In this groundbreaking book, Scalia and Garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases. Is a burrito a sandwich? Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you using a gun in a drug transaction? The authors grapple with these and dozens of equally curious questions while explaining the most principled, lucid, and reliable techniques for deriving meaning from authoritative texts. Meanwhile, the book takes up some of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence. What, exactly, is textualism? Why is strict construction a bad thing? What is the true doctrine of originalism? And which is more important: the spirit of the law, or the letter? The authors write with a well-argued point of view that is definitive yet nuanced, straightforward yet sophisticated.

Written by respected scholars and experienced educators, this book showcases rules and doctrine of civil procedure at work in the practice of law. The book focuses on civil rights both to engage student’s by focusing on issues they care out and to illustrate the impact of procedure on real people’s experience with the legal system. The cases are framed in their historical and social context. Each chapter contains a well-written introduction, cases, and clear explanations of the doctrine, supported by readings highlighting the context of the case as well as review questions and comments which deepen students’ understanding and clarify key concepts, and offers more than forty well-crafted problems (both for class use and review), to help students solidify their understanding of the materials whether used in class or as out-of-class assignments. In-class exercises and simulations based on a sample case file are integrated throughout. Pleadings, memoranda, transcripts, exhibits, motions, and more – all taken from a real case – appear in the Appendix. Civil Procedure: Doctrine, Practice, and Context consistently emphasizes the skills and values of lawyering as it offers a consideration of social responsibility. New to the 7th Edition: The inclusion of more examples and problem sets to make the materials more accessible and the concepts more concrete The addition of more practice exercises, with a focus on one set of Case Files throughout the book, rather than the two that were used in prior editions With the removal of Warner v. City of New York case files (because most professors did not have time to use the Warner case files into their courses), issues that are unique to public law litigation are woven throughout the book with practice problems, examples, comments, and questions. This revision will make it easier for professors to incorporate these issues into the course. Professors and students will benefit from: Practice exercises allow students to learn by doing – integrating doctrine, practice, and context. These exercises can be covered in class or, instead, recommended as content for study groups. Topics that are especially hard to teach (like discovery) and those that require a lot of time to teach have been rewritten to respond to adopters’ requests. A case file involving a car accident that is both accessible to first year students and provides good teaching tools for procedure professors to show how a case is litigated from complaint through trial. Because the case file involves a relatively simple state court case, it provides an opportunity to compare state and federal procedural regimes. Review questions focus on student comprehension; broader critical questions are separated out in “questions to ponder” sections. Questions are answered in the teacher’s manual. Background material has been integrated to promote critical thinking and engage students with the latest debates over civil procedure. New practice problems promote engagement with cutting edge issues like Multidistrict Litigation. The authors are developing an online community for adopters – in addition to the teacher’s manual -- to help better facilitate the learning and teaching process for this book.

Amid the halls of Harvard Law, a professor of legend, James Bradley Thayer, shaped generations of students from 1874 to 1902. His devoted protégés included future Supreme Court justices, appellate judges, and law school deans. The legal giants of the Progressive Era—Holmes, Brandeis, and Hand, to name only a few—came under Thayer’s tutelage in their formative years. He imparted to his pupils a novel jurisprudence, attuned to modern realities, that would become known as legal realism. Thayer’s students learned to confront with candor the fallibility of the bench and the uncertainty of the law. Most of all, he instilled in them an abiding faith that appointed judges must entrust elected lawmakers to remedy their own mistakes if America’s experiment in self-government is to survive. In the eyes of his loyal disciples, Thayer was no mere professor; he was a prophet bequeathing to them sacred truths. His followers eventually came to preside over their own courtrooms and classrooms, and from these privileged perches they remade the law in Thayer’s image. Thanks to their efforts, Thayer’s insights are now commonplace truisms. The Prophet of Harvard Law draws from untouched archival sources to reveal the origins of the legal world we inhabit today. It is a story of ideas and people in equal measure. Long before judges don their robes or scholars their gowns, they are mere law students on the cusp of adulthood. At that pivotal phase, a professor can make a mark that endures forever after. Thayer’s life and legacy testify to the profound role of mentorship in shaping the course of legal history.

Reprint of the sole edition. "This is an important, erudite, and difficult book. The author, who is of the school of institutional economists, has undertaken to analyze 'the structure only of that particular social organization and institution which is called property', not merely in its legal aspects but also with respect to the underlying economic facts of the institution today. (...) Those who will make the effort requisite to an understanding of this book will be well repaid.": Sidney Post Simpson, Harvard Law Review 49 (1935-36) 1211-16.

This document rebuts common government, legal profession, and liberal media false propaganda intended to discredit sovereignty advocates.