When justice is executed without mercy does the line seperating good and evil become distorted? Do we truely have power over who we are and what we will become? A young man unexpectedly finds himself confronted with these philosophical questions. While trekking through the darkest reaches of the supernatural he desperatly searches for answers which may turn out to be his own demise.
This slice of 17th and 18th century western history is a saga of love, savage violence, and betrayal that reads like fiction. While it is centered on a famous Roman Catholic order, its international and religious scope makes it of interest to armchair historians of all beliefs including Protestants, Jews, agnostics and secular humanists. In colonial South America the Jesuits established missions among the Guarani. As the Portuguese and Spanish slavers descended on Paraguay, the Jesuits sought to protect these stone-age Indians in their missions. Their resistance to the colonists? attacks contributed to the political problems of the church with Catholic monarchs back in Europe. As a consequence, the monarchs pressured a frightened pope to abolish the Jesuit order. In the long, tortured history of European colonization of the Americas, these Jesuit ?Black Robes? in Paraguay stood out as a breed apart, even from their fellow Jesuits elsewhere. Leaders of the anti-Catholic, anti-Jesuit Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Raynal rallied to the side of these extraordinary Paraguay missionaries. Raynal wrote that never has so much good been done for mankind with so little evil. Ironically, the ?heretic? monarchs of Russia and Prussia invited hundreds of the former Jesuits to run their colleges. In doing so, they inadvertently saved these outcasts to become the nucleus around which a reinvigorated papacy would re-establish the Jesuit order forty years after its abolition.
Black Robe, an account of the 17th-century encounter between the Huron and Iroquois the French called "Les Sauvages" and the French Jesuit missionaries the native people called "Blackrobes," is Brian Moore's most striking book. No other novel has so well captured both the intense--and disastrous--strangeness of each culture to one another, and their equal strangeness to our own much later understanding.
Scientific evidence is commonplace in today's criminal trials. From hair and handwriting analysis to ink and DNA fingerprints, scientists have brought their world to bear on the justice system. Combining political analysis, scientific reasoning, and an in-depth study of specific state supreme court cases, Black Robes, White Coats is an interdisciplinary examination of the tradition of "gatekeeping," the practice of deciding the admissibility of novel scientific evidence. Rebecca Harris systematically examines judicial policymaking in three areas forensic DNA, polygraphs, and psychological syndrome evidence to answer the question: Why is scientific evidence treated differently among various jurisdictions? These decisions have important implications for evaluating our judicial system and its ability to accurately develop scientific policy. While the interaction of these professions occurs because the white coats often develop and ascertain knowledge deemed very useful to the black robes, Harris concludes that the black robes are well positioned to render appropriate rulings and determine the acceptability of harnessing a particular science for legal purposes. First book to systematically gather and analyze judicial decisions on scientific admissibility Analyzes several key cases including Arizona v. Bible and Kansas v. Marks Includes examples of evidence in three appendices: forensic DNA, polygraph evidence, and syndrome evidence Presents an original model of the gatekeeping process
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1952.
Marinated with the makings of sizzle, the book is filled with the courts' tricks and traps for the unwary---to alert readers both why their law cases failed and what must be done to effect court refor
New York Times Editor's Choice "Biskupic, an accomplished and well-sourced journalist, knows the court as well as anyone now covering it... In her new book Biskupic has done something different and a good deal harder. She has written a group narrative that combines close accounts of the court's public business in the Trump years with a history of its private dramas and conflicts... The deeper message of 'Nine Black Robes' is that even with a new president in office we remain captive to the Age of Trump... A quiet urgency ripples through this informative, briskly paced and gracefully written book." —New York Times Book Review "Biskupic opens a window onto the opaque, insular world of the justices to show an institution sinking gradually into crisis . . . Biskupic is a longtime chronicler of the court, and "Nine Black Robes" puts on display her connections within its chambers." —Washington Post "[Biskupic] knows how to make news and illuminate the personalities atop the judicial org chart . . . The book reveals unseen sausage-making . . ." —Wall Street Journal "Fascinating and informative . . . [Biskupic's] long experience covering the court . . . has put her in an incomparable position to comment on its make-up, historical positions and direction. It has also made her privy to many significant, little-known secrets about Supreme Court personalities and their historical behaviors." —The National Book Review CNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic provides an urgent and inside look at the history-making era in the Supreme Court during the Trump and post-Trump years, from its seismic shift to the Right to its controversial decisions, including its reversal of Roe v. Wade, based on access to all the key players. Nine Black Robes displays the inner maneuverings among the Supreme Court justices that led to the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade and a half century of women’s abortion rights. Biskupic details how rights are stripped away or, alternatively as in the case of gun owners, how rights are expanded. Today’s bench—with its conservative majority—is desperately ideological. The Court has been headed rightward and ensnared by its own intrigues for years, but the Trump appointments hastened the modern transformation. With unparalleled access to key players, Biskupic shows the tactics of each justice and reveals switched votes and internal pacts that typically never make the light of day, yet will have repercussions for generations to come. Nine Black Robes is the definitive narrative of the country’s highest court and its profound impact on all Americans.
Fr Pierre-Jean De Smet, SJ is one of the most remarkable among the great missionary figures of the Society of Jesus. Born in Belgium, he emigrated to the United States to enter the Jesuit novitiate and was ordained in Missouri in 1837. He founded St Joseph's Mission at Council Bluffs for the Potawatomies in 1838, and visited the Sioux to arrange a peace between that nation and the Potawatomies, the first of his many peace missions. In 1840 he set out for the territory of the Flatheads in the far Northwest, and established St Mary's Mission on the Bitter Root River in Montana, and three years later on the Williamette River in Oregon he opened the most important of a chain of missions covering the Northwest. In 1846 he made peace between the Blackfeet and the Crows. Fr De Smet repeatedly crossed and recrossed the North American Continent, travelling by paddle steamer, raft, and canoe, dogsled and snowshoe, on horseback and in wagons, and for the greater part on foot. His growing influence among the Native American peoples and their leaders induced the United States Government to solicit his help in its dealings with them, and the rest of his life was devoted to promoting their cause in America and in Europe. Fr De Smet assisted at the great Indian Council of 1851 near Fort Laramie, and in 1886, after entering alone into the Sioux camp of warriors led by Sitting Bull, his enthusiastic reception led to a treaty of peace signed by all the chiefs.
