein the technical means to modify DNA are cheaper, faster, more accurate, more widely accessible, and with more far-reaching effects than ever before. These cutting-edge technologies raise legal, ethical, cultural, and ecological questions that are so broad and consequential for both human and other-than-human life that they can be difficult to grasp. What is clear, however, is that the power to directly alter not just a singular form of life but also the genetics of entire species and thus the composition of ecosystems is currently both inadequately regulated and undertheorized. In Gene Editing, Law, and the Environment, distinguished scholars from law, the life sciences, philosophy, environmental studies, science and technology studies, animal health, and religious studies examine what is at stake with these new biotechnologies for life and law, both human and beyond.
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Le droit à l’inclusion: Droit et identitité dans les récits de vie des personnes handicapées aux États-Unit (translation of: Rights of Inclusion: law and identity in the life stories of Americans with disabilities)
David M. Engel and Frank W. Munger
Les auteurs montrent que les personnes handicapées n’utilisent que rarement les possibilités de recours formels offertes afin de faire valoir leurs droits dans le cadre de la législation pionnière entrée en vigueur en 1990 (Americans with Disabilities Act). Ce texte est l’une des expressions majeures des avancées des droits civiques aux États-Unis, sur le principe des grands textes antidiscriminatoires de l’après-guerre. Toutefois, au travers de récits de vie fouillés, l’ouvrage souligne que le droit façonne les identités des citoyens de bien d’autres manières, qui ont une importance cruciale pour comprendre son rôle dans la société.
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Election Law in the American Political System
James A. Gardner and Guy-Uriel R. Charles
This new Election Law casebook, published by Aspen, and suitable for use in law schools and political science departments, offers a distinct alternative to casebooks currently on the market. Although election law, like any body of law, is a collection of constitutional provisions, statutes, and judicial rulings, it is also something more: election law establishes the ground rules by which politics itself is conducted. It is thus impossible, in our view, or at the very least inadvisable, to contemplate existing American election law without considering the kind of politics we have, and without asking whether it is the kind of politics we want, or deserve, or can justify. This book results, quite simply, from our wish for a set of course materials that places election law, as thoroughly as possible within the constraints of a typical classroom setting, in this broader context. It is designed to provide robust support for instructors who wish to ask questions about the efficacy, justifiability, and merits of contemporary politics and politico-legal institutions.
The book provides this support primarily in two ways. First, it organizes the material and offers an account of the field in a way that stresses the conceptual connections between legal regimes structuring different phases of the democratic process. Second, it draws frequently on democratic theory and empirical political science to provide tools to help answer, or at the very least to help frame and to ask, the really significant and challenging questions about the design and justifications of contemporary American election law. At the same time, the book’s judicious selection of cases and its use of more comprehensive case excerpts than are sometimes found in law school casebooks allow it to support equally teaching approaches that stress the intensive legal analysis of doctrine.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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New York Legal Research, 3d ed.: Teacher’s Manual
Elizabeth G. Adelman, Theodora Belniak, Courtney L. Selby, and Brian T. Detweiler
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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.
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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.
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Filosofía del Derecho Constitucional: Cuestiones Fundamentales
Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Leonardo García Jaramillo
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![Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho Volúmen 3 [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory, Volume 3] by Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Ezequiel Spector](https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/books/1190/thumbnail.jpg "Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho Volúmen 3 [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory, Volume 3] by Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Ezequiel Spector")
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
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![Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory] by Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Alvaro Núñez Vaquero](https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/books/1188/thumbnail.jpg "Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory] by Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Alvaro Núñez Vaquero")
Enciclopedia de filosofía y teoría del derecho [Encyclopedia of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory]
Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora and Alvaro Núñez Vaquero
