From the trial of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much that we do not understand about them. Why do governments use trials to pursue political objectives, and when? What differentiates political trials from ordinary ones? Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all political trials are show trials or contrive to set up scapegoats. This volume offers a novel account of political trials that is empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, linking state-of-the-art research on telling cases to a broad argument about political trials as a socio-legal phenomenon. All the contributors analyse the logic of the political in the courtroom. From archival research to participant observation, and from linguistic anthropology to game theory, the volume offers a genuinely interdisciplinary set of approaches that substantially advance existing knowledge about what political trials are, how they work, and why they matter.

Mock trials help students gain a basic understanding of the legal mechanism through which society chooses to resolve many of its disputes. Participation in mock trials helps students to understand better the roles that the various actors play in the justice system. This handbook explains how to prepare for and conduct mock trials in the classroom and introduces simplified rules of evidence and includes a sample judging form.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Political trials take issues of responsibility, conscience, representation, and legitimacy, which are tied in tight political and legal knots, and force us to face questions about our public identity, our standards for public policy, and our sense of history. Ron Christenson explores how political trials, especially those within the rule of law, engage society's conflicting values and loyalties. He examines numerous political trials throughout history, bringing into question basic foundations of law, politics, and society. Christenson classifies political trials according to the issues they generate in the political sphere: partisan trials are spurious legal proceedings but politically expedient; trials of corruption and insanity raise questions of public and personal responsibility; trials of dissenters involve problems of conscience; trials of nationalists highlight the nature of representation and the relationship of the part to the whole; and trials of regimes engage the most fundamental concept of both law and politics--legitimacy. Political Trials brings these considerations to bear on some of the best-known cases in history, including the Gunpowder Plot; the Spanish Inquisition; the Dreyfus affair; the Nuremburg trials; trials of dissenters such as Socrates, Thomas More, Roger Williams, and the Berrigan brothers; and trials of nationalists such as Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Knut Hamsun, and the Irish republicans. Since the first edition appeared, a number of notable political trials have raised critical issues for society. Shocking public exposures about the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 trials shook the British criminal justice establishment, while in the United States trials concerning the beating of Rodney King led up to the O.J. Simpson spectacle and a host of parallel questions. The trials of right-wing terrorists such as Paul Hill, found guilty of murdering an abortion doctor, and Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, parallel the case of left-wing dissenter Karl Armstrong in the 1970s. Finally, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee provides a test case of whether a nation can not only remember but grant amnesty and achieve true reconciliation. In examining the dilemmas involved in these trials, Christenson shows how they make a positive contribution to an open and democratic society. Political Trials will be an important addition to the libraries of historians, legal scholars, and political scientists.

Benjamin Franklin, it seems, was a reluctant revolutionary. In tracing the course of his political transformation, this book will explore the social and political understandings and misunderstandings that both sustained and divided Britain and its colonies in North America. At the center of the story is Benjamin Franklin's decision in late 1772 to use a cache of personal letters that had fallen in his lap in London for revelation in Massachusetts - essentially a Wikileaks for 1772 - and the consequences of that decision for himself and for the cause of an amicable settlement of differences between the colonies and the British government. The personal side of Franklin's life in London is explored fully enough for the reader to appreciate both his strong attachment to the place and the inevitable sense of loss from which he reluctantly retreated in the spring of 1775 upon his departure from Britain and return to Philadelphia. In the tradition of narrative history, this book combines two main stories, each one complementing the other. Woven into the chronological and social history is a tale with an air of genuine suspense and mystery about it, revolving around Franklin's publication of private correspondence with political ramifications. The "leak" was a shock to all, and had consequences for the prospect of avoiding a deeper rift with Britain, a cause Franklin pursued with increasing frustration in the last few years before the American Revolution. There are notable editorial innovations in the book. The appendices contain full transcripts of significant documents of the time (a first) as well as a thorough exploration of the mystery over the identity of Franklin's source for the Hutchinson letters. A practical 'time-line' is included showing major correlative events.This work will fill a partial void in the late colonial period in American history and will deepen our understanding of the role of the American with the most extensive experience of British political and cultural sensibilities of the time.