Lessons in Censorship: How Schools and Courts Subvert Students’ First Amendment Rights
American public schools often censor controversial student speech that the Constitution protects. Lessons in Censorship brings clarity to a bewildering array of court rulings that define the speech rights of young citizens in the school setting. Catherine J. Ross examines disputes that have erupted in our schools and courts over the civil rights movement, war and peace, rights …
Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies
Amid mounting fears of violent Islamic extremism, many Europeans ask whether Muslim immigrants can integrate into historically Christian countries. In a groundbreaking ethnographic investigation of France’s Muslim migrant population, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies explores this complex question. The authors conclude that both Muslim and non-Muslim French must share responsibility for the slow progress of Muslim …
The First Amendment Bubble: How Privacy and Paparazzi Threaten a Free Press
In determining the news that’s fit to print, U.S. courts have traditionally declined to second-guess professional journalists. But in an age when news, entertainment, and new media outlets are constantly pushing the envelope of acceptable content, the consensus over press freedoms is eroding. The First Amendment Bubble examines how unbridled media are endangering the constitutional privileges journalists gained …
How Judges Think (Pims – Polity Immigration and Society Series)
A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Richard A. Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases. When conventional legal materials enable judges to ascertain the true facts of a case and apply clear pre-existing legal rules to them, Posner argues, they do …
The theory of natural law grounds human laws in the universal truths of God’s creation. Until very recently, lawyers in the Western tradition studied natural law as part of their training, and the task of the judicial system was to put its tenets into concrete form, building an edifice of positive law on natural law’s foundations. Although much …
Should laws apply equally to everyone, or should some individuals and organizations be granted exemptions because of conflicting religious or moral convictions? In recent years, this question has become intensely controversial in America. The Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage, in particular, has provoked barbed debates about legal exemptions. At the core of these debates lies the question …
Judges and legal scholars talk past one another, if they have any conversation at all. Academics couch their criticisms of judicial decisions in theoretical terms, which leads many judges―at the risk of intellectual stagnation―to dismiss most academic discourse as opaque and divorced from reality. In Divergent Paths, Richard Posner turns his attention to this widening gap within the …
Cicero: Rhetorica ad Herennium (Loeb Classical Library No. 403) (English and Latin Edition)
Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BCE), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era which saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of …
Aeschylus, II, Oresteia: Agamemnon. Libation-Bearers. Eumenides (Loeb Classical Library)
Aeschylus (ca. 525–456 BCE), the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world’s great art forms, witnessed the establishment of democracy at Athens and fought against the Persians at Marathon. He won the tragic prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times between ca. 499 and 458, and in his later years was probably victorious almost every …
Seneca, Volume IV, Epistles 1-65 (Loeb Classical Library No. 75)
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BCE, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt’s care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius’ reign he became tutor and then, in 54 CE, advising minister to Nero, some …