- Table View
- List View
We Just Build Hammers: Stories from the Past, Present, and Future of Responsible Tech
by Coraline Ada EhmkePhilosopher Noam Chomsky is famously quoted as saying that technology is neither good nor bad, but simply a neutral tool. He likens it to a hammer, which can be used by carpenters and torturers alike. While the neutrality of tech is an idea that appeals to many technologists, this perspective is out of alignment with today's realities of pervasive ad-tech, surveillance capitalism, algorithmic manipulation, and rising techno-fascism. We Just Build Hammers applies a lens of speculative and science fiction to connect you with a historical lineage of thinkers and activists in the responsible tech movement. Its narrative spans a century of major technological upheavals: from the advent of the atomic age to the formative years of computing; from the hacker visionaries of the turn of the century to the tech justice revolutionaries of today. This book challenges technologists to consider for themselves whether they're really just "building hammers"– technologies whose potential for good balances their potential for harm– or if they are unwittingly contributing to systems that exacerbate inequality, inequity, and injustice. What You Will Learn A historic grounding and a science fiction perspective to help untangle the difficult and fraught topic of tech ethics Ways to bring ethical considerations into the development of new technologies How to navigate the increasing complexity of the techno-social world we live and work in Who This Book is For Designed to appeal broadly, not just to engineers and technologists, but to anyone interested in the history and future of ethics and technology.
We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law (Publicly Engaged Scholars: Identities, Purposes, Practices)
by Yxta Maya MurrayWe Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on woman of color and queer of color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct-action "artivism" draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the civil rights and feminist movements and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change. Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of four contemporary artivists —Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Imani Jacqueline Brown—and the artivist collective Drawn Together, combining new oral histories with sharp analyses of how their diverse and expansive artistic practices bear important aesthetic and politicolegal meanings that address a wide range of injustices.
We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption
by Justin FentonThe astonishing true story of &“one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation&” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize–nominated reporter who exposed a gang of criminal cops and their yearslong plunder of an American city&“A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.&”—David Simon, author of Homicide, co-author of The Corner, and creator of The Wire Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor&’s office—as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray&’s death—Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street. But behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city&’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore&’s citizens—skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The result was countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage about a rogue police unit, the city they held hostage, and the ongoing struggle between American law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve.
We Rip the World Apart: A sweeping story about motherhood, race and secrets
by Charlene Carr'A charged emotional epic . . . a can't-miss read!' Marissa Stapley'[A] fearless reflection on race, identity, and parenthood . . . page-turning and propulsive' Shelby Van Pelt'[A] haunting story about racism, identity, and the choice between safety and raising your voice . . . compelling and poignant' Nigar AlamThree women. Three secrets. One family torn apart.MOTHERWhen Evelyn fled to Canada with her young family during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, she thought they were finally safe. But, years later, her worst fears come true when her son is killed by the police.GRANDMOTHERIn the wake of her grandson's violent murder, Violet moves in, but despite her efforts to help the family through their grief, a growing web of secrets threatens the relationships they all hold so dear.DAUGHTERKareela has lived with silences surrounding the loss of her brother since she was a child. Now, 24 and pregnant with a baby she isn't sure she wants, she feels the need to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half Black and half white - yet feels neither.As the traumas the three women carry continue to pull them apart, Kareela must uncover the mysteries of her family's past to make sense of her identity and her future . . .A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment, can have devastating repercussions across the years, especially when people remain silent.PRAISE FOR HOLD MY GIRL:'[A] tense, emotional story about racial identity, loss and betrayal' Daily Mail'Carr gracefully explores the moral dilemma and custody battle . . . Fans of The Herd will love it!' Grazia'Compelling and thought-provoking . . . A page-turner' Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake
We Rip the World Apart: A sweeping story about motherhood, race and secrets
by Charlene Carr'A remarkable storyteller' AMANDA PETERS'Wrenching, deeply moving, yet hopeful' CHARMAINE WILKERSON'A haunting story about racism, identity, and the choice between safety and raising your voice' NIGAR ALAMTHREE WOMEN. THREE SECRETS. ONE FAMILY TORN APART.MOTHERWhen Evelyn fled to Canada with her young family during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, she thought they were finally safe. But, years later, her worst fears come true when her son is killed by the police.GRANDMOTHERIn the wake of her grandson's violent murder, Violet moves in, but despite her efforts to help the family through their grief, a growing web of secrets threatens the relationships they all hold so dear.DAUGHTERKareela has lived with silences surrounding the loss of her brother since she was a child. Now, 24 and pregnant with a baby she isn't sure she wants, she feels the need to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half Black and half white - yet feels neither.As the traumas the three women carry continue to pull them apart, Kareela must uncover the mysteries of her family's past to make sense of her identity and her future . . .'A charged emotional epic!' MARISSA STAPLEY'Page-turning and propulsive' SHELBY VAN PELT'A beautifully executed portrait of what it means to be a family' AMITA PARIKHA sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment, can have devastating repercussions across the years, especially when people remain silent.PRAISE FOR HOLD MY GIRL:'[A] tense, emotional story about racial identity, loss and betrayal' Daily Mail'Fans of The Herd will love it!' Grazia'Compelling and thought-provoking . . . A page-turner' Charmaine Wilkerson
We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance
by Jon FasmanAn investigation into the legal, political, and moral issues surrounding how the police and justice system use surveillance technology, asking the question: what are citizens of a free country willing to tolerate in the name of public safety?As we rethink the scope of police power, Jon Fasman&’s chilling examination of how the police and the justice system use the unparalleled power of surveillance technology—how it affects privacy, liberty, and civil rights—becomes more urgent by the day. Embedding himself within police departments on both coasts, Fasman explores the moral, legal, and political questions posed by these techniques and tools.By zeroing in on how facial recognition, automatic license-plate readers, drones, predictive algorithms, and encryption affect us personally, Fasman vividly illustrates what is at stake and explains how to think through issues of privacy rights, civil liberties, and public safety. How do these technologies impact how police operate in our society? How should archaic privacy laws written for an obsolete era—that of the landline and postbox—be updated?Fasman looks closely at what can happen when surveillance technologies are combined and put in the hands of governments with scant regard for citizens&’ civil liberties, pushing us to ask: Is our democratic culture strong enough to stop us from turning into China, with its architecture of control?
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
by Adam WinklerWe the Corporations chronicles the revelatory story of one of the most successful, yet least known, “civil rights movements” in American history. <p><p> We the Corporations chronicles the astonishing story of one of the most successful yet least well-known “civil rights movements” in American history. Hardly oppressed like women and minorities, business corporations, too, have fought since the nation’s earliest days to gain equal rights under the Constitution—and today have nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. <p> Exposing the historical origins of Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, Adam Winkler explains how those controversial Supreme Court decisions extending free speech and religious liberty to corporations were the capstone of a centuries-long struggle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business. Beginning his account in the colonial era, Winkler reveals the profound influence corporations had on the birth of democracy and on the shape of the Constitution itself. Once the Constitution was ratified, corporations quickly sought to gain the rights it guaranteed. The first Supreme Court case on the rights of corporations was decided in 1809, a half-century before the first comparable cases on the rights of African Americans or women. <p> Ever since, corporations have waged a persistent and remarkably fruitful campaign to win an ever-greater share of individual rights. Although corporations never marched on Washington, they employed many of the same strategies of more familiar civil rights struggles: civil disobedience, test cases, and novel legal claims made in a purposeful effort to reshape the law. Indeed, corporations have often been unheralded innovators in constitutional law, and several of the individual rights Americans hold most dear were first secured in lawsuits brought by businesses. <p> Winkler enlivens his narrative with a flair for storytelling and a colorful cast of characters: among others, Daniel Webster, America’s greatest advocate, who argued some of the earliest corporate rights cases on behalf of his business clients; Roger Taney, the reviled Chief Justice, who surprisingly fought to limit protections for corporations—in part to protect slavery; and Roscoe Conkling, a renowned politician who deceived the Supreme Court in a brazen effort to win for corporations the rights added to the Constitution for the freed slaves. Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Huey Long, Ralph Nader, Louis Brandeis, and even Thurgood Marshall all played starring roles in the story of the corporate rights movement. <p> In this heated political age, nothing can be timelier than Winkler’s tour de force, which shows how America’s most powerful corporations won our most fundamental rights and turned the Constitution into a weapon to impede the regulation of big business.
We the Kids: The Preamble To The Constitution Of The United States
by David CatrowA long time ago some smart guys wrote the Preamble to the Constitution. You have probably read it before, but do you know what it means? And did it ever make you laugh? Now it will! Perfect for inspiring discussion in classrooms and around kitchen tables, this fun-filled and cheerfully illustrated look at the Preamble provides an accessible introduction to America's founding ideals for citizens of all ages. Includes a glossary of terms and a foreword by the artist. "This zany, patriotic paean offers kids lighthearted but meaningful incentive to reflect further on the relevance of those 'big words' and 'big ideas.'"
We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush
by Andrea G. McDowellA surprising account of frontier law that challenges the image of the Wild West. In the absence of state authority, Gold Rush miners crafted effective government by the people—but not for all the people.Gold Rush California was a frontier on steroids: 1,500 miles from the nearest state, it had a constantly fluctuating population and no formal government. A hundred thousand single men came to the new territory from every corner of the nation with the sole aim of striking it rich and then returning home. The circumstances were ripe for chaos, but as Andrea McDowell shows, this new frontier was not nearly as wild as one would presume. Miners turned out to be experts at self-government, bringing about a flowering of American-style democracy—with all its promises and deficiencies.The Americans in California organized and ran meetings with an efficiency and attention to detail that amazed foreign observers. Hundreds of strangers met to adopt mining codes, decide claim disputes, run large-scale mining projects, and resist the dominance of companies financed by outside capital. Most notably, they held criminal trials on their own authority. But, mirroring the societies back east from which they came, frontiersmen drew the boundaries of their legal regime in racial terms. The ruling majority expelled foreign miners from the diggings and allowed their countrymen to massacre the local Native Americans. And as the new state of California consolidated, miners refused to surrender their self-endowed authority to make rules and execute criminals, presaging the don’t-tread-on-me attitudes of much of the contemporary American west.In We the Miners, Gold Rush California offers a well-documented test case of democratic self-government, illustrating how frontiersmen used meetings and the rules of parliamentary procedure to take the place of the state.
We the People: The Civil Rights Revolution
by Bruce AckermanThe breakthrough was the passage of laws that ended the institutionalized humiliations of Jim Crow and ensured equal rights at work, in schools, and in the voting booth. This legislation gained congressional approval only because of the mobilized support of the American people--and their principles deserve a central place in the nation's history.
We the People
by Bruce AckermanThe Civil Rights Revolution carries Bruce Ackerman’s sweeping reinterpretation of constitutional history into the era beginning with Brown v. Board of Education. From Rosa Parks’s courageous defiance, to Martin Luther King’s resounding cadences in “I Have a Dream,” to Lyndon Johnson’s leadership of Congress, to the Supreme Court’s decisions redefining the meaning of equality, the movement to end racial discrimination decisively changed our understanding of the Constitution.“The Civil Rights Act turns 50 this year, and a wave of fine books accompanies the semicentennial. Ackerman’s is the most ambitious; it is the third volume in an ongoing series on American constitutional history called We the People. A professor of law and political science at Yale, Ackerman likens the act to a constitutional amendment in its significance to the country’s legal development.”—Michael O’Donnell, The Atlantic“Ackerman weaves political theory with historical detail, explaining how the civil rights movement evolved from revolution to mass movement and then to statutory law…This fascinating book takes a new look at a much-covered topic.”—Becky Kennedy, Library Journal
We the People
by Donald C. DahlinDahlin takes an analytical approach to existing Constitutional scholarship and presents a limited number of landmark Supreme Court decisions in a way that makes this important material accessible to an undergraduate academic audience.
We, the People: Insights of an activist judge
by Albie SachsA stirring collection of public talks and essays by an activist and former judge offers an intimate insider’s view of South Africa’s Constitution. This stirring collection of essays and talks by activist and former judge Albie Sachs is the culmination of more than 25 years of thought about constitution-making and non-racialism. Following the Constitutional Court's landmark Nkandla ruling in March 2016, it serves as a powerful reminder of the tenets of the Constitution, the rule of law and the continuous struggle to uphold democratic rights and freedoms. We, the People offers an intimate insider's view of South Africa's Constitution by a writer who has been deeply entrenched in its historical journey from the depths of apartheid right up to the politically contested present. As a second-year law student at the University of Cape Town, Sachs took part in the Defiance Campaign and went on to attend the Congress of the People in Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. Three decades later, shortly after the bomb attack in Maputo that cost him his arm and the sight in one eye, he was called on by the Constitutional Committee of the African National Congress to co-draft (with Kader Asmal) the first outline of a Bill of Rights for a new democratic South Africa. In 1994, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to the Constitutional Court, where he served as a judge until 2009. We, the People contains some of Sachs' most memorable public talks and writings, in which he takes us back to the broad-based popular foundations of the Constitution in the Freedom Charter. He picks up on Oliver Tambo's original vision of a non-racial future for South Africa, rather than one based on institutionalised power-sharing between the races. He explores the tension between perfectability and corruptibility, hope and mistrust, which lies at the centre of all constitutions. Sachs discusses the enforcement of social and economic rights, and contemplates the building of the Constitutional Court in the heart of the Old Fort Prison as a mechanism for reconciling the past and the future. Subjective experience and objective analysis interact powerfully in a personalised narrative that reasserts the value of constitutionality not just for South Africans, but for people striving to advance human dignity, equality and freedom across the world today.
We the People 2: Transformations
by Bruce AckermanConstitutional change, seemingly so orderly, formal, and refined, has in fact been a revolutionary process from the first, as Bruce Ackerman makes clear in We the People: Transformations. The Founding Fathers, hardly the genteel conservatives of myth, set America on a remarkable course of revolutionary disruption and constitutional creativity that endures to this day. After the bloody sacrifices of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party revolutionized the traditional system of constitutional amendment as they put principles of liberty and equality into higher law. Another wrenching transformation occurred during the Great Depression, when Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers vindicated a new vision of activist government against an assault by the Supreme Court. These are the crucial episodes in American constitutional history that Ackerman takes up in this second volume of a trilogy hailed as "one of the most important contributions to American constitutional thought in the last half-century" (Cass Sunstein, New Republic). In each case he shows how the American people--whether led by the Founding Federalists or the Lincoln Republicans or the Roosevelt Democrats--have confronted the Constitution in its moments of great crisis with dramatic acts of upheaval, always in the name of popular sovereignty. A thoroughly new way of understanding constitutional development, We the People: Transformations reveals how America's "dualist democracy" provides for these populist upheavals that amend the Constitution, often without formalities. The book also sets contemporary events, such as the Reagan Revolution and Roe v. Wade, in deeper constitutional perspective. In this context Ackerman exposes basic constitutional problems inherited from the New Deal Revolution and exacerbated by the Reagan Revolution, then considers the fundamental reforms that might resolve them. A bold challenge to formalist and fundamentalist views, this volume demonstrates that ongoing struggle over America's national identity, rather than consensus, marks its constitutional history.
We, the Robots?: Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law
by Simon ChestermanShould we regulate artificial intelligence? Can we? From self-driving cars and high-speed trading to algorithmic decision-making, the way we live, work, and play is increasingly dependent on AI systems that operate with diminishing human intervention. These fast, autonomous, and opaque machines offer great benefits – and pose significant risks. This book examines how our laws are dealing with AI, as well as what additional rules and institutions are needed – including the role that AI might play in regulating itself. Drawing on diverse technologies and examples from around the world, the book offers lessons on how to manage risk, draw red lines, and preserve the legitimacy of public authority. Though the prospect of AI pushing beyond the limits of the law may seem remote, these measures are useful now – and will be essential if it ever does.
We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and about Students
by Jamin B. RaskinWe the Students is a highly acclaimed resource that has introduced thousands of students to the field of legal studies by covering Supreme Court issues that directly affect them. It examines topics such as students’ access to judicial process; religion in schools; school discipline and punishment; and safety, discrimination and privacy at school. Through meaningful and engagingly written commentary, excerpts of Supreme Court cases (with students as the litigants), and exercises and class projects, author Jamie B. Raskin provides students with the tools they need to gain a deeper appreciation of democratic freedoms and challenges, and underscores their responsibility in preserving constitutional principles. Completely revised and updated, the new, Fourth Edition of We the Students incorporates new Supreme Court cases, new examples, and new exercises to bring constitutional issues to life.
We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About Students
by Jamin B. RaskinThis volume uses Supreme Court cases involving young people to teach them about the US Constitution. In each chapter, Raskin (constitutional law and the First Amendment, American U. Washington), a Maryland state senator, considers a different amendment and set of rights, describing cases about sex and censorship, school vouchers, religion in schools, discrimination, drug use, and freedom of speech and thought, for example. More information on Equal Protection and discrimination is included, and this edition has been redesigned to include new features and exercises. Recent rulings on student speech, desegregation, affirmative action, and Title IX are included, as well as new justice biographies and the opinions of dissenting justices. The book came out of the Marshall Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, which takes law students into US public high schools to teach the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment
by Julie C. SukMeet the brilliant women who persisted across generations to change the Constitution. Their stories reveal why the Equal Rights Amendment still matters in the twenty-first century. The year 2020 marks the centennial the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women&’s constitutional right to vote. But have we come far enough? After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, revolutionary women demanded full equality beyond suffrage, by proposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congress took almost fifty years to adopt it in 1972, and the states took almost as long to ratify it. In January 2020, Virginia became the final state needed to ratify the amendment. Why did the ERA take so long? Is it too late to add it to the Constitution? And what could it do for women? A leading legal scholar tells the story of the ERA through the voices of the bold women lawmakers who created it. They faced opposition and subterfuge at every turn, but they kept the ERA alive. And, despite significant gains, the achievements of gender equality have fallen short, especially for working mothers and women of color. Julie Suk excavates the ERA&’s past to guide its future, explaining how the ERA can address hot-button issues such as pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay. The rise of movements like the Women&’s March and #MeToo have ignited women across the country. Unstoppable women are winning elections, challenging male abuses of power, and changing the law to support working families. Can they add the ERA to the Constitution and improve American democracy? We the Women shows how the founding mothers of the ERA and the forgotten mothers of all our children have transformed our living Constitution for the better.
We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative
by George J. BorjasFrom “America’s leading immigration economist” (The Wall Street Journal), a refreshingly level-headed exploration of the effects of immigration. We are a nation of immigrants, and we have always been concerned about immigration. As early as 1645, the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to prohibit the entry of “paupers.” Today, however, the notion that immigration is universally beneficial has become pervasive. To many modern economists, immigrants are a trove of much-needed workers who can fill predetermined slots along the proverbial assembly line. But this view of immigration’s impact is overly simplified, explains George J. Borjas, a Cuban-American, Harvard labor economist. Immigrants are more than just workers—they’re people who have lives outside of the factory gates and who may or may not fit the ideal of the country to which they’ve come to live and work. Like the rest of us, they’re protected by social insurance programs, and the choices they make are affected by their social environments. In We Wanted Workers, Borjas pulls back the curtain of political bluster to show that, in the grand scheme, immigration has not affected the average American all that much. But it has created winners and losers. The losers tend to be nonmigrant workers who compete for the same jobs as immigrants. And somebody’s lower wage is somebody else’s higher profit, so those who employ immigrants benefit handsomely. In the end, immigration is mainly just another government redistribution program. “I am an immigrant,” writes Borjas, “and yet I do not buy into the notion that immigration is universally beneficial. . . . But I still feel that it is a good thing to give some of the poor and huddled masses, people who face so many hardships, a chance to experience the incredible opportunities that our exceptional country has to offer.” Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, We Wanted Workers is essential reading for anyone interested in the issue of immigration in America today.
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
by Roxanna AsgarianA finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award | the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeA Washington Post best nonfiction book of 2023 | Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction“A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book.” —Robert Kolker, The Washington Post“[A] moving and superbly reported book.” —Jessica Winter, The New Yorker“A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York TimesA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023 The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children—and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family’s loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children. Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children’s birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts’ adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian’s reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda
by Philip Gourevitch"There are few books, fiction or non-fiction, as compelling as Philip Gourevitch's account of the Rwandan genocide." Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm. "Like the greatest war reporters, Philip Gourevitch raises the human banner in hell's mouth.... This volume establishes him as the peer of Michael Herr, is no limit to what we may expect from him." Robert Stone. "Magnificent, terrifying.... Gourevitch's account is factual, unemotional - and utterly gut-wrenching... The great achievement of his book is that it allows us to imagine this unimaginable crime.... and those who stood by, human beings all." Irish Times.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
by Philip GourevitchWe Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity.This remarkable debut book from Philip Gourevitch chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the killing was low-tech--largely by machete--it was carried out at shocking speed: some 800,000 people were exterminated in a hundred days. A Tutsi pastor, in a letter to his church president, a Hutu, used the chilling phrase that gives Gourevitch his title.With keen dramatic intensity, Gourevitch frames the genesis and horror of Rwanda's "genocidal logic" in the anguish of its aftermath: the mass displacements, the temptations of revenge and the quest for justice, the impossibly crowded prisons and refugee camps. Through intimate portraits of Rwandans in all walks of life, he focuses on the psychological and political challenges of survival and on how the new leaders of postcolonial Africa went to war in the Congo when resurgent genocidal forces threatened to overrun central Africa.Can a country composed largely of perpetrators and victims create a cohesive national society? This moving contribution to the literature of witness tells us much about the struggle everywhere to forge sane, habitable political orders, and about the stubbornness of the human spirit in a world of extremity.
Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic Legitimacy and the Question of Constituent Power (Routledge Research in Constitutional Law)
by Joel Colón-RíosIt has been frequently argued that democracy is protected and realized under constitutions that protect certain rights and establish the conditions for a functioning representative democracy. However, some democrats still find something profoundly unsettling about contemporary constitutional regimes. The participation of ordinary citizens in constitutional change in the world's most "advanced" democracies (such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom) is weak at best: the power of constitutional reform usually lies in the exclusive hands of legislatures. How can constitutions that can only be altered by those occupying positions of power be considered democratically legitimate? This book argues that only a regime that provides an outlet for constituent power to manifest from time to time can ever come to enjoy democratic legitimacy. In so doing, it advances a democratic constitutional theory, one that combines a strong or participatory conception of democracy with a weak form of constitutionalism. The author engages with Anglo-American constitutional theory as well as examining the theory and practise of constituent power in different constitutional regimes (including Latin American countries) where constituent power has become an important part of the left’s legal and political discourse. Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic Legitimacy and the Question of Constituent Power will be of particular interest to legal/political theorists and comparative constitutional lawyers. It also provides an introduction to the theory of constituent power and its relationship to constitutionalism and democracy.
Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review and Social Welfare Rights in Comparative Constitutional Law
by Mark TushnetUnlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced--not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative legal perspective to show how creating weaker forms of judicial review may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law. Under "strong-form" judicial review, as in the United States, judicial interpretations of the constitution are binding on other branches of government. In contrast, "weak-form" review allows the legislature and executive to reject constitutional rulings by the judiciary--as long as they do so publicly. Tushnet describes how weak-form review works in Great Britain and Canada and discusses the extent to which legislatures can be expected to enforce constitutional norms on their own. With that background, he turns to social welfare rights, explaining the connection between the "state action" or "horizontal effect" doctrine and the enforcement of social welfare rights. Tushnet then draws together the analysis of weak-form review and that of social welfare rights, explaining how weak-form review could be used to enforce those rights. He demonstrates that there is a clear judicial path--not an insurmountable judicial hurdle--to better enforcement of constitutional social welfare rights.
Wealth: NOMOS LVIII (NOMOS - American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy #17)
by Jack Knight Melissa SchwartzbergAn in-depth political, legal, and philosophical study into the implications of wealth inequality in modern societies.Wealth, and specifically its distribution, has been a topic of great debate in recent years. Calls for justice against corporations implicated in the 2008 financial crash; populist rallying against “the one percent”; distrust of the influence of wealthy donors on elections and policy—all of these issues have their roots in a larger discussion of how wealth operates in American economic and political life. In Wealth a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars in political science, law and philosophy address the complex set of questions that relate to economic wealth and its implications for social and political life in modern societies. The volume thus brings together a range of perspectives on wealth, inequality, capitalism, oligarchy, and democracy. The essays also cover a number of more specific topics including limitarianism, US Constitutional history, the wealth defense industry, slavery, and tax policy. Wealth offers analysis and prescription including original assessment of existing forms of economic wealth and creative policy responses for the negative implications of wealth inequality. Economic wealth and its distribution is a pressing issue and this latest installment in the NOMOS series offers new and thought provoking insights.