Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education

Author: James T. Patterson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001-03-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0199880840

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2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?

Georgia Legal Research
Georgia Legal Research

Author: Nancy P. Johnson

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781594603884

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Georgia Legal Research is the first book of its kind devoted to the resources and strategies needed to research Georgia state law. Taking a process-oriented approach, the book explains research in Georgia cases, statutes, legislative history, constitutional law, and administrative law and legal ethics research. Additional chapters describe the research process, secondary sources and practical guides, online research and citators. Appendices include legal citation rules, bibliography of legal research texts, and a list of Georgia practice materials. Georgia Legal Research was designed specifically for teaching legal research to first-year law students. Others who will find it helpful include practitioners, paralegals, librarians, college students, and even laypeople. It is clearly written, making even complex ideas accessible. Outlines of the research process and short excerpts from Georgia resources make the book easy to use. Web addresses point researchers to the many sources for finding free Georgia legal material online. Concise explanations of resources needed for researching federal law and the law of other states are provided throughout. Thus, Georgia Legal Research can be used as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with a research text concentrating on federal law. This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.

The Limits of the Criminal Sanction
The Limits of the Criminal Sanction

Author: Herbert Packer

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1968-06-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780804780797

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The argument of this book begins with the proposition that there are certain things we must understand about the criminal sanction before we can begin to talk sensibly about its limits. First, we need to ask some questions about the rationale of the criminal sanction. What are we trying to do by defining conduct as criminal and punishing people who commit crimes? To what extent are we justified in thinking that we can or ought to do what we are trying to do? Is it possible to construct an acceptable rationale for the criminal sanction enabling us to deal with the argument that it is itself an unethical use of social power? And if it is possible, what implications does that rationale have for the kind of conceptual creature that the criminal law is? Questions of this order make up Part I of the book, which is essentially an extended essay on the nature and justification of the criminal sanction. We also need to understand, so the argument continues, the characteristic processes through which the criminal sanction operates. What do the rules of the game tell us about what the state may and may not do to apprehend, charge, convict, and dispose of persons suspected of committing crimes? Here, too, there is great controversy between two groups who have quite different views, or models, of what the criminal process is all about. There are people who see the criminal process as essentially devoted to values of efficiency in the suppression of crime. There are others who see those values as subordinate to the protection of the individual in his confrontation with the state. A severe struggle over these conflicting values has been going on in the courts of this country for the last decade or more. How that struggle is to be resolved is a second major consideration that we need to take into account before tackling the question of the limits of the criminal sanction. These problems of process are examined in Part II. Part III deals directly with the central problem of defining criteria for limiting the reach of the criminal sanction. Given the constraints of rationale and process examined in Parts I and II, it argues that we have over-relied on the criminal sanction and that we had better start thinking in a systematic way about how to adjust our commitments to our capacities, both moral and operational.