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Abraham
by Alan M. DershowitzPart of the Jewish Encounter seriesOne of the world's best-known attorneys gives us a no-holds-barred history of Jewish lawyers: from the biblical Abraham through modern-day advocates who have changed the world by challenging the status quo, defending the unpopular, contributing to the rule of law, and following the biblical command to pursue justice. The Hebrew Bible's two great examples of advocacy on behalf of problematic defendants--Abraham trying to convince God not to destroy the people of Sodom, and Moses trying to convince God not to destroy the golden-calf-worshipping Children of Israel--established the template for Jewish lawyers for the next 4,500 years. Whether because throughout history Jews have found themselves unjustly accused of crimes ranging from deicide to ritual child murder to treason, or because the biblical exhortation that "justice, justice, shall you pursue" has been implanted in the Jewish psyche, Jewish lawyers have been at the forefront in battles against tyranny, in advocating for those denied due process, in negotiating for just and equitable solutions to complex legal problems, and in efforts to ensure a fair trial for anyone accused of a crime. Dershowitz profiles Jewish lawyers well-known and unheralded, admired and excoriated, victorious and defeated--and, of course, gives us some glimpses into the gung-ho practice of law, Dershowitz-style. Louis Brandeis, Theodor Herzl, Judah Benjamin, Max Hirschberg, René Cassin, Bruno Kreisky, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Irwin Cotler are just a few of the "idol smashers, advocates, collaborators, rescuers, and deal makers" who helped to change history. Dershowitz's thoughts on the future of the Jewish lawyer are presented with the same insight, shrewdness, and candor that are the hallmarks of his more than four decades of writings on the law and how it is (and should be!) practiced.From the Hardcover edition. his writings on the law and how it is (and should be!) practiced.
Above the Law
by David BurnhamThe U.S. Department of Justice is an institution of vast reach and power over the American people, with little oversight into its internal operations. This book examines the ways that attorneys general, FBI directors, federal prosecutors and other Justice Department officials have often abused their powers to achieve political goals rather than pursuing justice. Its warning remains as relevant in the digital post-9/11 era of the expanded national security state as it was in the days of J. Edgar Hoover.
Above the Law: The Disappearance, Above The Law, And A Killing In The Valley (The Luke Garrison Series #2)
by J. F. FreedmanWhen a federal drug bust goes awry, Luke Garrison must investigate a baffling government cover-up In a remote region of the California hills, Mexican drug lord Reynaldo Juarez has built a fortress, complete with a landing strip long enough for a Boeing 737. He has planned the biggest deal of his long and dangerous career: a $100 million cocaine buy that will make him a legend. With the DEA waiting in the hills, the Feds storm the Juarez compound. Four agents end up dead and the drug lord is shot through the skull. In the aftermath of the disastrous raid, former Santa Barbara District Attorney Luke Garrison is tasked with finding the shooter who killed Reynaldo. He will discover that a strange conspiracy, replete with a sinister cover-up, lies behind the assault on the kingpin&’s compound. Going up against the DEA is a fearsome prospect, but fearlessness is all that Luke has left.
Above the Clouds: A Guide to Trends Changing the Way we Work
by EfqmSome of us work to live. Some of us live to work. Some of us, by design or default, don't work at all. Whatever your position, as a stakeholder in today's society, there is no avoiding the complex web that is the world of work. Everyone is affected to some degree by issues such as stress and work-life balance, teleworking, offshoring, stakeholder democracy, globalisation – the list goes on. But, as things continue to change at an ever-faster rate, what can we expect work to look like in the next five, ten, or twenty years? Above the Clouds is the result of a future studies project carried out by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), a not-for profit foundation that promotes excellence in European business. The project aimed to identify trends that will have an impact on the world of work over the coming decade. Work here is defined in terms of methods, organisation and future challenges. It took two years to create the full picture, which is now available in this book. "Trendspotting" sessions were organised across Europe as a means of gathering ideas on where work was heading in the future. The experience and insights of people from a diverse range of backgrounds were included in the project. Working with raw material from these sessions, researchers investigated each of the trends and their possible ramifications on the world of work. The resulting articles were posted for comment online. People from all around Europe responded and some of these views are quoted in this book. In addition, academics and leading CEOs and executives were asked for their reactions to these trends. Each of the 15 chapters of Above the Clouds analyses a trend in detail and includes perspectives from business, academia and comments from the European public. There are disagreements, but also a surprising amount of convergence on issues such as leadership, outsourcing, global risk, women, age, spirituality, stress and technology. Rather than trying to offer certainty, the book aims to equip people and organisations with the awareness and adaptability they will need to meet tomorrow's challenges to the way we work. It is fascinating reading for anyone interested in how the big issues of work are likely to impact on us all.
Above Suspicion: An Undercover FBI Agent, an Illicit Affair, and a Murder of Passion (Above Suspicion Ser. #Vol. 1)
by Joe SharkeySoon to be a major motion picture starring Emilia Clarke and Jack Huston: The "uncommonly trenchant account of the only known FBI agent to confess to murder" (Kirkus Reviews). When rookie FBI agent Mark Putnam received his first assignment in 1987, it was the culmination of a lifelong dream, if not the most desirable location. Pikeville, Kentucky, is high in Appalachian coal country, an outpost rife with lawlessness dating back to the Hatfields and McCoys. As a rising star in the bureau, however, Putnam soon was cultivating paid informants and busting drug rings and bank robbers. But when one informant fell in love with him, passion and duty would collide with tragic results. A coal miner's daughter, Susan Smith was a young, attractive, struggling single mother. She was also a drug user sometimes described as a con artist, thief, and professional liar. Ultimately, Putnam gave in to Smith's relentless pursuit. But when he ended the affair, she waged a campaign of vengeance that threatened to destroy him. When at last she confronted him with a shocking announcement, a violent scuffle ensued, and Putnam, in a burst of uncontrolled rage, fatally strangled her. Though he had everything necessary to get away with murder--a spotless reputation, a victim with multiple enemies, and the protection of the bureau's impenetrable shield--his conscience wouldn't allow it. Tormented by a year of guilt and deception, Putnam finally led authorities to Smith's remains. This is the story of what happened before, during, and after his startling confession--an account that "should take its place on the dark shelf of the best American true crime" (Newsday). Revised and updated, this ebook also includes photos and a new epilogue by the author.
About Time: Speed, Society, People and the Environment
by Martin Rees Will Hutton Mary Warnock Geoff Mulgan Jay Griffiths Jonathon Porritt David Boyle Alexandra Jones Ghillean Prance Tim AldrichWhere does all the time go? Despite the burgeoning army of machines designed to save us time – from cars and aeroplanes to dishwashers and microwaves – we don't seem to have any more of it on our hands. We simply fill the space we clear with more things to do – consuming more, spending more – and then look around for new ways of saving time. And so we spiral onwards, upwards, ever faster. Being busy has become a habit, and a habit that gives us high status – busy people are important people. The business of business is busy-ness. We are moving from a world in which the big eats the small, to a world where the fast eats the slow. But the fallout from a society hooked on speed is everywhere. It's affecting our health: 60 per cent of the adult population in the UK report that they suffer from stress, and more than half of these say that this has worsened over the last 12 months. It's affecting our family life, with a quarter of British families sharing a meal together only once a month. And it affects our environment too: air travel is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating climate change as we speed around the world. And the faster we live, the faster we consume, the faster we waste energy and the faster we pollute the planet. The faster we seem to be running out of time. Is there something fundamentally wrong with the structure and values of this high-speed society? What are we running from and what are we running towards? Sustainable development is all about time. It's about trying to safeguard the health of the planet, and the people it supports, indefinitely, unconstrained by time. The idea of time offers a novel perspective on what sustainable development is all about. Looking at issues affecting society and the environment through the prism of time conveys the urgency of the challenge and leads us to solutions we might not have thought of before. About Time, edited by the think-tank Forum for the Future, brings together ten of the world's leading thinkers and writers, including Will Hutton, Baroness Mary Warnock, Sir Martin Rees, Ghillean Prance, Jay Griffiths (the author of the bestselling Pip Pip) and Jonathon Porritt, from disciplines including biology, business, sociology, ethnography, astronomy, philosophy, politics, history and sustainability in a collection of intriguing essays exploring the issue of time and how it relates to the environment, economy and society. The first half of this collection looks at different dimensions of time – from the history of time as a social phenomenon and cultural notions of time, to cosmological time and the difference between human and machine time. These "think-pieces" are followed by a series of more practical, solutions-oriented contributions, looking at how we deal with time in different contexts – from the slow food movement and time banks to long-term thinking in politics and what we can individually do to cope with the speed society. Contributions are liberally interspersed with boxes and brief pieces offering bite-sized facts, figures and insights relating to time and our everyday lives. About Time is a high-profile collection aimed at creating debate about where the values of our contemporary society are taking us. It will foster reflective thinking about different aspects of time, using the concept of time to communicate and illuminate the idea of sustainable development and question our idolatry of speed. In doing so, it aims to inspire and help decision-makers in business, government and elsewhere to appreciate the challenges of sustainable development, and inspire individuals to create change in their own lives. For readers of No Logo and Longitude, this book provides a thought-provoking twist, bringing together time and sustainability in a refreshing, provocative and accessible way.
About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First Century America
by Carol SangerNew medical technologies, women’s willingness to talk online and off, and tighter judicial reins on state legislatures are shaking up the practice of abortion. As talk becomes more transparent, Carol Sanger writes, women’s decisions about whether to become mothers will be treated more like those of other adults making significant personal choices.
Abortion Rights: For and Against (Routledge Annals Of Bioethics Ser.)
by Christopher Kaczor Kate GreasleyThis book features opening arguments followed by two rounds of reply between two moral philosophers on opposing sides of the abortion debate. In the initial opening essays, Kate Greasley and Christopher Kaczor lay out what they take to be the best case for and against abortion rights. In the ensuing dialogue, they engage with each other's arguments and each responds to criticisms fielded by the other. Their conversational argument explores such fundamental questions as: what gives a person the right to life? Is abortion bad for women? And what is the difference between abortion and infanticide? Underpinned by philosophical reasoning and methodology, this book provides opposing and clearly structured perspectives on a highly emotive and controversial issue. The result gives readers a window into how moral philosophers argue about the contentious issue of abortion rights, and an in-depth analysis of the compelling arguments on both sides.
Abortion Rights: Documents of the Socialist Workers Party 1971-86
by Mary-Alice WatersPart 3 of a series. How did the oppression of women begin? Who benefits? What social forces have the power to end the second-class status of women? This three-part series helps politically equip the generation of women and men joining battles in defense of women's rights today.
Abortion Politics in Congress
by Scott H. Ainsworth Thad E. HallThis book examines how legislators have juggled their passions over abortion with standard congressional procedures, looking at how both external factors (such as public opinion) and internal factors (such as the ideological composition of committees and party systems) shape the development of abortion policy. Driven by both theoretical and empirical concerns, Scott H. Ainsworth and Thad E. Hall present a simple, formal model of strategic incrementalism, illustrating that legislators often have incentives to alter policy incrementally. They then examine the sponsorship of abortion-related proposals as well as their committee referral and find that a wide range of Democratic and Republican legislators repeatedly offer abortion-related proposals designed to alter abortion policy incrementally. Abortion Politics in Congress reveals that abortion debates have permeated a wide range of issues and that a wide range of legislators and a large number of committees address abortion.
Abortion, Conscience and Democracy
by Mark R. MacguiganFew issues have polarized Canadians and Americans as much as the abortion debate. In this thoughtful and thought-provoking reflection on the implications the law on abortion has on democracy, Mark MacGuigan brings a much-needed perspective to this controversial subject. Few people are as well qualified to do so: MacGuigan is a former law professor, minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, a Catholic, and a federal appellate-court judge.Distinguishing carefully between morality and the law, MacGuigan includes a history of the criminal law, the Catholic Church’s views, and the often-ignored roles of individual conscience, freedom and responsibility in democracy. He reviews the essential debate, important case histories, and the evolving social perspectives that have attached themselves to discussions of abortion. he also includes chapters on the related issues of contraception and euthanasia.MacGuigan refers to a wide range of influential and international documents and judgements: papal encyclicals, the Wolfenden Report, Roe vs. Wade, a ruling in a case that involved Dr. Henry Morgentaler, and numerous other sources. With great candour, MacGuigan also explores how his own attitude and position have changed to the point where he now opposes any legislation limiting abortion before viability.Those who are seeking clarity of the issues and those who want to uncloud the rhetoric and the arguments should not miss reading this important work.
Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood
by Kristin LukerKristin Luker examines the issues, people, and beliefs on both sides of the abortion conflict and draws data from twenty years of public documents and newspaper accounts, as well as over two hundred interviews with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present
by Mary ZieglerWith the Supreme Court likely to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision, American debate appears fixated on clashing rights. The first comprehensive legal history of a vital period, Abortion and the Law in America illuminates an entirely different and unexpected shift in the terms of debate. Rather than simply championing rights, those on opposing sides battled about the policy costs and benefits of abortion and laws restricting it. This mostly unknown turn deepened polarization in ways many have missed. Never abandoning their constitutional demands, pro-choice and pro-life advocates increasingly disagreed about the basic facts. Drawing on unexplored records and interviews with key participants, Ziegler complicates the view that the Supreme Court is responsible for the escalation of the conflict. A gripping account of social-movement divides and crucial legal strategies, this book delivers a definitive recent history of an issue that transforms American law and politics to this day.
Abortion and Social Responsibility: Depolarizing the Debate
by Laurie ShrageShrage argues that Roe v Wade's regulatory scheme of a six-month time span for abortion on demand polarized the public and obscured alternatives with potentially broader support. She explores the origins of that scheme, then defends an alternate one--with a time span shorter than 6 months for non-therapeutic abortions--that could win broad support needed to make legal abortion services available to all women.
Abortion and Ireland: How the 8th Was Overthrown
by David RalphThis book asks the crucial question of how it came to pass that on the 25 May 2018, the Irish electorate voted by a landslide in favour of changing its abortion legislation that, for the previous thirty-five years, had been one of the most restrictive regimes in Europe. The author shows how, alongside traditional campaigning tactics such as street demonstrations, door-to-door canvassing, and the distribution of pro-choice merchandise and information leaflets, a key strategy of pro-choice advocacy groups was to encourage first-person abortion story-sharing by women in their efforts to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which had effectively banned abortion provision in the country. The book argues that a normalizing of abortion talk took place in the lead-up to the referendum, with women speaking publicly in unprecedented numbers about their abortion histories. These women storytellers were mirroring certain pro-choice movements in other contexts, where a new ‘sound it loud, say it proud’ narrative around abortion experiences has emerged as a central contemporary strategy for destigmatizing abortion discourse.Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including law, gender studies, sociology, and human geography, will find this book of interest.
The Abortion Act 1967: A Biography of a UK Law (Law in Context)
by Sally Sheldon Gayle Davis Jane O'Neill Clare ParkerThe Abortion Act 1967 may be the most contested law in UK history, sitting on a fault line between the shifting tectonic plates of a rapidly transforming society. While it has survived repeated calls for its reform, with its text barely altered for over five decades, women's experiences of accessing abortion services under it have evolved considerably. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, this book explores how the Abortion Act was given meaning by a diverse cast of actors including women seeking access to services, doctors and service providers, campaigners, judges, lawyers, and policy makers. By adopting an innovative biographical approach to the law, the book shows that the Abortion Act is a 'living law'. Using this historically grounded socio-legal approach, this enlightening book demonstrates how the Abortion Act both shaped and was shaped by a constantly changing society.
Abortion: The Supreme Court Decisions, 1965-2007
by I. ShapiroUpdated to include the 2007 decision Gonzales v. Carhart, this volume provides all of the major Supreme Court decisions on abortion -- as well as many majority, dissenting, and plurality opinions -- carefully edited for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in a variety of disciplines. In his introductory essay, Shapiro sets these cases in political, historical, and philosophical context, and gives the reader a sense of what the main issues in the constitutional law of abortion are likely to be in the future.
Abortion: The Supreme Court Decisions 1965–2022
by Ian Shapiro Ed. Alicia SteinmetzThis new edition of Abortion: The Supreme Court Decisions includes all of the major Supreme Court decisions on abortion since the 1960s—as well as many majority, dissenting, and plurality opinions—carefully edited for use by researchers, journalists, and teachers in a variety of disciplines.
Aboriginal Women, Law and Critical Race Theory: Storytelling From The Margins (Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice)
by Nicole WatsonThis book explores storytelling as an innovative means of improving understanding of Indigenous people and their histories and struggles including with the law. It uses the Critical Race Theory (‘CRT’) tool of ‘outsider’ or ‘counter’ storytelling to illuminate the practices that have been used by generations of Aboriginal women to create an outlaw culture and to resist their invisibility to law. Legal scholars are yet to use storytelling to bring the experiential knowledge of Aboriginal women to the centre of legal scholarship and yet this book demonstrates how this can be done by way of a new methodology that combines elements of CRT with speculative biography. In one chapter, the author tells the imagined story of Eliza Woree who featured prominently in the backdrop to the decision of the Supreme Court of Queensland in Dempsey v Rigg (1914) but whose voice was erased from the judgements. This accessible book adds a new and innovative dimension to the use of CRT to examine the nexus between race and settler colonialism. It speaks to those interested in Indigenous peoples and the law, Indigenous studies, Indigenous policy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, feminist studies, race and the law, and cultural studies.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy: Sovereignty, Black Power, Land Rights and the State
by Gary Foley Andrew Schaap Edwina HowellThe 1972 Aboriginal Embassy was one of the most significant indigenous political demonstrations of the twentieth century. What began as a simple response to a Prime Ministerial statement on Australia Day 1972, evolved into a six-month political stand-off between radical Aboriginal activists and a conservative Australian government. The dramatic scenes in July 1972 when police forcibly removed the Embassy from the lawns of the Australian Houses of Parliament were transmitted around the world. The demonstration increased international awareness of the struggle for justice by Aboriginal people, brought an end to the national government policy of assimilation and put Aboriginal issues firmly onto the national political agenda. The Embassy remains today and on Australia Day 2012 was again the focal point for national and international attention, demonstrating the intensity that the Embassy can still provoke after forty years of just sitting there. If, as some suggest, the Embassy can only ever be removed by Aboriginal people achieving their goals of Land Rights, Self-Determination and economic independence then it is likely to remain for some time yet. ‘This book explores the context of this moment that captured the world’s attention by using, predominantly, the voices of the people who were there. More than a simple oral history, some of the key players represented here bring with them the imprimatur of the education they were to gain in the era after the Tent Embassy. This is an act of radicalisation. The Aboriginal participants in subversive political action have now broken through the barriers of access to academia and write as both eye-witnesses and also as trained historians, lawyers, film-makers. It is another act of subversion, a continuing taunt to the entrenched institutions of the dominant culture, part of a continuum of political thought and action.’ (Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law, Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney)
Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law (Indigenous Peoples and the Law)
by Irene WatsonThis work is the first to assess the legality and impact of colonisation from the viewpoint of Aboriginal law, rather than from that of the dominant Western legal tradition. It begins by outlining the Aboriginal legal system as it is embedded in Aboriginal people’s complex relationship with their ancestral lands. This is Raw Law: a natural system of obligations and benefits, flowing from an Aboriginal ontology. This book places Raw Law at the centre of an analysis of colonisation – thereby decentring the usual analytical tendency to privilege the dominant structures and concepts of Western law. From the perspective of Aboriginal law, colonisation was a violation of the code of political and social conduct embodied in Raw Law. Its effects were damaging. It forced Aboriginal peoples to violate their own principles of natural responsibility to self, community, country and future existence. But this book is not simply a work of mourning. Most profoundly, it is a celebration of the resilience of Aboriginal ways, and a call for these to be recognised as central in discussions of colonial and postcolonial legality. Written by an experienced legal practitioner, scholar and political activist, AboriginalPeoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law will be of interest to students and researchers of Indigenous Peoples Rights, International Law and Critical Legal Theory.
Aboriginal Child Welfare, Self-Government and the Rights of Indigenous Children: Protecting the Vulnerable Under International Law
by Sonia Harris-ShortThis volume addresses the contentious and topical issue of aboriginal self-government over child welfare. Using case studies from Australia and Canada, it discusses aboriginal child welfare in historical and comparative perspectives and critically examines recent legal reforms and changes in the design, management and delivery of child welfare services aimed at securing the 'decolonization' of aboriginal children and families. Within this context, the author identifies the limitations of reconciling the conflicting demands of self-determination and sovereignty and suggests that international law can provide more nuanced and culturally sensitive solutions. Referring to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is argued that the effective decolonization of aboriginal child welfare requires a journey well beyond the single issue of child welfare to the heart of the debate over self-government, self-determination and sovereignty in both national and international law.
Abolition of Antitrust
by Gary HullThe Abolition of Antitrust asserts that antitrust laws-on economic, legal, and moral grounds-are bad, and provides convincing evidence supporting arguments for their total abolition. Every year, new antitrust prosecutions arise in the U.S. courts, as in the cases against 3M and Visa/MasterCard, as well as a number of ongoing antitrust cases, such as those involving Microsoft and college football's use of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Gary Hull and the contributing authors show that these cases-as well as the Sherman Antitrust Act itself-are based on an erroneous interpretation of the history of American business, premised on bad economics. They equivocate between economic and political power-the power to produce versus the power to use physical force. For Hull, antitrust prosecutions are based on a horrible moral inversion: that it is acceptable to sacrifi ce America's best producers. The contributors explain how key antitrust ideas, for instance, "monopoly," "restraint of trade," and "anticompetitive behavior," have been used to justify prosecution, and then make clear why those ideas are false. They sketch the historical, legal, economic, and moral reasoning that gave rise to the passage and growth of antitrust legislation. All of the theoretical points in this volume are woven around a number of fascinating cases, both historical and current-including the Charles River Bridge, Alcoa, General Electric, and Kellogg/General Mills. Designed for the uninformed but educated layman, The Abolition of Antitrust makes positive arguments in defense of wealth creation, business, and profi t, explains the proper role of government, and offers a rational view of the meaning of contract and economic freedom. AldineTransaction www.transactionpub.com ISBN: 978-1-4128-0502-5 Library of Congress: 2004058124 Printed in the U.S.A. Cover design by Ellen F. Kane "The essays in this book present a sustained economic, historical, moral, and legal broadside against the various federal statutes known as antitrust doctrine. They explode the cherished myths underlying the antitrust laws, and expose their intellectual fountainhead in a morality of self-sacrifice that is incompatible with individual rights, free enterprise, and objective law. With the publication of this text, businessmen, lawyers, economists, policymakers,legislators, and judges finally have access to a systemic critique of the antitrust laws. From here on, if antitrust continues to violate the rights of businessmen and to ravage the American economy, it is not for lack of knowing how and why."-Adam Mossoff, assistant professor of law, Michigan State University College of Law.
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (Open Media Series)
by Angela Y. DavisRevelations about U.S policies and practices of torture and abuse have captured headlines ever since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison story in April 2004. Since then, a debate has raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world's leading democracy. It is within this context that Angela Davis, one of America's most remarkable political figures, gave a series of interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics and prison. Davis talks about her own incarceration, as well as her experiences as "enemy of the state," and about having been put on the FBI's "most wanted" list. She talks about the crucial role that international activism played in her case and the case of many other political prisoners.Throughout these interviews, Davis returns to her critique of a democracy that has been compromised by its racist origins and institutions. Discussing the most recent disclosures about the disavowed "chain of command," and the formal reports by the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch denouncing U.S. violation of human rights and the laws of war in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Davis focuses on the underpinnings of prison regimes in the United States.
La abolición del tormento: El inédito Discurso sobre la injusticia del apremio judicial (c. 1795), de Pedro García del Cañuelo (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures #314)
by José Manuel Pereiro OteroJunto a la erradicacion de la esclavitud y de la pena capital, la abolicion del tormento configura durante el siglo XVIII una de las disputas intelectuales mas incisivas de la Europa continental. Una importante e inedita pieza de esta controversia juridica, politica y social en la Espana de la epoca es el Discurso sobre la injusticia del apremio judicial, donde se argumenta a favor de prohibir este y otros metodos legales de coercion fisica y mental. A mediados de la ultima decada del setecientos, su autor, el abogado Pedro Garcia del Canuelo, trata de publicarlo y busca la mediacion de Manuel Godoy. Sin embargo, el futuro Principe de la Paz rechaza proteger el manuscrito y advierte al autor sobre posibles repercusiones si continua examinando dicho asunto. En consecuencia, aunque el titulo ha pasado al registro historico en contadas referencias indirectas, su contenido se creia perdido. La abolicion del tormento no solamente rescata la figura y el trabajo de su autor, sino que analiza, transcribe y reproduce el texto. Ademas, aparte de estudiar las repercusiones de este debate intelectual en ensayos, dramas, textos narrativos y articulos periodisticos, examina los fundamentos filosoficos y legales de la controversia sobre la tortura juridica en Europa y, particularmente, en Espana. La disputa en la que participa el Discurso sobre la injusticia del apremio judicial refleja las tensiones politicas, juridicas y sociales de la epoca, ya que el debate sobre la legitimidad de la tortura implica considerar planteamientos cuya relevancia no se limita al siglo XVIII. Entre ellos se encuentran, por ejemplo, como se puede articular la relacion entre legalidad y justicia, que criterios se usan para definir a un ser humano, que principios establecen el valor intrinseco de la existencia individual, asi como que circunstancias condicionan la igualdad ante la ley, y cuales son los limites del poder legitimo cuando este suspende los derechos naturales, politicos y civiles del ciudadano. Ampliamente documentado, este estudio es de particular interes para quienes reflexionen sobre los cambios en los procesos legales y en las practicas politicas durante la transicion entre el Antiguo Regimen y el liberalismo moderno.