New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

Throughout America’s history, our laws have been a reflection of who we are, of what we value, of who has control. They embody our society’s genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present. Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.

In this book, Alan Watson argues that the slave laws of North and South America--the written codes defining the relationship of masters to slaves--reflect not so much the culture and society of the various colonies but the legal traditions of England, Europe, and ancient Rome. A pathbreaking study concerned as much with the nature of comparative law as the specific subject of the law of slavery, Slave Law in the Americas posits an essential distance in the Western legal tradition between the tenets of law and the values of the society they govern. Laws, Watson shows, often are made not by governments or rulers but by jurists as in ancient Rome, law professors as in medieval and continental Europe, and judges as in common law England. Bodies of law, often created without reference to particular social and political ideals, are also often transferred whole cloth from one society to another. Tracing the effects of the reception of Roman law throughout Europe (excluding England) and the Americas, Watson reveals the enormous impact of this legal tradition on subsequent lawmakers operating under utterly dissimilar social and political conditions in the New World. Slave law in the colonies, Watson demonstrates, had much to do with the mother country's relations to Roman law. Spain, Portugal, France, and the United Dutch Provinces, all within the Roman legal tradition, imposed on their colonies slave laws that were private and nonracist in character, laws that interfered little in master-slave relations and provided for the relative ease of manumission and the grant of citizenship to freed slaves. England, however, did not ascribe to Roman law and colonists created rather than received slave law. Public and racist, slave law in the English colonies uniquely reflected local concerns, involving every citizen in the protection and perpetuation of slavery, strictly regulating education, manumission, and citizenship status. "Comparative legal history," Watson writes, "is in its infancy." Presenting the laws of slavery in ancient Rome and in the slaveholding colonies of America, Watson demonstrates how comparative law can elucidate the relationship of law, legal rules, and institutions to the society in which they operate. Investigating not the dynamics of slavery but of slave law, he reveals the working of a legal culture and its peculiar history.

Drawing upon extensive experience in law, government service, teaching, and research, Ronald Cass offers a contribution to the ongoing public discussion on law and society. After opening his discussion with chapters on the rule of law in American society, Cass turns to the hard case of its application to the president of the United States. Through this prism Cass examines the behavior of judges who may not always act according to a "perfect model." This book provides a corrective to criticism of the American legal system raised all too frequently by some members of the academy. Rather than concentrating on relatively minor inconsistencies in the law and slight departures from the ideal of perfectly constrained decision making, Cass argues that the energies of his fellow scholars could be better spent on more serious defects in the legal system. With a special section on the 2000 presidential election, including the Florida recount and Supreme Court decision, The rule of law in America offers a look at a subject of interest to legal scholars and general readers alike.

In each of the first three editions of the bestselling Law 101, Jay Feinman gave readers an upbeat and vivid examination of the American legal system. Since the third edition was published in 2010, much has happened: several key Supreme Court cases have been decided, we've seen sensational criminal trials, and the legal system has had to account for the latest developments in Internet law. This fully updated fourth edition of Law 101 accounts for all this and more, as Feinman once again provides a clear introduction to American law. The book covers all the main subjects taught in the first year of law school, and discusses every facet of the American legal tradition, including constitutional law, the litigation process, and criminal, property, and contracts law. To accomplish this, Feinman brings in the most noteworthy, infamous, and often outrageous examples and cases. We learn about the case involving scalding coffee that cost McDonald's half a million dollars, the murder trial in Victorian London that gave us the legal definition of insanity, and the epochal decision of Marbury vs. Madison that gave the Supreme Court the power to declare state and federal law unconstitutional. A key to learning about the law is learning legal vocabulary, and Feinman helps by clarifying terms like "due process" and "equal protection," as well as by drawing distinctions between terms like "murder" and "manslaughter." Above all, though, is that Feinman reveals to readers of all kinds that despite its complexities and quirks, the law is can be understood by everyone. Perfect for students contemplating law school, journalists covering legislature, or even casual fans of "court-television" shows, Law 101 is a clear and accessible introduction to the American legal system. New to this edition: Featured analysis of: -the Obamacare case -Citizens United -the DOMA decision -the Trayvon Martin case As well as recent legal developments pertaining to: -online contracting -mortgages -police investigations -criminal sentencing

American law in the twentieth century describes the explosion of law over the past century into almost every aspect of American life. Since 1900 the center of legal gravity in the United States has shifted from the state to the federal government, with the creation of agencies and programs ranging from Social Security to the Securities Exchange Commission to the Food and Drug Administration. Major demographic changes have spurred legal developments in such areas as family law and immigration law. Dramatic advances in technology have placed new demands on the legal system in fields ranging from automobile regulation to intellectual property. Throughout the book, Friedman focuses on the social context of American law. He explores the extent to which transformations in the legal order have resulted from the social upheavals of the twentieth century--including two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, and the sexual revolution. Friedman also discusses the international context of American law: what has the American legal system drawn from other countries? And in an age of global dominance, what impact has the American legal system had abroad? This engrossing book chronicles a century of revolutionary change within a legal system that has come to affect us all.

Resource added for the Paralegal program 101101.