ENGL 250 (N. Nelson)

The state makes law. But the state is also subject to law in two realms: international law and constitutional law. But how in the international realm can law be enforced against powerful states in the absence of a super-state standing above them? How far can moral and legal frameworks developed around ordinary persons be extended to apply to personified Leviathans? The book argues that these kinds of questions are equally applicable to the second major regime of law for states, constitutional law. By assimilating constitutional and international law as parallel projects of imposing law upon the state, this book brings focus to the concept of "law for Leviathan" as a distinctive legal form.

In Marginal Workers, Ruben J. Garcia demonstrates that when it comes to these marginal workers, the sum of the law is less than its parts, and, despite what appears to be a plethora of applicable statutes, marginal workers are frequently lacking in protection. To ameliorate the status of marginal workers, he argues for a new paradigm in worker protection, one based on human freedom and rights.

Formed as a result of the changes that give birth to the modern state, public law establishes the authority and legitimacy of modern governmental ordering. Public law today is a universal phenomenon, but its origins are European. Part I of the book examines the conditions of its formation, showing how much the concept borrowed from the refined debates of medieval jurists. Part II then examines the nature of public law. Drawing on a line of juristic inquiry that developed from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries-extending from Bodin, Althusius, Lipsius, Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Pufendorf to the later works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Smith and Hegel-it presents an account of public law as a special type of political reason. The remaining three Parts unpack the core elements of this concept: state, constitution, and government.

In Democratic Responsibility, Nora Hanagan examines American thinkers and activists who offered an alternative to individualistic conceptions of responsibility and puts them in dialogue with contemporary philosophers who write about shared responsibility. Drawing on the political theory and practice of Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King Jr., and Audre Lorde, Hanagan develops a distinctly democratic approach to shared responsibility. Cooperative democracy is especially relevant in an age of globalization and hyperconnectivity, where societies are continually threatened with harms--such as climate change, global sweatshop labor, and structural racism--that result from the combined interactions of multiple individuals and institutions, and which therefore cannot be resolved without collective action.

Written by the preeminent democratic theorist of our time, this book explains the nature, value, and mechanics of democracy.

Bedau and Cassell present a cutting edge look at the state of the death penalty in America, from the point of view of a judge, a district attorney, two defense lawyers, and two philosophers.

Covers the history of capital punishment plus discussions of numerous court cases, legal decisions, and historical statistics. Also includes information about execution methods, minors and the death penalty, public attitudes, and capital punishment around the world.

The United States is divided about the death penalty--17 states have banned it, while the remaining states have not. From wrongful convictions to botched executions, capital punishment is fraught with controversy. In The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive, award-winning criminal defense attorney Andrea Lyon turns a critical eye towards the reasons why the death penalty remains active in most states, in spite of well-documented flaws in the justice system.