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Image one: E-book titled Native Agency: Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (2023) - synopsis: The Bureau of Indian Affairs was hatched in the U.S. Department of War to subjugate and eliminate American Indians. Yet beginning in the 1970s, American Indians and Alaska Natives took over and now run the agency. Choctaw anthropologist Valerie Lambert argues that, instead of fulfilling settler-colonial goals, the Indians in the BIA have been leveraging federal power to fight settler colonialism, battle white supremacy, and serve the interests of their people. Although the missteps and occasional blunders of the Indians in the BIA have at times damaged the federal-Indian relationship and fueled the ire of their people, and although the BIA is massively underfunded, Indians began crafting the BIA into a Native agency by reformulating the meanings of concepts that lay at its heart—concepts such as tribal sovereignty, treaties, the trust responsibility, and Indian land.
Image two: E-book titled Native American Entrepreneurs (2020) - synopsis: This book captures the entrepreneurial stories and mindsets of contemporary Native Americans. Native American entrepreneurs are important contributors to the American economy and social landscape. Faced with numerous challenges, many Native American entrepreneurs have learned to transcend tough obstacles, leverage resources, and strategically pursue opportunities to achieve business success.
Image one: Constitution Day
Image two: E-book titled The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic (2015) - synopsis: While we may be united under one Constitution, separate and distinct states remain, each with its own constitution and culture. Geographic idiosyncrasies add more than just local character. Regional understandings of law and justice have shaped and reshaped our nation throughout history. In The Law of the Land, renowned legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar illustrates how geography, federalism, and regionalism have influenced some of the biggest questions in American constitutional law.
Image three: E-book titled The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016) - synopsis: Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them “all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.” One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests. Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman’s The Framers’ Coup narrates how the Framers’ clashing interests shaped the Constitution—and American history itself.
Image four: E-book titled What Would Madison Do?: The Father of the Constitution Meets Modern American Politics (2015) - synopsis: What would the father of the Constitution think of contemporary developments in American politics and public policy? Constitutional scholars have long debated whether the American political system, which was so influenced by the thinking of James Madison, has in fact grown outmoded. But if Madison himself could peer at the present, what would he think of the state of key political institutions that he helped originate and the government policies that they produce? In What Would Madison Do?, ten prominent scholars explore the contemporary performance of Madison's constitutional legacy and how much would have surprised him.
Image five: E-book titled Athens, Rome, and England: America's Constitutional Heritage (2014) - synopsis: Political scientist and legal scholar Matthew A. Pauley fills in the blanks in our understanding of the development of the U.S. Constitution by chronicling the three most important influences on the American constitutional experience: ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and England. Pauley’s masterful historical survey sheds new light on our system of representative democracy, our court structure, and our traditions of law—civil and criminal, public and private.
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Image one: E-book titled Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution since the Age of FDR - synopsis: Passed in June 1940, the Smith Act was a peacetime anti-sedition law that marked a dramatic shift in the legal definition of free speech protection in America by criminalizing the advocacy of disloyalty to the government by force. It also criminalized the acts of printing, publishing, or distributing anything advocating such sedition and made it illegal to organize or belong to any association that did the same. It was first brought to trial in July 1941, when a federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted twenty-nine Socialist Workers Party members, fifteen of whom also belonged to the militant Teamsters Local 544. Eighteen of the defendants were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. Examining the social, political, and legal history of the first Smith Act case, this book focuses on the tension between the nation's cherished principle of free political expression and the demands of national security on the eve of America's entry into World War II.
image two: E-book titled A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives - synopsis: The materials gathered here, from both the American and Vietnamese sides, remind readers that the conflict touched the lives of many people in a wide range of social and political situations and spanned a good deal more time than the decade of direct U.S. combat. Indeed, the U.S. war was but one phase in a string of conflicts that varied significantly in character and geography. Michael Hunt brings together the views of the conflict's disparate players--from Communist leaders, Vietnamese peasants, Saigon loyalists, and North Vietnamese soldiers to U.S. policymakers, soldiers, and critics of the war. By allowing the participants to speak, this volume encourages readers to formulate their own historically grounded understanding of a still controversial struggle.
Image one: E-book titled Child Labor: An American History - synopsis: Despite its decline throughout the advanced industrial nations, child labor remains one of the major social, political, and economic concerns of modern history, as witnessed by the many high-profile stories on child labor and sweatshops in the media today. This work considers the issue in three parts. The first section discusses child labor as a social and economic problem in America from an historical and theoretical perspective. The second part presents child labor as National Child Labor Committee investigators found it in major American industries and occupations, including coal mines, cotton textile mills, and sweatshops in the early 1900s. Finally, the concluding section integrates these findings and attempts to apply them to child labor problems in America and the rest of the world today.
Image two: E-book titled Sweatshop: The History of an American Idea - synopsis: Arguing that the sweatshop is as American as apple pie, Laura Hapke surveys over a century and a half of the language, verbal and pictorial, in which the sweatshop has been imagined and its stories told. Not seeking a formal definition of the sort that policymakers are concerned with, nor intending to provide a strict historical chronology, this unique book shows, rather, how the "real" sweatshop has become intertwined with the "invented" sweatshop of our national imagination, and how this mixture of rhetoric and myth has endowed American sweatshops with rich and complex cultural meaning.
Image one: E-book titled The Mosquito Crusades: A History of the American Anti-Mosquito Movement from the Reed Commission to the First Earth Day - synopsis: Among the struggles of the twentieth century, the one between humans and mosquitoes may have been the most vexing. As vectors of diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis, and dengue fever, mosquitoes forced open a new chapter in the history of medical entomology. Based on extensive use of primary sources, The Mosquito Crusades traces this saga and the parallel efforts of civic groups in New Jersey's Meadowlands and along San Francisco Bay's east side to manage the dangerous mosquito population.
Image two: E-book titled Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation - synopsis: Crimes against Nature reveals the hidden history behind three of the nation's first parklands: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Focusing on conservation's impact on local inhabitants, Karl Jacoby traces the effect of criminalizing such traditional practices as hunting, fishing, foraging, and timber cutting in the newly created parks. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes" and provides a rich portrait of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Image one: E-book titled Ethics and Accountability on the U.S. Supreme Court: An Analysis of Recusal Practices (2017) synopsis: Do US Supreme Court justices withdraw from cases when they are supposed to? What happens when the Court is down a member? In Ethics and Accountability on the US Supreme Court, Robert J. Hume provides the first comprehensive examination of the causes and consequences of recusal behavior on the Supreme Court. Using original data, and with rich attention to historical detail including media commentary about recusals, he systematically analyzes the factors that influence Supreme Court recusal, a process which has so far been shrouded in secrecy.
Image two: E-book titled The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive (2014) - synopsis: The United States is divided about the death penalty: 17 states have banned it, while the remaining states have not. From wrongful convictions to botched executions, capital punishment is fraught with controversy. In The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive, award-winning criminal defense attorney Andrea Lyon turns a critical eye towards the reasons why the death penalty remains active in most states, in spite of well-documented flaws in the justice system. The book opens with an overview of the history of the death penalty in America, then digs into the reasons capital punishment is a fixture in the justice system of most states.
Image one: E-book titled After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (2015) - synopsis: Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade continues to make headlines. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate cuts through the myths and misunderstandings to present a clear-eyed account of cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed. The grassroots activists who shaped the discussion after Roe, Mary Ziegler shows, were far more fluid and diverse than the partisans dominating the debate today.
Image two: E-book titled Reframing Rights: Bioconstitutionalism in the Genetic Age (2011) - synopsis: Reframing Rights explores the evolving relationship of biology, biotechnology, and law through a series of national and cross-national case studies. Chapters examine such topics as national cloning and xenotransplant policies; the politics of stem cell research in Britain, Germany, and Italy; DNA profiling and DNA databases in criminal law; clinical trials in India and the United States; the GM crop controversy in Britain; and precautionary policymaking in the European Union. These cases demonstrate changes of constitutional significance in the relations among human bodies, selves, science, and the state.
Image one: Constitution Week
Image two: E-book titled African Americans and the First Amendment: The Case for Liberty and Equality (2019) - synopsis: Utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that a strong commitment to civil liberty and to racial equality are mutually supportive. This crucial connection is evidenced throughout US history, from the days of colonial and antebellum slavery to Jim Crow: in the landmark US Supreme Court decision in 1937 freeing the black communist Angelo Herndon; in the struggles and victories of the civil rights movement, from the late 1930s to the late ’60s; and in the historical and modern debates over hate speech restrictions. Liberty and equality can conflict in individual cases, Shiell argues, but there is no fundamental conflict between them. Robust First Amendment values protect and encourage demands for racial equality while weak First Amendment values, in contrast, lead to censorship and a chilling of demands for racial equality.
Image two: E-book titled A Constitutional History of the U.S. Supreme Court (2015) - synopsis: Presents a concise overview and general history for readers and students in constitutional history and politics, one that will also make an excellent fact-filled source book for lawyers and political scientists. The chapters deal with leading decisions of successive courts and begin with brief biographies of the justices on the courts. Famous cases from Marbury v Madison, to the Dred-Scott decision, Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, up to the Roberts court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare are discussed. Four appendices deal with the text of the Constitution and amendments, the court system, a chronological list of the justices with biographical details, and a chronological list of the membership on successive courts.
Image one: E-book titled Nixon's Gamble: How a President's Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration (2015) - synopsis: After being sworn in as president, Richard Nixon told the assembled crowd that “government will listen... Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in.” But that same day, he obliterated those pledges of greater citizen control of government by signing National Security Decision Memorandum 2, a document that made sweeping changes to the national security power structure. Nixon’s signature erased the influence that the departments of State and Defense, as well as the CIA, had over Vietnam and the course of the Cold War. The new structure put Nixon at the center, surrounded by loyal aides and a new national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who coordinated policy through the National Security Council under Nixon’s command. Using years of research and revelations from newly released documents, USA Today reporter Ray Locker upends much of the conventional wisdom about the Nixon administration and its impact and shows how the creation of this secret, unprecedented, extra-constitutional government undermined U.S. policy and values. In doing so, Nixon sowed the seeds of his own destruction by creating a climate of secrecy, paranoia, and reprisal that still affects Washington today.
Image two: E-book titled Democracy in the Dark: The Seduction of Government Secrecy (2015) - synopsis: From Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe to the National Security Agency’s massive intelligence gathering, secrecy has too often captured the American government’s modus operandi better than the ideals of the Constitution. In this important book, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., who was chief counsel to the US Church Committee on Intelligence—which uncovered the FBI’s effort to push Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide; the CIA’s enlistment of the Mafia to try to kill Fidel Castro; and the NSA’s thirty-year program to get copies of all telegrams leaving the United States—uses examples ranging from the dropping of the first atomic bomb and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Iran-Contra and 9/11 to illuminate this central question: How much secrecy does good governance require? Schwarz argues that while some control of information is necessary, governments tend to fall prey to a culture of secrecy that is ultimately not just hazardous to democracy but antithetical to it.
Image one: E-book titled For Fear of an Elective King: George Washington and the Presidential Title Controversy of 1789 (2014) - synopsis: In the spring of 1789, within weeks of the establishment of the new federal government based on the U.S. Constitution, the Senate and House of Representatives fell into dispute regarding how to address the president. Congress, the press, and individuals debated more than thirty titles, many of which had royal associations and some of which were clearly monarchical. For Fear of an Elective King is Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon's rich account of the title controversy and its meanings. The short, intense legislative phase and the prolonged, equally intense public phase animated and shaped the new nation's broadening political community.
Image two: E-book titled Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration (2021) - synopsis: Washington’s Government shows how George Washington’s administration—the subject of remarkably little previous study—was both more dynamic and more uncertain than previously thought. Rather than simply following a blueprint laid out by the Constitution, Washington and his advisors constructed over time a series of possible mechanisms for doing the nation’s business. The results were successful in some cases, disastrous in others. Yet at the end of Washington’s second term, there was no denying that the federal government had achieved remarkable results. As Americans debate the nature of good national governance two and a half centuries after the founding, this volume’s insights appear timelier than ever.
Image one: Constitution Day - September 17
Image two: E-book titled Encyclopedia of the Continental Congresses (2015) - synopsis: Provides an in-depth look at the first Continental Congress in 1774, the second Continental Congress from 1775-1789, and the first Federal Congress in 1789. A product of over 25 years of research, this encyclopedia contains over 500 entries and is the first to cover specifically the Continental Congresses and the persons, places, and events who had an impact on these formative bodies.
Image three: E-book titled African Americans and the First Amendment: The Case for Liberty and Equality (2019) - synopsis: Utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that a strong commitment to civil liberty and to racial equality are mutually supportive. This crucial connection is evidenced throughout US history, from the days of colonial and antebellum slavery to Jim Crow: in the landmark US Supreme Court decision in 1937 freeing the black communist Angelo Herndon; in the struggles and victories of the civil rights movement, from the late 1930s to the late ’60s; and in the historical and modern debates over hate speech restrictions. Liberty and equality can conflict in individual cases, Shiell argues, but there is no fundamental conflict between them. Robust First Amendment values protect and encourage demands for racial equality while weak First Amendment values, in contrast, lead to censorship and a chilling of demands for racial equality.
Image four: E-book titled A Handy American Government Answer Book: How Washington, Politics, and Elections Work (2018) - synopsis: Filling the breach and answering basic questions about how our very complex government operates and what it promises, The Handy American Government Answer Book: How Washington, Politics, and Elections Work takes a comprehensive look at the historic development of the government, the functions of each branch of government, and the systems, people, and policies that comprise American democracy.
Image five: E-book titled After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (2015) - synopsis: Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade continues to make headlines. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate cuts through the myths and misunderstandings to present a clear-eyed account of cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed. The grassroots activists who shaped the discussion after Roe, Mary Ziegler shows, were far more fluid and diverse than the partisans dominating the debate today.
Image six: E-book titled Reframing Rights: Bioconstitutionalism in the Genetic Age (2011) - synopsis: Reframing Rights explores the evolving relationship of biology, biotechnology, and law through a series of national and cross-national case studies. Chapters examine such topics as national cloning and xenotransplant policies; the politics of stem cell research in Britain, Germany, and Italy; DNA profiling and DNA databases in criminal law; clinical trials in India and the United States; the GM crop controversy in Britain; and precautionary policymaking in the European Union. These cases demonstrate changes of constitutional significance in the relations among human bodies, selves, science, and the state.
Image seven: E-book titled A Constitutional History of the U.S. Supreme Court (2015) - synopsis: Presents a concise overview and general history for readers and students in constitutional history and politics, one that will also make an excellent fact-filled source book for lawyers and political scientists. The chapters deal with leading decisions of successive courts and begin with brief biographies of the justices on the courts. Famous cases from Marbury v Madison, to the Dred-Scott decision, Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, up to the Roberts court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare are discussed. Four appendices deal with the text of the Constitution and amendments, the court system, a chronological list of the justices with biographical details, and a chronological list of the membership on successive courts.
Image eight: E-book titled Supreme Decisions: Great Constitutional Cases and Their Impact (2012) - synopsis: Covers twenty-four Supreme Court cases (twelve per volume) that have shaped American constitutional law. Interpretive chapters shed light on the nuances of each case, the individuals involved, and the social, political, and cultural context at that particular moment in history. Discussing cases from nearly every decade in a two-hundred-year span, Melvin I. Urofsky expounds on the political climate of the United States from the country's infancy through the new millennium.
Image nine: E-book titled Ethics and Accountability on the U.S. Supreme Court: An Analysis of Recusal Practices (2017) synopsis: Do US Supreme Court justices withdraw from cases when they are supposed to? What happens when the Court is down a member? In Ethics and Accountability on the US Supreme Court, Robert J. Hume provides the first comprehensive examination of the causes and consequences of recusal behavior on the Supreme Court. Using original data, and with rich attention to historical detail including media commentary about recusals, he systematically analyzes the factors that influence Supreme Court recusal, a process which has so far been shrouded in secrecy.
Image ten: E-book titled The Gun Debate: An Encyclopedia of Gun Rights and Gun Control in the United States (2016) - synopsis: Over 350 entries provide in-depth, unbiased coverage of both sides of the gun debate. Updated and expanded coverage includes new entries on recent gun laws and legislation, coverage of mass shootings, gun incidents and police shootings, plus new information from groups who support gun rights and those who support gun control in America.
Image eleven: E-book titled The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive (2014) - synopsis: The United States is divided about the death penalty: 17 states have banned it, while the remaining states have not. From wrongful convictions to botched executions, capital punishment is fraught with controversy. In The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive, award-winning criminal defense attorney Andrea Lyon turns a critical eye towards the reasons why the death penalty remains active in most states, in spite of well-documented flaws in the justice system. The book opens with an overview of the history of the death penalty in America, then digs into the reasons capital punishment is a fixture in the justice system of most states.
Image one - E-book titled The Jewish Unions in America: Pages of History and Memories (2018) - synopsis: Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles, and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.
Image two - E-book titled A Time to Rise: Collective Memoirs of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP) (2017) - synopsis: A Time To Rise is an intimate look into the workings of the KDP, the only revolutionary organization that emerged in the Filipino American community during the politically turbulent 1970s and 1980s. Overcoming cultural and class differences, members of the KDP banded together in a single national organization to mobilize their community into civil rights and antiwar movements in the United States and in the fight for democracy and national liberation in the Philippines and elsewhere.
Image three - E-book titled Cuban Revolution in America: Havana and the Making of a United States Left, 1968-1992 (2018) - synopsis: In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island's achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation's Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left.
Image one - America: Government, History, Culture
Image two - E-book titled A Constitutional History of the U.S. Supreme Court (2015) - synopsis: In A Constitutional History of the U.S. Supreme Court, Richard Regan presents a concise overview and general history for readers and students in constitutional history and politics, one that will also make an excellent fact-filled source book for lawyers and political scientists. The chapters deal with leading decisions of successive courts and begin with brief biographies of the justices on the courts. Famous cases from Marbury v Madison, to the Dred-Scott decision, Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, up to the Roberts court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare are discussed. Four appendices deal with the text of the Constitution and amendments, the court system, a chronological list of the justices with biographical details, and a chronological list of the membership on successive courts.
Image three - E-book titled Fit for the Presidency?: Winners, Losers, What-Ifs, and Also-Rans (2017) - synopsis: In Fit for the Presidency?, Seymour Morris Jr. applies an executive recruiter's approach to fifteen presidential prospects from 1789 to 1980, analyzing their résumés and references to determine their fitness for the job. Were they qualified? How real were their actual accomplishments? Could they be trusted, or were their campaign promises unrealistic? The result is a fresh and original look at a host of contenders from George Washington to William McAdoo, from DeWitt Clinton to Ronald Reagan.
Image four - E-book titled John Adams's Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many (2016) - synopsis: Of all the founding fathers, author Richard Alan Ryerson argues, John Adams may have worried the most about the problem of social jealousy and political conflict in the new republic. Ryerson explains how these concerns, coupled with Adams's concept of executive authority and his fear of aristocracy, deeply influenced his political mindset. He weaves together a close analysis of Adams's public writings, a comprehensive chronological narrative beginning in the 1760s, and an exploration of the second president's private diary, manuscript autobiography, and personal and family letters, revealing Adams's most intimate political thoughts across six decades.
Image one: E-book titled Black Women in Politics: Demanding Citizenship, Challenging Power, and Seeking Justice (2018) - synopsis: This book explores how Diasporic Black women engage in politics, highlighting three dimensions—citizenship, power, and justice—that are foundational to intersectionality theory and politics as developed by Black women and other women of color. By extending beyond particular time periods, locations, and singular definitions of politics, Black Women in Politics sets itself apart in the field of women’s and gender studies in three ways: by focusing on contemporary Black politics not only in the United States, but also the African Diaspora; by showcasing politics along a broad trajectory, including social movements, formal politics, public policy, media studies, and epistemology; and by including a multidisciplinary range of scholars, with a strong concentration of work by political scientists, a group whose work is often excluded or limited in edited collections.
Image two: E-book titled Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (2020) - synopsis: This book argues that women served as leaders in a number of synagogues during the Roman and Byzantine periods. The evidence for this consists of nineteen Greek and Latin inscriptions in which women bear the titles “head of the synagogue,” “leader,” “elder,” “mother of the synagogue,” and “priestess.” These inscriptions range in date from 27 B.C.E. to perhaps the sixth century C.E. and in provenance from Italy to Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine. While new discoveries make this a growing corpus of material, a number of the inscriptions have been known to scholars for some time. The book contains a new preface by the author.
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Image one: Native American Heritage Month
Image two: E-book titled Kayanerenkó:wa - The Great Law of Peace (2018) - synopsis: Several centuries ago, the five nations that would become the Haudenosaunee — Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca — were locked in generations-long cycles of bloodshed. When they established Kayanerenkó:wa, the Great Law of Peace, they not only resolved intractable conflicts, but also shaped a system of law and government that would maintain peace for generations to come. This law remains in place today in Haudenosaunee communities: an Indigenous legal system, distinctive, complex, and principled. It is not only a survivor, but a viable alternative to Euro-American systems of law. With its emphasis on lasting relationships, respect for the natural world, building consensus, and on making and maintaining peace, it stands in contrast to legal systems based on property, resource exploitation, and majority rule.
Image one: A rendering of the signing of the constitution. Text: Patrick Henry was elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but he declined because he "smelt a rat."
Image three: E-book titled Constitutional Environmental Rights (2005) - synopsis: This book shows why a fundamental right to an adequate environment ought to be provided in the constitution of any modern democratic state. This book is the first to examine the issue from the perspective of political theory. It explains why the right to an environment adequate for one's health and well-being is a genuine human right, and why it ought to be constitutionalized. It carefully elaborates this case and defends it in closely argued responses to critical challenges. It thus shows why there is no insurmountable obstacle to the effective implementation of this constitutional right, and why constitutionalizing this right is not democratically illegitimate.
Image one: A rendering of the signing of the constitution. Text: Established on November 26, 1789, the first national Thanksgiving was originally created by George Washington as a way of giving thanks for the Constitution.
Image two: E-book titled Ethics and Accountability on the U.S. Supreme Court: An Analysis of Recusal Practices (2017) synopsis: Do US Supreme Court justices withdraw from cases when they are supposed to? What happens when the Court is down a member? In Ethics and Accountability on the US Supreme Court, Robert J. Hume provides the first comprehensive examination of the causes and consequences of recusal behavior on the Supreme Court. Using original data, and with rich attention to historical detail including media commentary about recusals, he systematically analyzes the factors that influence Supreme Court recusal, a process which has so far been shrouded in secrecy.
Image three: E-book titled The Gun Debate: An Encyclopedia of Gun Rights and Gun Control in the United States (2016) - synopsis: Over 350 entries provide in-depth, unbiased coverage of both sides of the gun debate. Updated and expanded coverage includes new entries on recent gun laws and legislation, coverage of mass shootings, gun incidents and police shootings, plus new information from groups who support gun rights and those who support gun control in America.
Image one: A rendering of the signing of the constitution. Text: Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution. He was in France during the Convention, where he served as the U.S. minister.
Image two: E-book titled After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (2015) - synopsis: Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade continues to make headlines. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate cuts through the myths and misunderstandings to present a clear-eyed account of cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed. The grassroots activists who shaped the discussion after Roe, Mary Ziegler shows, were far more fluid and diverse than the partisans dominating the debate today.
Image one: A rendering of the signing of the constitution. Text: Of the three New York Delegates, Alexander Hamilton was the only one to sign the Constitution. The other two delegates had fled the convention in anger.
Image one: A rendering of the signing of the constitution. Text: Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts was initially opposed to the office of vice president. He later became vice president under James Madison.
Image three: E-book titled The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive (2014) - synopsis: The United States is divided about the death penalty: 17 states have banned it, while the remaining states have not. From wrongful convictions to botched executions, capital punishment is fraught with controversy. In The Death Penalty: What's Keeping It Alive, award-winning criminal defense attorney Andrea Lyon turns a critical eye towards the reasons why the death penalty remains active in most states, in spite of well-documented flaws in the justice system. The book opens with an overview of the history of the death penalty in America, then digs into the reasons capital punishment is a fixture in the justice system of most states.
Image one: Resources - HeinOnline is a database containing legal journal articles, government documents, and legal treatises.
Image two: Resources - Nexis Uni features more than 17,000 news, business, and legal sources - including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790.
Image one: E-book titled American Civil Wars: United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s (2017) - synopsis: Contributors position the American Civil War squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings—all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s. The multiple conflicts described in these essays illustrate how the United States' sectional strife was caught up in a larger, complex struggle in which nations and empires on both sides of the Atlantic vied for the control of the future.
Image two: E-book titled A Constitutional History of the Supreme Court (2015) - synopsis: Presents a concise overview and general history for readers and students in constitutional history and politics, one that will also make an excellent fact-filled source book for lawyers and political scientists. The chapters deal with leading decisions of successive courts and begin with brief biographies of the justices on the courts. Famous cases from Marbury v Madison, to the Dred-Scott decision, Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, up to the Roberts court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare are discussed.
Image one: E-book titled African Americans and the First Amendment: The Case for Liberty and Equality (2019) - synopsis: African Americans and the First Amendment is the first book to explore in detail the relationship between African Americans and our “first freedoms,” especially freedom of speech. Timothy C. Shiell utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that a strong commitment to civil liberty and to racial equality are mutually supportive, as they share an opposition to orthodoxy and a commitment to greater inclusion and participation.
Image two: E-book titled Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing (2012) - synopsis: Enables audiences/readers, critics, and students to review Morrison’s cultural and literary impacts and to consider the import, and influence of her legacies in her multiple roles as writer, editor, publisher, reader, scholar, artist, and teacher over the last four decades.
