New Books in Law

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge.You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices within social movements mobilize and radicalize heavily aggrieved collectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Andrew T. Fede is a lawyer in private practice in northern New Jersey and an adjunct professor of law at Montclair State University.  His new book Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2017) is a comparative account of slave homicide law in the American colonies and states, covering the period from the early 17th century through the American Civil War.  Professor Fede’s account traces the variations in restrictions on slave owners and third parties’ treatment upon the murder of a slave.  The harsh, often lethal, conditions of servitude in the Caribbean seem to have shaped the willingness (usually unwillingness) of slave owners and elected officials in these island to restrict what masters could do to their slaves.  Whereas in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern colonies, restrictions were somewhat more easily countenanced.  Fede reveals the details of murder prosecutions against slave masters, overseers and third-party non-owners and the limits such prosecutions faced in courts.Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Eddie Glaude Jr. is James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Religion, and Chair of the Department of African American Studies, at Princeton University. He is the author of An Uncommon Faith: A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of African American Religion.The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Martha S. Jones, in her excellent new book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America(Cambridge University Press, 2018), weaves together the legal and constitutional dimensions of citizenship—from the Founding documents and law cases with which  many scholars and students are familiar—with the daily civic engagement of African-Americans as they took part in public life and the rights of citizens. This political, historical, and legal analysis focuses particularly on the antebellum experiences of black Americans in Baltimore, Maryland, just miles from the U.S. Capital, but also vital as the largest free black community in the U.S. in one of the largest cities in the United States before the Civil War. Birthright Citizens takes the question of what defines and makes an individual a citizen, legally, and how that is performed and engaged in a granular or daily way, and delves into the historical record of black Americans in Baltimore, exploring how individuals took on the qualities and actions of citizens before the 14th Amendment. Jones’ deeply researched work is, as she notes, “a history, told through a series of disruptive vignettes, that suggests how people without rights still exercised them.” This is a fascinating marrying together of the structural and legal parameters of citizen rights and denials of those rights for many black Americans, both free and enslaved, and the ideas and actions pursued and taken by African-Americans in an effort to act like and thus be citizens. As we continue to consider the idea of citizenship, which remains less fixed and clear as a concept or legal construct, this analysis lays out the fluid and evolving understanding of the idea and daily functioning of citizenship in the early years of the republic and, particularly, in context of free, formerly enslaved, and enslaved black Americans in the United States.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Birth control, and the access to it, has continued to be a divisive issue in American political and social life. While birth control has almost become shorthand for “the pill,” a wide range of birth control methods have been in the American lexicon for the better part of its history. In his new book, Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Trent MacNamara explores the ways in which birth control was talked about, debated, and eventually accepted in the 20th century. Rather than having one centralized movement and leadership structure, MacNamara traces the multiple avenues in which birth control entered the lives of everyday Americans and gained social acceptance. Talking in conjunction with established historiography while also adding important perspectives, MacNamara’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in the birth control movement, social change, and large historical change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In her book Suspect Citizens: Women, Virtue, and Vice in Backlash Politics (Temple University Press, 2012), Jocelyn M. Boryczka explores the fraught position that women find themselves in as citizens of the United States. She examines this complex position within the parameters of virtue and vice, the dichotomy through which women, their behavior, and their role in the republic are usually situated and interpreted. Explaining that women are often given the moral responsibility for the care and perpetuation of the country, Boryczka concentrates on demands that women hew to a standard of virtue, and if they deviate from that standard, they are often blamed for the failings or problems that afflict the entire country. This precarious position is where these suspect citizens, women, find themselves and have often found themselves across the history of the country itself. The book delves into the historical positioning of women within this dichotomous frame and traces distinct political moments when different groups of women engaged in aspects of citizenship and, often, how those acts of political engagement then generated a backlash to female political involvement. Boryczka puts these historical flashpoints into non-linear engagement with each other, often seeing parallel outcomes or political approaches from distinct events and situations. For anyone interested in the question and complexity of citizenship, this is yet another important analysis, especially in considering the more precarious position of some citizens within the republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Michele F. Margolis is assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. She has recently published a book titled From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In American Sutra:  A story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019), Duncan Ryūken Williams recenters the role of faith in the Japanese-American experience in WWII by showing how religious differences underlay the injustices that they suffered before, during, and after the war. American Sutra is also an inspiring account of how Japanese-Americans embodied faith, ingenuity and sacrifice in the face of great adversity. At a time when the religious dimensions of American identity are being contested, American Sutra is a timely book about how Japanese-Americans forged, with their blood, sweat and tears, a space in American identity where it’s possible to be Japanese, Buddhist and American.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

The law does things, writes David Ray Papke, and it says things, and if we are talking about poor Americans, especially those living in big cities, what it does and says combine to function as powerfully oppressive forces that can much more likely be counted on to do harm than good. Join us as we discuss Papke's book Containment and Condemnation: Law and the Oppression of the Urban Poor (Michigan State University Press, 2019) and learn about how law functions in the lives of poor people in the U.S. today.Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Debra Thompson, in her award-winning* book The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explores the complexities of the politics of the census. This book, which unpacks the census itself, leads the reader to consider how this mundane tool actually translates the abstraction of the state into a concrete entity, and, at the same time, how this tool has been and is used in contradictory ways in regard to the issue of race. Thompson, in exploring the census, contextualizes her analysis within three case studies: the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She examines these cases over the course of more than 200 years of history and data, and she traces the shifts and changes in terms of racial categorization on the census, noting the fluid nature of understandings of race as applied to the citizen body in each of these countries, and how race was made legible by the census. The Schematic State also digs into the state, how it makes use of the data that is gleaned from the census, and what these uses suggest in terms of the instrument of the census. This book will be of interest to a variety of scholars and lay people, since the text and the research knit together different fields within and beyond political science, including comparative politics, critical race studies, critical legal studies, political theory, public policy, institutional political development, and statistical studies.*Winner, 2017 Race and Comparative Politics Best Book Award, Race, Ethnicity and Politics Section, American Political Science Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law