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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Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters
David A. Westbrook
As the image of anthropologists exploring exotic locales and filling in blanks on the map has faded, the idea that cultural anthropology has much to say about the contemporary world has likewise diminished. In an increasingly smaller world, how can anthropology help us to tackle the concerns of a global society? David A. Westbrook argues that the traditional tool of the cultural anthropologist—ethnography—can still function as an intellectually exciting way to understand our interconnected, yet mysterious worlds.
Navigators of the Contemporary describes the changing nature of ethnography as anthropologists use it to analyze places closer to home. Westbrook maintains that a conversational style of ethnography can help us look beyond our assumptions and gain new insight into arenas of contemporary life such as corporations, financial institutions, science, the military, and religion. Westbrook’s witty, absorbing book is a friendly challenge to anthropologists to shed light on the present and join broader streams of intellectual life. And for those outside the discipline, his inspiring vision of ethnography opens up the prospect of understanding our own world in much greater depth.
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Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy
James A. Gardner
Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy is a full-featured guide designed primarily for law students in research, writing, analysis and trial advocacy classes and moot court programs. Inside you'll find detailed explanations of how lawyers construct legal arguments and practical guidelines to the process of molding the raw materials of litigation—cases, statutes, testimony, documents, common sense—into instruments of persuasive advocacy. You'll also find writing guidelines that show you how to present a well-constructed legal argument in writing in a way that legal decision makers will find persuasive. The centerpiece of this indispensable work is its syllogism-based step-by-step method, designed to walk the advocate through the process of crafting a winning argument.
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Intellectual Property: Private Rights, the Public Interest, and the Regulation of Creative Activity
Shubha Ghosh, Richard Gruner, Jay P. Kesan, and Robert I. Reis
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Georgia Legal Research
Nancy P. Johnson, Elizabeth G. Adelman, and Nancy J. Adams
Georgia Legal Research is the first book of its kind devoted to the resources and strategies needed to research Georgia state law. Taking a process-oriented approach, the book explains research in Georgia cases, statutes, legislative history, constitutional law, and administrative law and legal ethics research. Additional chapters describe the research process, secondary sources and practical guides, online research and citators. Appendices include legal citation rules, bibliography of legal research texts, and a list of Georgia practice materials. Georgia Legal Research was designed specifically for teaching legal research to first-year law students. Others who will find it helpful include practitioners, paralegals, librarians, college students, and even laypeople. It is clearly written, making even complex ideas accessible. Outlines of the research process and short excerpts from Georgia resources make the book easy to use. Web addresses point researchers to the many sources for finding free Georgia legal material online. Concise explanations of resources needed for researching federal law and the law of other states are provided throughout. Thus, Georgia Legal Research can be used as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with a research text concentrating on federal law. 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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Supplements to The Clean Water Handbook and Wetlands: Law and Policy: Understanding Section 404
Stephen M. Johnson, Kim Diana Connolly, and Mark A. Ryan
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Between Citizen and State: An Introduction to the Corporation
David A. Westbrook
Between Citizen and State is an intrepid and readable introduction to, and insightful commentary on, the role of the corporation in the modern world. Corporate actors have typical motivations, opportunities, temptations - they are characters, and their interactions follow familiar plotlines. Part I, Background, introduces the characters and their context. Part II, Internal Struggles, explains common conflicts in terms of well-known court cases. Part III, External Relations, examines relationships between the corporation, individuals, and the state.
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Confronting Sustainability: Forest Certification in Developing and Transitioning Countries
Benjamin E. Cashore, Fred Gale, Errol E. Meidinger, and Deanna Newsom
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Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology
Charles Patrick Ewing and Joseph T. McCann
In recent years, the public has become increasingly fascinated with the criminal mind. Television series centered on courtroom trials, criminal investigations, and forensic psychology are more popular than ever. More and more people are interested in the American system of justice and the individuals who experience it firsthand.
Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology gives you an inside view of 20 of the highest profile legal cases of the last 50 years. Drs. Ewing and McCann take you "behind the scenes" of each of these cases, some involving celebrities like Woody Allen, Mike Tyson, and Patty Hearst, and explain the impact they had on the fields of psychology and the law. Many of the cases in this book, whether involving a celebrity client or an ordinary person in an extraordinary circumstance, were determined in part by the expert testimony of a psychologist or other mental health professional. Psychology has always played a vital role in so many aspects of the American legal system, and these fascinating trials offer insight into many intriguing psychological issues. In addition to expert testimony, some of the issues discussed in this entertaining and educational book include the insanity defense, brainwashing, criminal profiling, capital punishment, child custody, juvenile delinquency, and false confessions.
In Minds on Trial, the authors skillfully convey the psychological and legal drama of each case, while providing important and fresh professional insights.
Mental health and legal professionals, as well as others with an interest in psychology and the law will have a hard time putting this scholarly, yet readable book down.
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Progressive Black Masculinities
Athena D. Mutua
In the struggle for pride and political agency, the imperative to 'be a man' has been central to the lives of black males. Yet, what it means to be a black man-in terms of both racial and gender identity-has been subject to continual debate in public and academic spheres alike.
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Wetlands Law and Policy: Understanding Section 404
Kim Diana Connolly, Stephen M. Johnson, and Douglas R. Williams
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Interpreting State Constitutions: A Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System
James A. Gardner
Interpreting State Constitutions examines and proposes a solution to a problem central to contemporary debates over the enforcement of civil liberties: how courts, government officials, and lawyers should go about interpreting the constitutions of the American states.
With the Supreme Court's retreat from the aggressive protection of individual rights, state courts have begun to interpret state constitutions to provide broader protection of liberties. This development has reversed the polarity of constitutional politics, as liberals advocate unimpeded state power while conservatives lobby for state subordination to a constitutional law controlled centrally by the Supreme Court.
James A. Gardner here lays out the first fully developed theory of subnational constitutional interpretation. He argues that states are integral components of a national system of overlapping and mutually checking authority and that the purpose of this system is to protect liberty and defend against federal domination. The resulting account provides valuable prescriptive advice to state courts, showing them how to fulfill their responsibilities to the federal system in a way that strengthens American constitutional discourse.
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Civil Penalties, Social Consequences
Christopher Mele and Teresa A. Miller
Mele and Miller offer a timely, insightful analysis of the continuing challenges faced by ex-felons upon re-entry into society. Such penalties include a lifetime ban on receiving welfare and food stamps for individuals convicted of drug felonies as well as barriers to employment, child rearing, and housing opportunities. This much-needed work contains pieces by scholars in law, criminology, and sociology, including: Scott Christianson, Michael Lichter, and Daniel Kanstroom.
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Employment Discrimination Law: Cases and Materials on Equality in the Workplace
Robert Belton, Dianne Avery, Maria L. Ontiveros, and Roberto L. Corrada
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The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974: a political history
James A. Wooten
This study of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) explains in detail how public officials in the executive branch and Congress overcame strong opposition from business and organized labor to pass landmark legislation regulating employer-sponsored retirement and health plans. Before Congress passed ERISA, federal law gave employers and unions great discretion in the design and operation of employee benefit plans. Most importantly, firms and unions could and often did establish pension plans that placed employees at great risk for not receiving any retirement benefits. In the early 1960s, officials in the executive branch proposed a number of regulatory initiatives to protect employees, but business groups and most labor unions objected to the key proposals. Faced with opposition from powerful interest groups, legislative entrepreneurs in Congress, chiefly New York Republican senator Jacob K. Javits, took the case for pension reform directly to voters by publicizing frightening statistics and "horror stories" about pension plans. This deft and successful effort to mobilize the media and public opinion overwhelmed the business community and organized labor and persuaded Javits's colleagues in Congress to support comprehensive pension reform legislation. The enactment of ERISA in September 1974 recast federal policy for private pension plans by making worker security an overriding objective of federal law.
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Rights of Inclusion: law and identity in the life stories of Americans with disabilities
David M. Engel and Frank W. Munger
Rights of Inclusion provides an innovative, accessible perspective on how civil rights legislation affects the lives of ordinary Americans. Based on eye-opening and deeply moving interviews with intended beneficiaries of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), David M. Engel and Frank W. Munger argue for a radically new understanding of rights-one that focuses on their role in everyday lives rather than in formal legal claims.
Although all sixty interviewees had experienced discrimination, none had filed a formal protest or lawsuit. Nevertheless, civil rights played a crucial role in their lives. Rights improved their self-image, enhanced their career aspirations, and altered the perceptions and assumptions of their employers and coworkers-in effect producing more inclusive institutional arrangements. Focusing on these long-term life histories, Engel and Munger incisively show how rights and identity affect one another over time and how that interaction ultimately determines the success of laws such as the ADA.
