God vs. the Gavel challenges the pervasive assumption that all religious conduct deserves constitutional protection. While religious conduct provides many benefits to society, it is not always benign. The thesis of the book is that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else - and truth be told, religion is capable of great harm. This may not sound like a radical proposition, but it has been under assault since the 1960s. The majority of academics and many religious organizations would construct a fortress around religious conduct that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute child abuse by clergy, medical neglect of children by faith-healers, and other socially unacceptable behaviors. This book intends to change the course of the public debate over religion by bringing to the public's attention the tactics of religious entities to avoid the law and therefore harm others.
In Glass and Gavel, noted legal expert Nancy Maveety has written the first book devoted to alcohol in the nation’s highest court of law, the United States Supreme Court. Combining an examination of the justices’ participation in the social use of alcohol across the Court’s history with a survey of the Court’s decisions on alcohol regulation, Maveety illustrates the ways in which the Court has helped to construct the changing culture of alcohol. “Intoxicating liquor” is one of the few things so plainly material to explicitly merit mention, not once, but twice, in the amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Maveety shows how much of our constitutional law—Supreme Court rulings on the powers of government and the rights of individuals—has been shaped by our American love/hate relationship with the bottle and the barroom. From the tavern as a judicial meeting space, to the bootlegger as both pariah and patriot, to the individual freedom issue of the sobriety checkpoint—there is the Supreme Court, adjudicating but also partaking in the temper(ance) of the times. In an entertaining and accessible style, Maveety shows that what the justices say and do with respect to alcohol provides important lessons about their times, our times, and our “constitutional cocktail” of limited governmental power and individual rights.
The definitive history of the marriage equality debate in the United States, praised by Library Journal as "beautifully and accessibly written. . . . An essential work.” As a legal scholar who first argued in the early 1990s for a right to gay marriage, William N. Eskridge Jr. has been on the front lines of the debate over same‑sex marriage for decades. In this book, Eskridge and his coauthor, Christopher R. Riano, offer a panoramic and definitive history of America’s marriage equality debate. The authors explore the deeply religious, rabidly political, frequently administrative, and pervasively constitutional features of the debate and consider all angles of its dramatic history. While giving a full account of the legal and political issues, the authors never lose sight of the personal stories of the people involved, or of the central place the right to marry holds in a person’s ability to enjoy the dignity of full citizenship. This is not a triumphalist or one‑sided book but a thoughtful history of how the nation wrestled with an important question of moral and legal equality.
The separation of powers becomes a meaningless cliche as Alexander Charns - using the Federal Bureau of Investigation's own files - reveals how that agency undermined the independence of the U.S. Supreme Court for a half-century. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's goal was simple: to push the Supreme Court to the right on issues of civil rights and criminal law. His techniques ranged from illegal wiretapping to spreading disinformation, from using Justice Abe Fortas as an informant to trying to hound liberal Justice William O. Douglas off the bench. Cloak and Gavel, the definitive work on the FBI-Supreme Court relationship, is based on thousands of pages of FBI documents that Charns fought for eight years to obtain. One 2,000-page file was released only after he filed hundreds of Freedom of Information requests and brought lawsuits against the FBI. It establishes Hoover's strategies to influence the Senate confirmation process, incite the public against the Warren court, lobby for legislation to counteract judicial rulings, and use numerous informants inside the Court to both monitor and influence it. Charns was given special permission to conduct research using Justice Abe Fortas's papers, which had been sealed until the year 2000. These papers proved Fortas had acted as an informer for the White House and for the FBI during his tenure on the bench. Fortas ultimately left the Court in disgrace after an ethics scandal unrelated to his informant role. Charns also suggests that Hoover's death did not end the FBI's attempts to influence Congress and the federal judiciary - as evidenced by the role of the FBI in the explosive Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings in 1991. Until now, no onehas examined the ultimate constitutional violation - the FBI's attempts to influence the Court by any means available.
Justice the Courthouse Dog and the Missing Gavel is a story of a therapy dog who is on a quest to find a judge's missing gavel. Throughout Justice's quest, she encounters many of the people in a courthouse, including a judge, a prosecutor, an interpreter, a guardian ad litem, and more. Through Justice's story, children are familiarized with the courthouse and learn that the courthouse is a safe place for children. Children will learn that the people in the courthouse are there to help them, which will reduce their anxiety before having to enter the courthouse.
Dr. Harry Rein has lived an extraordinary life. He has been a refugee, soldier, husband, father, doctor, lawyer, and judge, and to the best of his knowledge, the only doctor-lawyer-judge in the United States. His path begins when he boards the last train out of Austria after Hitler's annexation, followed by remaining one step ahead of destruction for the next year. Then comes a denial of entry into the United States due to quotas and poverty, followed by eventual admission three years later. "Angels" then enter his life and those of his family, allowing them to become meaningful citizens in the United States. These episodes from his inspiring journey discuss the ambition, attitude, kindnesses, rewards, and punishment he experiences with the many people he encounters along the way who lift him to higher levels of practice within each of his three professions. From Stethoscope to Gavel is the true story of an ordinary man from a humble background whose optimism and generosity in the face of crushing hardships will challenge, encourage, and motivate generations to come.
“At a time when policing in America is at a crossroads, Barry Friedman provides much-needed insight, analysis, and direction in his thoughtful new book. Unwarranted illuminates many of the often ignored issues surrounding how we police in America and highlights why reform is so urgently needed. This revealing book comes at a critically important time and has much to offer all who care about fair treatment and public safety.” —Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption In June 2013, documents leaked by Edward Snowden sparked widespread debate about secret government surveillance of Americans. Just over a year later, the shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, set off protests and triggered concern about militarization of law enforcement and discriminatory policing. In Unwarranted, Barry Friedman argues that these two seemingly disparate events are connected—and that the problem is not so much the policing agencies as it is the rest of us. We allow these agencies to operate in secret and to decide how to police us, rather than calling the shots ourselves. And the courts, which we depended upon to supervise policing, have let us down entirely. Unwarranted tells the stories of ordinary people whose lives were torn apart by policing—by the methods of cops on the beat and those of the FBI and NSA. Driven by technology, policing has changed dramatically. Once, cops sought out bad guys; today, increasingly militarized forces conduct wide surveillance of all of us. Friedman captures the eerie new environment in which CCTV, location tracking, and predictive policing have made suspects of us all, while proliferating SWAT teams and increased use of force have put everyone’s property and lives at risk. Policing falls particularly heavily on minority communities and the poor, but as Unwarranted makes clear, the effects of policing are much broader still. Policing is everyone’s problem. Police play an indispensable role in our society. But our failure to supervise them has left us all in peril. Unwarranted is a critical, timely intervention into debates about policing, a call to take responsibility for governing those who govern us.
A consultant for nonprofit management support organizations challenges nonprofit leaders to retire "Robert's Rules of Order" and adopt a simpler, friendlier, and more effective method for conducting meetings.
Lauren Besoner's routine life as a court stenographer in Crawford, Wyoming is suddenly changed when she discovers her boss's dead body. She is faced with a detective who believes she's a killer. Lauren must investigate the murder to stay out of jail. But Lauren's sleuthing leads her to be targeted as next in line to be permanently silenced.
Family Court has become highly profitable business. In courtrooms across this nation, children are being torn away and isolated from their father or mother as they become pawns in a game designed to keep parent's fighting, and money flowing. Today, a narcissistic, abusive parent can easily use the "justice system" to punish, torment and alienate the target parent. CPS workers frequently use their power to enable such abuse, as their opinions are treated as scientific conclusions during trials where the alienated parent finds his or herself disparaged and maligned without evidence to back up such attacks other than the observations of these case workers. Maryann Petri's story is a critical example revealing the truth about Family Court corruption. It is a must-read for anyone going through such legal oppression, both to validate their suffering and to provide tools with which to fight back, as Maryann teaches what she has learned. Dismantling Family Court Corruption: Why Taking The Kids Was Not Enough tells the story of Maryann's journey, providing essential "Takeaways" throughout which conveys to the reader the wisdom she gained which can empower them to be stronger, more resilient and more successful in the midst of their own Family Court battles. As a Pro Se, Maryann has a better record than most attorneys, winning two cases in Superior Court.Dismantling Family Court Corruption is also an essential book to demonstrate how easily and effectively Family Law professionals are able to exploit the contention of parents, and proves the utter lack of oversight to prevent such abuse. Maryann's story is not unique; she is one of thousands whose tragedies have brought to the forefront the new psychological term: Parental Alienation. While painful to read, Maryann's story is fast-paced and provides many moments of humor and hope as she recounts courtroom experiences and what it was like being sent to jail, a real-life debtor's prison. Sitting in the holding cell, she used the acoustics of the cement walls to ring with beautiful music that even the guards stopped to admire. At only pages, it is an approachable book which can serve as one of the most important resources for raising awareness and starting conversations about Family Law Corruption and the reality of Parental Alienation. Maryann observes, "Although my story is ultimately tragic, as I lost my children to the beastly system, I can find purpose and meaning in what I have gone through. I hope that my book will serve to indict the system which broke (figuratively and financially) and damaged my family so that changes will be made to prevent such false accusations, extortion and persecution in the future."Maryann Petri is a first-hand-experience, leading expert on the issue of Family Court corruption. She is at the forefront of the movement to stop this abuse and has a website, blog and podcast which can be found at www.DismantlingFamilyCourtCorruption.com.
