In this, the last book published during his lifetime, renowned historian of the English Revolution Christopher Hill uses the literary culture of the seventeenth century to explore the immense social changes of the period as well as the expressions of liberty, the law and the hero-worship of the outlaw defiance. As well as chapters on gypsies and vagabonds, Hill analyzes class, religion and the shift away from the importance of the church after the Reformation. Liberty against the Law is a late classic of Hill's work and essential reading for anyone interested in the history and politics of the seventeenth-century.

In an ere as morally confused as ours, Stoner argues, we at least ought to know what we've abandoned or suppressed in the name of judicial activism and the modern rights-oriented Constitution. Having lost our way, perhaps the common law, in its original sense, provides a way back, a viable alternative to the debilitating relativism of our current age.

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in concern for the rule of law. Not only have there been a multitude of articles and books on the essence, nature, scope and limitation of the law, but citizens, elected officials, law enforcement officers and the judiciary have all been actively engaged in this debate. Thus, the concept of the rule of law is as multifaceted and contested as it’s ever been, and this book explores the essence of that concept, including its core principles, its rules, and the necessity of defining, or even redefining, the basic concept. Law, Liberty, and the Rule of Law offers timely and unique insights on numerous themes relevant to the rule of law. It discusses in detail the proper scope and limitations of adjudication and legislation, including the challenges not only of limiting legislative and executive power via judicial review but also of restraining active judicial lawmaking while simultaneously guaranteeing an independent judiciary interested in maintaining a balance of power. It also addresses the relationship not only between the rule of law, human rights and separation of powers but also the rule of law, constitutionalism and democracy.

From "the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years" (Bill Moyers), a scathing critique of the two-tiered system of justice that has emerged in America From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world. Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud. Cogent, sharp, and urgent, this is a no-holds-barred indictment of a profoundly un-American system that sanctions immunity at the top and mercilessness for everyone else.

"The criminalization of dissent, and possible threats to civil liberties posed by this criminalization, have become central issues of debate within liberal democracies, particularly in relation to discussions of political violence and the role of law in protests. Law against Liberty provides significant commentary on the criminalization of political movements and dissent within (neo)liberal democracies in the contemporary context. The criminalization of dissent has been a common feature of neo-liberal governance in the current period of capitalist globalization. It has accompanied various structural adjustment and free trade policies as the required force to impose such programs on unwilling publics. Police violence has been a constant feature of alternative globalization demonstrations. Examples of escalating state attacks on opponents of global capital include tear gas attacks, use of rubber bullets and concussion grenades, illegal searches and seizures, surveillance and beatings of arrestees, and, most severely, the deaths of people at the hands of police as in Genoa and England. At the same time demonstrators have developed new repertoires of protest practice, including acts of violence and combat. Yet these engagements of escalation (as police and protesters adapt to each other's actions) have been understudied and undertheorized in recent social science works. Most works on the criminalization of dissent focus on a specific national context. Those that offer multinational examples tend to be earlier works that predate the Seattle protests of 1999, a watershed event in the development of alternative globalization movements and struggles. Based on contributions from engaged scholars, many of whom have direct, first-hand experience in the protests that they analyze, this book offers the most extensive and diverse examination of dissent and its criminalization in contemporary liberal democracies."--Publisher.

Liberty and Law examines a previously underappreciated theme in legal history - the idea of permissive natural law. The idea is mentioned only peripherally, if at all, in modern histories of natural law. Yet it engaged the attention of jurists, philosophers, and theologians over a long period and formed an integral part of their teachings. This ensured that natural law was not conceived of as merely a set of commands and prohibitions that restricted human conduct, but also as affirming a realm of human freedom, understood as both freedom from subjection and freedom of choice. Freedom can be used in many ways, and throughout the whole period from 1100 to 1800 the idea of permissive natural law was deployed for various purposes in response to different problems that arose. It was frequently invoked to explain the origin of private property and the beginnings of civil government.

A new approach to the telling of legal history, devoid of jargon and replete with good stories, which will be of interest to anyone wishing to know more about the common law - the spinal cord of the English body politic.