This collection of thoughtful and timely essays offers refreshing and intelligent new perspectives on postwar American liberalism. Sophisticated yet accessible, Making Sense of American Liberalism challenges popular myths about liberalism in the United States. The volume presents the Democratic Party and liberal reform efforts such as civil rights, feminism, labor, and environmentalism as a more united, more radical force than has been depicted in scholarship and the media emphasizing the decline and disunity of the left. Distinguished contributors assess the problems liberals have confronted in the twentieth century, examine their strategies for reform, and chart the successes and potential for future liberal reform. Contributors are Anthony J. Badger, Jonathan Bell, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Hartmann, Ella Howard, Bruce Miroff, Nelson Lichtenstein, Doug Rossinow, Timothy Stanley, and Timothy Thurber.

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.

Makes sense of truthmaking in law, media, politics, and courts of popular opinion including on transgender controversies and cancel culture.

`This book is a very worthwhile read for teachers, student teachers and teacher educators. It would be encouraging if politically based policy makers were to digest its contents also′ - Citizenship, Social and Economics Education `I recommend this book as an enjoyable, thought provoking and politically important read′ - Widenining Participation and Lifelong Learning `This important book challenges current educational policies in England in a style, for the most part, easily accessible to a wide audience. Geoff Whitty′s assertions are supported by a wide variety of research findings and this is a book that should be of considerable interest to student of sociology and to all member of the teaching profession′ - Mark Pepper, Equals `The particular strength of this book is Geoff Whitty′s grasp on and insights into the politics of education... he is able to bring to bear an authoritative perspective which is unrivaled in the United Kingdom. there is no other current book which compares in terms of the breadth and depth of this′ - Professor Stephen Ball, Institute of Education, University of London `This book represents a "struggle" by the director of the London Institute of Education, one of our foremost centres of teacher training and research in education, to understand what lies behind the education policies of recent governments. It is tempting to conclude that if a leading educational sociologist such as Geoff Whitty, who happens also to be brother of the former general secretary of the Labour party, has difficulty with this, there can be little hope for the rest of us. But now, at least, we have this personal odyssey to guide us′ - Bob Doe, Times Educational Supplement This book aims to make sense of the changes in education policy over the past decade, using the resources of the sociology and politics of education. The author shows that wider sociological perspectives can help us to appreciate both the limits and the possibilities of educational change. Geoff Whitty illustrates this through studies of curriculum innovation, school choice, teacher professionalism and school improvement. He considers how far education policy can be used to foster social inclusion and social justice and the book concludes with an assessment of New Labour education policy in these terms. The book deals with education policy in England and Wales, as well as making comparisons with contemporary education policy in other countries. This book is relevant to students of education at masters and doctoral levels, students of social policy, and policy-makers.

Armed with an empty whiskey bottle and wearing a tie-dyed Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, Florida State University dropout Marshall Ledbetter broke into the Florida State Capitol early one morning in June 1991. He occupied the Sergeant of Arms suite, demanding an extra-large Gumby’s pizza and 666 donuts for the cops waiting outside. He hoped to garner media attention for his protest of poverty, homelessness, and cuts to higher education. After an eight hour standoff, Ledbetter was betrayed by the very media he had counted on to tell his story; his demands were not broadcast on CNN as he had been promised but streamed into the office on closed-circuit TV. Although he left the building peacefully, the ensuing trial, his trips in and out of the state’s mental health institutions over the following decade, and his eventual suicide in 2003 speak to how difficult it is to untangle addiction, isolation, brilliance, and deviance. Ledbetter’s invasion of the Capitol remains the biggest security breach of the building’s history, but Daniel Harrison’s telling of the Ledbetter saga is about more than one misguided young man’s breaking and entering into the state’s most secure building. Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter thoughtfully and honestly explores the ways society manages deviant people in real world situations and whether or not our law enforcement and justice systems are adequately equipped to handle mental illness.

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.

"This is a formidable and well-documented counterblast to a developing modern orthodoxy, expressing a point of view that many readers will not even have suspected existed, let alone read."--Anthony Daniels, Spectator "A useful and controversial contribution to the debate about victor's justice, and a valuable warning that international war crimes tribunals need to operate with precision and care."--Jonathan Steele, Guardian The rapid development of the use of international courts and tribunals to try heads of state for genocide and other crimes against humanity has been welcomed by most people, because they think that the establishment of international tribunals and courts to try notorious dictators represents a triumph of law over impunity. In A History of Political Trials, John Laughland takes a very different and controversial view, namely that political trials are inherently against the rule of law and almost always involve the abuse of process, as well as being seriously hypocritical. By means of detailed consideration of the trials of figures as disparate as Charles I, Louis XVI, Erich Honecker and Saddam Hussein, Laughland shows that the guilt of the accused has always been assumed in advance, that the judges are never impartial, that the process is always unfair and biased in favor of the prosecution, that the defense is not permitted to use all the arguments at its disposal, and that often the accusers have done exactly what they accuse the defence of having done. All the trials he recounts were marked by arbitrariness and injustice, often gross injustice. Although the chapters are short and easy to read, they are the fruit of formidable erudition and wide reading. The general reader will be forced by this book to re-examine the ideas on this subject, and will be much less sanguine about the possibility of bringing dictators and other leaders to genuine justice. John Laughland lives in Bath and is an author, journalist, and has been a university lecturer in France. He has published The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea (Time Warner Paperbacks) and has written for the Spectator, he Economist, and The New York Times . Table of Contents Introduction The Trial of Charles I and the Last Judgement The Trial of Louis XVI and the Terror War Guilt after World War I Defeat in the Dock: the Riom Trial Justice as Purge: Marshal Peacute;tain faces his Accusers Treachery on Trial: the Case of Vidkun Quisling Nuremberg : Making War Illegal Creating Legitimacy: the Trial of Marshal Antonescu Ethnic Cleansing and National Cleansing in Czechoslovakia, 19451947 Peoplers"s Justice in Liberated Hungary From Mass Execution to Amnesty and Pardon: Postwar Trials in Bulgaria, Finland, and Greece Politics as Conspiracy: the Tokyo Trials The Greek Colonels, the Emperor Bokassa, and the Argentine Generals: Transitional Justice, 19752007 Revolution Returns: the Trial of Nicolae Ceausescu A State on Trial: Erich Honecker in Moabit Jean Kambanda, Convicted without Trial Kosovo and the New World Order: the Trial of Slobodan Miloscaron;evic Regime Change and the Trial of Saddam Hussein Conclusion Notes Bibliography and Further Reading Index