Reviews (14)

BestAnti-Pornography Book Ever
It may be a long read, but it covers practically everything one needs to know about pornography, including the "pro pornography" side. It has two wonderfully written introduction pieces, by MacKinnon and Dworkin respectively.
Pure genious
This is, by far, the best book on the subject I have ever read. If you sneer and think I�m hyping here, then you are not familiar with the brilliant mind of Andrea Dworkin and what she is capable of. But if you are familiar with her and are interested in gender issues, then this read should be an epiphany. In these oppressive times, questions as those dealt with in this book are as important as the fact that USA andWestern Europe are exploiting Third World countries. We need to give feminists our attention, in order for them to remind us of the many ways women are oppressed, in the same way we need to be reminded that child labour and slavery never disappeared, we just moved it to the developing countries, where we didn't have to see it or call it American or European (even though it is; just look at who abuses the Free-Trade Zones). Dworkin/MacKinnon: Meese/Dobson: the domestic violence nexus
This book is a product of the Meese Commission established by President Reagan to repudiate the findings of the Nixon-appointed Commission investigating pornography which, after wide consultation, found no evidence that exposure to pornography leads to criminal conduct.The Meese Commission avoided coming to this "wrong" conclusion by not calling for or consulting studies (in the peer-reviewed academic sense) and instead relying on anecdotal claims largely supplied by MacKinnon and Dworkin.Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Law and legislation    3. Legal Reference / Law Profession    4. Legal status, laws, etc.    5. Obscenity (Law)    6. Pornography    7. Reference    8. Social Science    9. United States    10. Women    11. Freedom of information & freedom of speech    12. Law    13. Law / General    14. Pornography & obscenity    15. USA   

Reviews (2)

A Must Read
Meltsner's THE MAKING OF A CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER is a powerful and timely book.It should be "required reading" for those of us who came of political age in the early sixties (that time of hope) and for all of us who now watch--helplessly and hoplessly--the corrupt, methodical erosion of those truths we hold to be self evident.

Portrait of An Age
This is a first-rate read.The book is a biography no so much of a "civil rights lawyer" as of a critical period in US history--the coming of age of the Civil Rights movement. With the inside stories Meltsner provides, we see the exacting day to day (and night) work of people struggling for the rights of all of us. The bad guys are even worse than we thought--the good guys, in government, not nearly as good as we thought.
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Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Civil Rights    4. Civil rights workers    5. Law    6. Lawyers    7. Lawyers & Judges    8. Legal History    9. United States    10. Biography: general    11. Civil rights & citizenship    12. Legal skills & practice   

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Law    3. Legal Reference / Law Profession   

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. General    3. Government policy    4. Law    5. Legal Reference / Law Profession    6. Legal status, laws, etc.    7. Minorities    8. Politics and government    9. United States    10. Civil rights & citizenship    11. Constitutional & administrative law    12. Ethnic studies    13. Law / Civil Rights    14. MINORITIES_LEGAL STATUS, LAWS, ETC.    15. MINORITIES_UNITED STATES    16. UNITED STATES_POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT    17. UNITED STATES_RACE RELATIONS    18. USA   

Reviews (1)

Finally...a book that actually makes sense!
This book is great and is something you've got to have to understand ways to protect yourself and your partner and kids if you have them.It is straightforward with lots of information.I thought it was very inclusive and practical.There's something in here for everyone - gay, bi, lesbian, TG, whatever. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Constitutional    3. Gay Studies    4. Gay rights    5. Gender Studies    6. Homosexuality    7. Law and legislation    8. Lesbian Studies    9. Lesbians    10. Social Science    11. Sociology    12. United States    13. Social Science / Gay Studies   

Reviews (5)

Highlights the Necessity and Beauty of Liberty!
"Freedom" and "liberty" seem like two of the most over-used and under-appreciated words in our contemporary political vocabulary. Left-wingers might champion the freedom of dissenting speech (or freedom to abort a fetus), while opining about the necessity of hate speech legislation and railing against the right to own a firearm. Right-wingers might champion association rights and freedom of contract, but might rail to the death to regulate 'indecency' and stand opposed to the freedom of gays to marry. As Wendy Kaminer notes several times in this beautiful book, we tend to treat liberty as we do tax loopholes: we only champion the ones we use; to hell with the others. True Civil Libertarian
In this book, Wendy Kaminer, lawyer and civil libertarian, compiles many of her essays from her column in the American Prospect about censorship, religious freedom, women's rights, anti-individualism, rights of the accused, and post 9-11 curtailings of civil liberties in the United States. Kaminer makes a clear distinction between civil liberties, which are the laws protecting citizens from unjust government power and control, and civil rights, in which government power is used to protect the rights of a marginalized or minority population from other citizen groups. Kaminer criticizes both the right and the left in her attempts to find an appropriate balance, and she leans strongly toward individual freedoms except where clear, unambiguous discrimination is taking place. Timely collection of essays in defense of the Bill of Rights
Social conservatives, Stalinist feminists, and political correct Democrats (not to mention the Christian soldiers of the Bush administration) will find no comfort here.Wendy Kaminer is going to come down on the side of individual freedom against governmental power whatever the issue at hand.Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Law    3. Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights    4. Politics / Current Events    5. Sociology - General    6. United States    7. Social Science / Sociology / General   

Reviews (1)

Compelling reexamination of rights revolutions
Charles Epp has done something interesting by providing what should have been a self-evident explanation for rights revolution meant to supplement the standard explanations. Conventional wisdom has it that rights revolutions are created either by one or a combination of any of the following: a general rights consciousness in society, a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights, or liberal judges interested in pushing the rights agenda forward. Epp argues that none of these explanations alone sufficiently explain why rights revolutions occur. Instead he argues that a rights revolution depends upon a support structure in civil society able to fund and organize strategic rights litigation. Epp develops this theory by examining the limitations of conventional explanations for the US rights revolution, which began around 1917. After revealing these limitations, Epp examines the creation of the support structure and demonstrates how this more adequately explains the developing rights revolution. Prior to the development of rights oriented groups, the only persons or groups that were able to sustain strategic litigation were businesses. But, beginning in the early 20th century, rights groups developed sufficient funding and organizational capabilities necessary to allow sustained rights litigation. The judicial rights agenda, Epp demonstrates, is directly responsive to these types of litigation strategies.
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Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Government - U.S. Government    3. History    4. Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights    5. Political Science    6. Politics / Current Events    7. Politics/International Relations    8. Canada    9. Constitutional & administrative law    10. Courts & procedure    11. English legal system: courts & procedure    12. Human rights    13. India    14. Political Science / Civil Rights    15. Postwar period, 1945 to c 2000    16. Second World War, 1939-1945    17. USA    18. United Kingdom, Great Britain   

Subjects:  1. Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice    2. Civil Rights    3. Deaf    4. Discrimination    5. Handicapped    6. Hearing impaired    7. Law    8. Legal Reference / Law Profession    9. Legal status, laws, etc    10. Legal status, laws, etc.    11. Services For The Physically Challenged    12. Social Law    13. United States    14. Private, property, family law    15. USA   

Editorial Review

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Reviews (4)

Modern Medea, modern mistakes
The first chapter is about the Gaines family, how is it Mr. Weisenburger can make so many mistakes and no one seems to notice. Did he use newspaper articles of the day for his chapters having to do with the trial? If he can take a 12 page letter from Sept. 14, 1852 and change the names of those in the letter how can we believe he could get the rest of the story right ? The Gaines family genealogy chart is wrong and possibly gotten off any one of the internet genealogy websites.
A true story of slavery and infanticide
In February 1857, slave Margaret Garner fled from her master Archibald Gaines's Kentucky plantation.She, her husband Robert, his parents, and their four children crossed the frozen Ohio River in Cincinnati, hiding out in the cabin of one of Margaret's cousins, a free black.Gaines quickly trailed them to the cabin, and, in one quick moment, Margaret picked up a knife and killed one of her children, not wanting any of them to go back into slavery. Interesting story, well written
Very well done indeed.I am impressed that an English professor could turn in such good work as an historian and cover the courtroom battles withthe skill of an experienced lawyer.A well told story of an obscure, butvery revealing, chapter in the period just before the Civil War.
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Subjects:  1. African American Studies - History    2. Biography    3. Cincinnati    4. Civil Rights    5. Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General    6. Fugitive slaves    7. Garner, Margaret    8. History - General History    9. History: American    10. Kentucky    11. Legal status, laws, etc    12. Legal status, laws, etc.    13. Murder    14. Ohio    15. Slavery    16. Social Science    17. United States    18. United States - Antebellum Era    19. Trials, litigation, etc   

Reviews (1)

Trial and Error
Tom Rubillo's work "Trial and Error" gives excellent insight into the race relations of the South and how the Jim Crow mentality influenced criminal trials. Rubillo does an excellent job with his research as he examines the trial of John Brownfield. Important read for those interested in law or history, but an enjoyable read for anyone, regardless of interests. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Criminal Law    2. Criminal Law - General    3. Legal Reference / Law Profession    4. United States - State & Local - South   

Reviews (1)

Forces a major reevaluation of Reconstruction
This is a bitter-sweet book that should go far in convincing people of all races of the existence of a cadre of educated and capable progressive Blackpeople in South Carolina during reconstruction.The sadness is that thewhite power structure extinguished this at the end of Reconstuction with asegregated Jim Crow society unseen before in South Carolina.This bookwill go far to extinguish the myth of crude unschooled Blacks manipulatedby northern carpetbaggers to "rule" the state after the CivilWar. The African-Americans who were able to gain a foothold on the AmericanDream during this period were to become the nucleus of the civil rightsmovemement in the US. Given a less pig headed white power structure, racialtensions of the past century might have been avoided. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General    3. Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Histor    4. History    5. History: American    6. Sociology    7. United States - State & Local - General    8. United States - State & Local - South   

Editorial Review

Central to David Richards's elegant and provocative Read more

Reviews (1)

Brilliant Case for Gay Rights
Richards has advanced the constitutional argumentation for gay rights in a profound way.He has analogized the case for gay rights to arguments forracial, gender, and religious equality and concluded that attempts to finda genetic or "innate" basis for homosexuality are no more likelyto provide grounds for equality than to provide grounds for continuedinequality and discrimination.Read more

Subjects:  1. African Americans    2. Civil Rights    3. Discrimination    4. Discrimination & Racism    5. Gay Studies    6. Gay rights    7. Gay/Lesbian Nonfiction    8. Homosexuality    9. Law    10. Legal Reference / Law Profession    11. Social Law    12. United States    13. Women's rights    14. Gay & Lesbian studies    15. Human rights    16. International human rights law    17. Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations   

Reviews (8)

Strong Historical Analysis
Where did our constitutional rights come from? Why are they written the way they are? Were they original, or did our Founding Fathers get the ideas elsewhere? These questions and more will be answered in Levy's Origins of the Bill of Rights. Wonderful historical reference for the Bill of Rights
Well written and interesting. This book gives a wonderful historical perspective of the laws, practices, and history that led up to the framing of the Bill of Rights. With careful study, Levy has built a window into the politics, thoughts, and fears that led to the inclusion of the BOR and includes many examples of the reasons that they were included. Well written and entertaining, this lesson in American history reads like series of short stories.

Origins of the Bill of Rights
The upset with politicians today is nothing new."Origins.." puts a human history face on the Bill of Rights.Amazing that our country has retained the original hopes of our founders.Levy is excellent in his description and inspiration. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1st-10th Amendments    2. 1st-10th Amendments.    3. Civil Rights    4. Constitution    5. Constitution.    6. Constitutional    7. Constitutions    8. History    9. Law    10. Legal Reference / Law Profession    11. Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights    12. Political History    13. Political Science    14. U.S. - Political And Civil Rights    15. U.S. Constitutional History    16. United States    17. United States.    18. Law / Constitutional   

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Constitutional history    3. Government - Judicial Branch    4. Government - U.S. Government    5. History    6. Law    7. Legal System    8. Politics / Current Events    9. Public opinion    10. United States    11. United States - State & Local - General    12. Constitution: government & the state    13. History / Asia    14. Social & cultural anthropology    15. USA   

Reviews (5)

Absolute Classic
Things are quite simple. If there is A contemporary debate in jurisprudence, it is the so-called Hart/Dworkin debate. It all starts with this wonderful book that cuts deeply and challenges the theory of legal positivism on many levels. As for the theory of rights, Dworkin is a proponent of one of the most coherent, interesting and complex articulations of liberalism. In short: to the extent that fundamental rights are in play, the "political majority" (if such a thing exists) does not have the moral right totell members of the minority what to do with their own lives. Is not this a simple but powerful moral truth?

Tyranny of a minority
Dworkin's thesis is that a tyranny of a minority is better than a tyranny of the majority. His argument is based on rigorous logic. But Justice Holmes observed that, "The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience." Dworkin's theory is similar to those of Plato and Marx. But experience with the latters' theories has been negative. For an analysis of that experience, read Kark Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies.

His Logic is Flawless
... and this is a welcome breeze in the current political fog of an America drowning in six-shooters and visceral-response-teams. The Dworkin-challenge before us is the discovery of rights as emanating from the individual, and their use in daily life. This is where Dworkin may break down. Unlike Dershowitz's "Shouting Fire", for example, Dworkin does not write as if there is a human behind the logic who is actually extolling our necessary freedoms. Perhaps it is just me, but I'd like to hold on to and celebrate my rights and yours; I'd also like to affect change-- as would Dworkin, on a global scale. Though he sees humanity's natural path to decency, his writing "feels" far too cold to be effective.Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Jurisprudence    3. Law    4. Legal Reference / Law Profession    5. Legal positivism    6. Philosophy    7. Political rights    8. Jurisprudence & General Issues    9. Philosophy / General   

Reviews (4)

Adequate & Annoying
The authors' explanation of the workings of the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc systems is adequate but is not particularly well written and often lacks clarity. This is certainly not one of NOLO's best offerings. Significant error in VA section
page 10/7: "E. Medical Treatment....And dependents and survisors of a veteran who has a service connected disabilities, or who receives a veterans pension, are entitled to care in VA facilities if they are unable to afford private care." Could reading about federal regulations be entertaining?
The authors of this comprehensive guidebook come close to achieving this feat. As they point out, many Americans are not receiving all the benefits they deserve under our current system. By explaining the various benefit programs and laws in conversational English, they hope to help readers ensure they are getting everything to which they are entitled. It's also helpful that the text is presented in a visually interesting two-column format with plenty of headings, boxes, and even the occasional illustration.Read more

Subjects:  1. Business / Economics / Finance    2. Civil Rights    3. Law    4. Law and legislation    5. Medicaid & Medicare    6. Medicare    7. Military    8. Pensions    9. Personal Finance - Retirement Planning    10. Politics - Current Events    11. Popular works    12. Public Policy - Social Security    13. Social Welfare (General)    14. Social security    15. United States   

Reviews (5)

Dazed and Confused
This guy doesn't know the difference between a philosopher and a filafel.Anyone with a glimmer of a formal training in philosophy would know it.He uses some philosophers' names to prove the most mundane of points that require no citation at all while using others with the deft of a second year graduate student. Brilliant
Having come from a similar background as an Asian-American in the field of law, I can relate well to many of the experiences highlighted in the text.This work accurately describes the intricate philosophies and commonexperiences held by many Asian-Americans, thus allowing vital insight intoa often misconstrued culture.It represents a fresh look into thisimportant segment of the American society.The text flowed well andcovered a broad range of stimulating issues.A very satisfying read.

Thoughtful and perceptive
I really enjoyed this book, and thought it was accessible (I read it in a couple days), at times humorous, and smart.It contains multiple essays on law and Asian America, one of which is a thought-provoking discussion ofthe place/placing of Asian Americans in the Affirmative Action debate,particularly for those of us who are used to looking at affirmative actionthrough a different racial/ethnic lens.I am very impressed with thisauthor. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Law    3. Legal Reference / Law Profession    4. Minority Studies - Ethnic American   

Reviews (2)

Interesting, informative and important.A must read book.
I loved this book.A very readable journey through the court case which arose out of Colorado's anti-gay initiative, supported by a clear and descriptive primer on the larger gay rights movement.The pacing wascrisp, the writing clear and the story told in a compelling fashion.Ihighly recommend this book.

Fascinating insights on a major constitutional case
Suzanne Goldberg, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund attorney who worked onRomer v. Evans, and Lisa Keen, the Washington Blade journalist who won anaward from the A.B.A. for her news coverage of the case, have collaboratedon a truly fascinating "inside baseball" account of thelitigation.Particulary useful: their detailed description of the experttestimony offered to the trial court on the issue of "suspectclassification" for sexual orientation discrimination analysis.Thisis a must read for lawyers and legal scholars interested in Romer and gayrights generally. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Gay Studies    3. Gender Studies    4. General    5. Law    6. Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights    7. Jurisprudence & General Issues    8. Social Science / Gender Studies   

Subjects:  1. Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice    2. Civil Rights    3. Government policy    4. Law    5. Legal Reference / Law Profession    6. Right to die    7. States    8. United States   

Subjects:  1. Civil Rights    2. Personal & Practical Guides    3. Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights    4. Reference    5. Research    6. Social Science    7. Sociology    8. Political Science / Civil Rights