Bridging Cultural Conflicts: A New Approach for a Changing World

Book Description

"This much needed book . . .is a creative, helpful, and hopeful contribution at a time when we are especially challenged to bridge cultures in the pursuit of mutual understanding and peace."
â Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Laureate

In our global society, challenging conflicts abound in personal, business, government, and international settings. Many of these conflicts are complicated by layers of miscommunication, cultural misunderstandings, and completely different ways of looking at the world. These conflicts cannot be solved by goodwill or sincere intentions alone. In our multicultural world, we need new tools to address gaps in communication and understanding and the conflicts that flow from them.

Bridging Cultural Conflicts answers this need in groundbreaking ways that cut through complexity, replacing confusion with clarity. It introduces mindful awareness, cultural fluency, and conflict fluency as tools for decoding and moving through intercultural conflicts, and for deepening and integrating change. The book shows how fluency with culture and conflict can be learned through attention and practice, just as we would internalize a new language. As fluency is acquired, a process called dynamic engagement is presented to help prevent intercultural conflict, limit its escalation, and transform it into a learning experience.

Michelle LeBaron's approach in Bridging Cultural Conflicts is human, practical, and adaptable to a wide range of interpersonal, community, organizational, and political conflicts. Drawing from her work as an attorney, mediator, scholar, and internationally acclaimed consultant, Michelle combines the dynamism of Western approaches to conflict resolution with the insight and balance of Eastern approaches. In the process, she offers a wide array of creative strategies and usable tools. As we urgently seek better ways to work and live together and to address the issues that divide us, this timely book inspires flexibility, creativity, and hope.

Customer Reviews:

Lebaron Charts New Waters.......2003-04-25

This is an extraordinary book. For those of us involved in cross-cultural training and negotiations work, this book brings together a progressive practioner's life experience and emotional intelligence to create new ways of framing our work. I used up a "highlighter" through the first two chapters. If your work is in mediation, cross-cultural communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, or facilitation, this book is a great investment. If you just want to know more about interactions between people and yourself, and come to better understand the internal dialogues you have when you are conflicted, this is a great, entertaining, and enlightening read.

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity

Average customer rating:

Obscure and not totally convincing (3.25 *s)
Well done
Really provocative
Intellectual Property Rights & HIV/AIDS
a fantastic read. well crafted - couldn't put it down!

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity
Lawrence Lessig
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
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The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
Digital Copyright
Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

ASIN: 1594200068
Release Date: 2004-03-25

Book Description

From "the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era" (The New Yorker), a landmark manifesto about the genuine closing of the American mind.

Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, Code and The Future of Ideas, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in Free Culture, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.

All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten?

Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can't do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What's at stake is our freedom-freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.

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"From ""the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era"" (The New Yorker), a landmark manifesto about the genuine closing of the American mind. Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, Code and The Future of Ideas, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in Free Culture, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation. All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten?

Customer Reviews:

Obscure and not totally convincing (3.25 *s).......2007-04-16

The author is a well-known advocate for "free culture," a culture where creators and innovators are supported and protected, which he claims is part of our tradition. Copyright laws have ensured that authors have a property right in their work for a limited duration. Part of the reason for a limitation is that cultural advancements and change have always drawn upon past culture to produce the new. Copyrights extending into perpetuity would harm cultural growth.

The author is alarmed by two developments: the extension of copyright to 95 years from an original period of 28 years via the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 and, with the rise of the Internet and the ease of copying and sharing content, the ability of technology controlled by big media companies to discover copying, whether illegal or not, and their willingness to rigidly enforce, even unfairly, copyright laws. Ironically, as he points out, many large companies in film, television, and music have often advanced by borrowing content from past work. Now it seems that similarly-situated companies want to slam the door shut.

Not all use of copyrighted materials is illegal. There is the legal concept of "fair use," where such material is incidentally used not for direct financial gain. But the author claims that we are becoming a "permission" culture, where expensive, legal action is required to gain access to copyrighted material for even innocuous purposes. The author gives several examples where users of original content were clearly not involved in piracy, yet found themselves on the losing end of legal proceedings largely because of a lack of sufficient resources.

The author shows a narrow legal perspective with his view that he had considered the massive consolidation of media that has occurred over the last few decades to have had a non-harmful impact on creativity (p 164). Now he is changing his mind. He apparently ignored the tremendous amount of commentary on the ability of huge media corporations to censor independent views and to dumb-down the culture, if not engage in propaganda.

One of the prime motivating factors for this book was the author's role in a losing effort as the principal litigator in Eldred vs. Ashcroft at the Supreme Ct, which was an attempt to overturn the CETA on the Constitutional right of Congress to promote progress in ideas by granting exclusive rights to works and discoveries for a limited time. In reviewing his arguments, the author admits to not demonstrating a decided decrease in creativity due to copyright extension. And that is a problem with the book.

The book is actually somewhat obscure. The interaction of computer software and technology within and over the Internet combined with the application of copyright law is vaguely presented. Beyond some horror stories, it's hard to determine the true impact on creativity. The author agrees that selling copyrighted material without compensating the author is illegal whether on or off the Internet. There is no doubt that commercial web sites can impose any restrictions on accessing their content, regardless of copyright status. The author seems to suggest that cracking down on replicating thousands of copies of copyrighted content on the Internet stifles creativity and is contrary to the precedence established by reading or reselling books. But such issues within the scope and instant access of the Internet are complex and are far from being resolved.

Far more persuasive in terms of suppressing the free advance of ideas in our society is the growth of mega-corporations squeezing out small producers of cultural content and homogenizing our culture. Within such huge organizations independent voices like journalists are controlled or silenced. The free and widely disseminated exchange of ideas so vital to a vibrant democracy is hurt by the massive consolidation of the media intent on not offending and accommodating the status quo. The author notes the rise of web-logs on the Internet. It is unclear as to whether such random postings can counter the huge trend of controlling information.

Our culture is suffering. We as a society and as individual citizens are uninformed and lack empowerment. No more evidence is needed than our political debacles and international misadventures over the last few years. Overagressive enforcement of copyrights on the Internet may be problematical but is hardly our main problem in the assault on a free culture.

Well done.......2007-01-28

This book gives a comprehensive presentation against the current copyright theory and why we should go towards a more copyleft/creative commons type system.

Really provocative.......2005-09-21

I loved this illuminating and thought-provoking book. Lessig makes a compelling argument against extended copyright laws and other issues that may interfere with creating new projects based on derivative works.

The book was a bit repetitive but easy to read unlike his earlier book, the Future Of Ideas, which I found to be overly technical.

The Internet opens up so many vast possibilities for us to expand creative intellectual ideas but these will never materialize if we continue on our current path of making it nearly impossible to borrow from other people's works.

Lessig is imminently reasonable and has a great deal of respect for property and the rights of authors or creators. As soon as I finished reading Free Culture, I registered two of my Web blogs with Creative Comments. Now they both say "Some Rights Reserved." :-)

Sigrid Macdonald
Author of D'Amour Road

Intellectual Property Rights & HIV/AIDS.......2005-05-23

Like we need another review here. Anyhow, my 2 bits . . . because no one else has mentioned it.

The heart of Lessig's discussion/idea/arguement is where the debate over Intellectual Property Rights leads regarding HIV/AIDS and the availability of drugs to help fight or control the disease in Africa.

Sure, grant Disney Corp. another 20? years of pimping M-I-C-K-E-Y . . . and keep Dr. Seuss from falling into the hands of pornographers. Who cares?

Lessig points out where the obnoxiously single-minded, show-me-the-money (oops! is this a copyright infringement?) p.o.v. of the wealthy leads us as a culture: that, collectively, we can dispense with the lives of millions of people while upholding a legal argument based on principal.

It's about money clamping down on life, whether that's the freedom to have the creative works, which were created within a cultural context, return something of value to the culture that spawned them, or whether it means the very lives of HIV/AIDS sufferers in the "3rd World."

Read.

a fantastic read. well crafted - couldn't put it down!.......2005-04-26

i am a content creator myself (artist and graphic designer) and this presented issues of intellectual property, copyrights and file sharing in a proper perspective. lessig stays fairly moderate throughout, borrowing rally cries from both the left and the right. the reviewer who called him a "communist" has obviously not read the whole book. a person of such limited mental faculty probably had difficulty finishing it.

lessig is a law professor and a constitutional scholar - many of his problems with the perpetual extensions of copyright stem from the fact that very plainly they are unconstitutional.

the author proposes that copyrights be limited reasonably (as provided by the constitution) so that public domain will continue to grow. as it stands anything before the great depression is part of this domain - "free" in the sense that it is part of our general cultural output - owned by no one. through corporate lobbying efforts, it is quite possible that nothing new will be added to the public domain in our lifetime.

the framers of the constitutions SPECIFICALLY limited the duration of copyright so that a creative work, after making money for the creator and living a commercial life, would then become part of the PUBLIC domain - a domain that we all share and all contribute to.

some readers, like the communist-brander, may have been thrown by the title. the author does in no way suggest that creators should not get paid and that everything is for free. "free" culture does NOT mean a "free" lunch, but a "free" society of "free" markets. the freedom to create, the freedom to get paid, and THEN the freedom for the creative work to join to public domain (after the author has died) and be FREE to us all.

lessig is certainly no radical - although i suppose for even raising some of these questions about the crackdown on p2p networks and the nature of intellectual property he will be branded one by the crazies dominating the current debate.

a free society, and indeed a free culture, is about asking tough questions, and that is what lessig is doing with this book.

highly recommended.

The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

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An excellent, meticulously researched book.
Common Place Of Law is anything but common
A very, very important book for the study of law today.

The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago Series in Law and Society)
Patricia Ewick , and Susan S. Silbey
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Just Words, Second Edition: Law, Language, and Power (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

ASIN: 0226227448

Book Description

Why do some people not hesitate to call the police to quiet a barking dog in the middle of the night, while others accept the pain and losses associated with defective products, unsuccesful surgery, and discrimination? Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey collected accounts of the law from more than four hundred people of diverse backgrounds in order to explore the different ways that people use and experience it. Their fascinating and original study identifies three common narratives of law that are captured in the stories people tell.

One narrative is based on an idea of the law as magisterial and remote. Another views the law as a game with rules that can be manipulated to one's advantage. A third narrative describes the law as an arbitrary power that is actively resisted. Drawing on these extensive case studies, Ewick and Silbey present individual experiences interwoven with an analysis that charts a coherent and compelling theory of legality. A groundbreaking study of law and narrative, The Common Place of Law depicts the institution as it is lived: strange and familiar, imperfect and ordinary, and at the center of daily life.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent, meticulously researched book........2000-03-06

The richness of this book comes from four hundred thirty interviews that support the text. The gist of the book is that people have three takes on the law: before the law, against the law, and with the law.

"Before the law" is an attitude of awe and respect for the institution. Faith in that day in court, that statue of blind justice and the policeman is my friend. "Against the law" is an attitude of resistance to the institution. Law as a caprice of the powerful, and resistance the right way to deal with it. "With the law" is an attitude of game playing with the institution. I didn't make the rules, but me and my lawyer, we sure as hell will play the game. People shift and change among these modes depending on where they are in life, the particulars of the situation, and growing experience with the law.

The biggest contribution of this book is in highlighting the game playing aspect of dealing with law. I think game-playing gets short shrift from other law authors who may be stuck inside their very serious institution. Most other books reduce game-playing to simple economic theory and don't pay enough attention to the human side of gaming with the law. I mean, really. Just look at how big the sports section of the Sunday paper is versus the economic analysis section! Games are a big part of everyday life. Ewick & Silbey give game-playing the appropriate type of attention. Big bravo.

My only criticism is that the language of this book is mainly for an academic audience, and thus I give it only four stars-sorry. The writing could be de-academicized and made more powerful and popular. Overall it is an excellent, meticulously researched book

I got the book for its cover-the picture of chairs in newly shoveled parking space. Now that's a real hotbed of attitude in the informal/formal law divide. Thanks to the authors and worker-bees for all their work.

Common Place Of Law is anything but common.......1999-10-19

The Common Place Of Law is a literate, witty and very well written explanation of how law does and does not work for the people for whom law was created: the common citizen.

Using anecdotal material mixed with sociological theory, Ewing and Silbey have created an intelligent mix of the plebeian and the patrician.

A very, very important book for the study of law today........1998-11-11

This book is accessible to many different audiences and is profound in its content. It would be an excellent book for undergraduate education, legal education or, even for pleasure reading. The anecdotal chapters interspersed with the analysis of the role of law in the lives or ordinary Americans makes this sophisticated book about the sociology of law in contemporary society one that should have staying power in the academy as well as more popular venues. What it has to say about law -- that Americans have a complex and sometimes contradictory relationship with the legal system and its promise of justice -- is not surprising as much as it is affirming and explanatory of so much of what we experience these days in the media and popular culture. The method the authors use to tease their thesis is rigorous and convincing, a model of scholarship for students and professionals. The Common Place of Law is a book to which I will refer and which I will reread for years.

Average customer rating:

This is as good as it gets

The Science of Cold Case Files
Katherine Ramsland
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes
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Crime Scene Investigation

ASIN: 042519793X
Release Date: 2004-09-07

Book Description

COLD CASE:
An inexplicable death is ruled to be an unfortunate accident--until authorities link it to the broken bones of a kidnap victim years later.

COLD CASE:
A braid is found belonging to a woman missing for 18 years--how can it solve the mystery of her disappearance?

The Science of Cold Case Files(r) reveals the absorbing true stories behind the pioneering A&E television series, and the intrepid detectives whose investigations resulted in the resolution of the most baffling of crimes-sometimes decades after they were committed.

From handwriting analysis, facial reconstruction, fingerprints and K-9 detectives, state-of-the-art DNA technology, and old-fashioned perseverance and police work, here is a detailed look at the methods used in forensic detection. Featuring the most fascinating Cold Case Files(r) on record, some of these cases have never been seen on television. Plus, this book offers an inside look at the intriguing clues found in cases that remain unsolved to this day.

Customer Reviews:

This is as good as it gets.......2005-03-18

For all you TV thriller fans, The Science of Cold Case Files is an in depth exploration into the world of modern forensic science, the kind highly-acclaimed CBS TV drama `CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' is based upon. Yes, it's that interesting. It's also heavier.

Like the series, there's the thrill of discovery to The Cold Case. The only other book to have given me a such a rush to date, was Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, both having in common, thriller elements and insights into a specialized world we could - who knows - accidentally careen into by force of circumstance, tomorrow. Just knowing this will engage your imagination.

Except that the Cold Case delivers this with more gravity, being an expose on the dark side of man, and it's also heavy with science stuff. So, it cannot quite be described as unputdownable but the wonder of it all is Ramsland is a lucid and concise writer, so if you're a diehard CSI fan, like me, it'll be a book you'll want to finish, when you can.

The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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Comprehensive, yet complex overview
important

The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822322455

Amazon.com

Beginning with a historical survey by editor Morris Dickstein of the 20th-century revival of pragmatism in American philosophical circles, this collection of academic essays continues with a typically bold assertion from pragmatism's most prominent modern advocate, Richard Rorty. "Mill's On Liberty provides all the ethical instruction you need," he writes, "all the philosophical advice you are ever going to get about your responsibilities to other human beings." Other contributors consider the influence of pragmatism on social thought, law, and culture. While most of the writers share to some degree the enthusiasm with which federal judge Richard A. Posner elaborates upon the notion of "pragmatic adjudication," there are some naysayers. Richard Weisberg, for example, in his proposal for a countertradition of "codifiers," suggests, "The challenge for us is to develop and perfect our own private beliefs and, if they are good enough, to make them public." And, in his concluding remarks, literary critic Stanley Fish throws some cold water on the fire:

Some people do philosophy, some people (lots more) don't and those who do have not ascended to some rarefied realm of reflection or critical self-consciousness from which they bring back the news to their less enlightened brethren; they merely have the knack of doing a trick some others can't do and the competence they have acquired travels no further than the very small arenas in which that trick is typically performed and rewarded.

The Revival of Pragmatism is an intriguing collection of essays that manages for the most part to achieve clarity of prose equal to its rigor of intellect. --Ron Hogan

Book Description

Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatismâwith its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truthâlost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival.
As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism’s cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish.
Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century.

Contributors. Richard Bernstein, David Bromwich, Ray Carney, Stanley Cavell, Morris Dickstein, John Patrick Diggins, Stanley Fish, Nancy Fraser, Thomas C. Grey, Giles Gunn, Hans Joas, James T. Kloppenberg, David Luban, Louis Menand, Sidney Morgenbesser, Richard Poirier, Richard A. Posner, Ross Posnock, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michel Rosenfeld, Richard H. Weisberg, Robert B. Westbrook, Alan Wolfe

Customer Reviews:

Comprehensive, yet complex overview.......2007-08-09

The revival of pragmatism, which can largely be traced to Richard Rorty's work provides an important framework for a variety of problems ranging from philosophical, through legal, cultural and literary. For someone who wants a good overview of the debates around pragmatism, this volume provides a good introduction.

The variety of essays provides a good selection of the span of modern pragmatist thought. It includes excellent articles by both Rorty and Putnam, who have very different philosophical takes on pragmatism. A few excellent survey articles on the history of pragmatism and articles that engage specific applications of pragmatist thought. As might be expected, the summary article by Stanley Fish is sure to infuriate some readers.

This is a book for someone who has a background understanding of pragmatism, but wants to learn more the uses to which it is being put.

important.......1999-02-11

This is an excellent and important book of well-written positions from a variety of perspectives. A fan of pragmatism may be turned off by the 2nd through the 6th essays, but of the following 25 at least 23 or 24 are well worth reading. The section on law debates the question of whether philosophy influences or "supports" law. I came away, as I'd been before, convinced that moving to pragmatism in philosophy is likely to have a good effect on legal opinions and that Rorty is absurdly unfair to the value of his own work by stressing that law can get on without traditional philosophy. Of course it can, but what needs to be said is that we would be better off if it did. The concluding essay by Stanley Fish is wonderful and makes a point I've been trying to find someone to agree with for years, namely that religious tolerance is a contradiction in terms; tolerance is a restriction on religion.

The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423 (Conjunctions of Religion & Power in the Medieval Past)

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The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423 (Conjunctions of Religion & Power in the Medieval Past)
Daniel Lord Smail
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Rancor & Reconciliation in Medieval England (Conjunctions of Religion & Power in the Medieval Past)

ASIN: 0801441056

Book Description

n the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the ideas and practices of justice in Europe underwent significant change as procedures were transformed and criminal and civil caseloads grew apace. Drawing on the rich judicial records of Marseille from the years 1264 to 1423, especially records of civil litigation, this book approaches the courts of law from the perspective of the users of the courts (the consumers of justice) and explains why men and women chose to invest resources in the law.

Smail shows that the courts were quickly adopted as a public stage on which litigants could take revenge on their enemies. Even as the new legal system served the interest of royal or communal authority, it also provided the consumers of justice with a way to broadcast their hatreds and social sanctions to a wider audience and negotiate their own community standing in the process. The emotions that had driven bloodfeuds and other forms of customary vengeance thus never went away, and instead were fully incorporated into the new procedures.

Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Studies in Legal History)
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Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Studies in Legal History)
Daniel J. Hulsebosch
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Ancient Constitution And The Origins Of Anglo-American Liberty

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Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge Studies on the American Constitution)

ASIN: 0807829552
Release Date: 2006-02-23

Book Description

According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. Hulsebosch complicates this viewpoint by arguing that American ideas of constitutions were based on British ones and that, in New York, those ideas evolved over the long eighteenth century as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire.

Hulsebosch explains how colonists and administrators reconfigured British legal sources to suit their needs in an expanding empire. In this story, familiar characters such as Alexander Hamilton and James Kent appear in a new light as among the nation's most important framers, and forgotten loyalists such as Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson and lawyer William Smith Jr. are rightly returned to places of prominence.

In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional history: the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of a newly powerful constitution and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution.

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Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal culture

The Mark Twain of lawyer jokes

Lawyer jokes for smart people

Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture
Marc Galanter
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0299213544

Book Description

What do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? Marc Galanter calls it an opportunity to investigate the meanings of a rich and time-honored genre of American humor. Lowering the Bar analyzes hundreds of jokes from Mark Twain classics to contemporary anecdotes about Dan Quayle, Johnnie Cochran, and Kenneth Starr. Drawing on representations of law and lawyers in the mass media, political discourse, and public opinion surveys, Galanter finds that the increasing reliance on law coexists uneasily with anxiety about the "legalization" of society. Always entertaining, his book explores the tensions between Americans' deep-seated belief in the law and their ambivalence about lawyers.

Customer Reviews:

Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal culture.......2006-03-10

Very funny lawyer jokes. I am enjoying them.

The Mark Twain of lawyer jokes.......2005-09-21

There are plenty of lawyer-bashing books, but this is not one of them. Rather, like a modern Mark Twain, Marc Galanter uses lawyer jokes to reflect trends in American society. Through thousands of jokes and cartoons that mock lawyers and legalization, he shows on how the legal system is influencing and being influenced by changing relationships between individuals, between citizens and government, and between consumers and corporations. Lawyer jokes are popular because lawyers still fight and win for the little guy. A good read for your favorite lawyer or lawyer-to-be.

Lawyer jokes for smart people.......2005-09-21

I thought about starting this review with one of the hundreds of lawyer jokes that are "told" and given life in this excellent book, but I wouldn't want to spoil the punch lines.

The author, evidencing an extrodinarily broad range of knowledge, shows how lawyer jokes have evolved over time (and how some jokes previously targetted at Jews, minorities, and businessmen have evolved into lawyer jokes), and how this evolution reflects larger changes in society about attitudes towards law and individual rights.

In addition, the artwork in the book combines so old favorites from The New Yorker, plus older drawings from earlier centuries.

This is a great book for lawyers and for those who like to make fun of lawyers -- basically, everybody.

Rights, Culture, and the Law: Themes from the Legal and Political Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Law)

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Rights, Culture, and the Law: Themes from the Legal and Political Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Law)

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0199248257

Book Description

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. James Griffin and Yael Tamir raise questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and its application to claims of cultural and political autonomy, while Will Kymlicka and Bernhard Peters examine Raz's theory of multicultural society. Lukas Meyer investigates the applicability of the notion of harm in the intergenerational context. Other papers are devoted to fundamental theoretical tenets of Raz's work. Hillel Steiner and Andrei Marmor examine Raz's account of value pluralism and incommensurability in light of what these authors consider to be goods whose equal distribution must be valued for its own sake. Robert Alexy and Timothy Endicott discuss traditional issues of jurisprudence and legal philosphy with special attention to Raz's contribution. Rudiger Bittner, Bruno Celano, and J. E. Penner discuss and criticize aspects of Raz's theory of practical reason. Jeremy Waldron presents a critique of Raz's interpretation of authority. This volume concludes with a chapter by Joseph Raz in which he responds to arguments in the foregoing essays.

Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31: The Right to Leisure, Play and Culture (Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child)

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Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31: The Right to Leisure, Play and Culture (Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child)
Paulo David
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 9004148825

Book Description

This volume constitutes a commentary on Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is part of the series, A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides an article by article analysis of all substantive, organizational and procedural provisions of the CRC and its two Optional Protocols. For every article, a comparison with related human rights provisions is made, followed by an in-depth exploration of the nature and scope of State obligations deriving from that article. The series constitutes an essential tool for actors in the field of children's rights, including academics, students, judges, grassroots workers, governmental, non- governmental and international officers. The series is sponsored by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office.

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