Capital Punishment on Trial: Furman v. Georgia and the Death Penalty in Modern America (Landmark Law Cases and American Society)

In his first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story, renowned historian David Oshinsky takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stances on capital punishment--in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia.

Career criminal William Furman shot and killed a homeowner during a 1967 burglary in Savannah, Georgia. Because it was a "black-on-white" crime in the racially troubled South, it also was an open-and-shut case. The trial took less than a day, and the nearly all-white jury rendered a death sentence. Aided by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, Furman's African-American attorney, Bobby Mayfield, doggedly appealed the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1972 overturned Furman's sentence by a narrow 5-4 vote, ruling that Georgia's capital punishment statute, and by implication all other state death-penalty laws, was so arbitrary and capricious as to violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Furman effectively, if temporarily, halted capital punishment in the United States. Every death row inmate across the nation was resentenced to life in prison. The decision, however, did not rule the death penalty per se to be unconstitutional; rather, it struck down the laws that currently governed its application, leaving the states free to devise new ones that the Court might find acceptable. And this is exactly what happened. In the coming years, the Supreme Court would uphold an avalanche of state legislation endorsing the death penalty. Capital punishment would return stronger than ever, with many more defendants sentenced to death and eventually executed.

Oshinsky demonstrates the troubling roles played by race and class and region in capital punishment. And he concludes by considering the most recent Supreme Court death-penalty cases involving minors and the mentally ill, as well as the impact of international opinion. Compact and engaging, Oshinsky's masterful study reflects a gift for empathy, an eye for the telling anecdote and portrait, and a talent for clarifying the complex and often confusing legal issues surrounding capital punishment.

This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series.

Price: $14.95

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The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel V. Vitale Changed America (Landmark Law Cases and American Society)

It has become known to many as the moment when the U.S. Supreme Court kicked God out of the public schools, supposedly paving the way for a decline in educational quality and a dramatic rise in delinquency and immorality. The 6-to-1 decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962) not only sparked outrage among a great many religious Americans, it also rallied those who cried out against what they perceived as a dangerously activist Court.

Bruce Dierenfield has written a concise and readable guide to the first-and still most important-case that addressed the constitutionality of prayer in public schools. The 22-word recitation in a Long Island school that was challenged in Engel v. Vitale was hardly denominational-not even overtly Christian-but a handful of parents saw it as a violation of the First Amendment's proscription again the establishment of religion. The case forced the Supreme Court to take a stand on Jefferson's "wall of separation" between church and state. When it did so, the Court declared that by endorsing the prayer recitation-no matter how brief, nondenominational, or voluntary-the Long Island school board had unconstitutionally approved the establishment of religion in school.

Writing with impeccable fairness and sensitivity, Dierenfield sets his account of the Engel decision in the larger historical and political context, citing battles over a wide range of religious activities in public schools throughout American history. He takes readers behind the scenes at school board meetings and Court deliberations to show real people wrestling with deeply personal issues. Through interviews with many of the participants, he also reveals the large price paid by the plaintiffs and their children, who were frequently harassed both during and after the trial.

For a long time, opponents of the decision have loudly claimed that it was based on a distorted reading of the First Amendment and deprived Americans of their right to practice religion. Dierenfield shows that the polarizing effect of Engel-a decision every bit as controversial as Roe v. Wade-has reverberated through the subsequent decades and gained intensity with the rise of the religious right. His book helps readers understand why, even in the face of this landmark decision, Americans remain divided on how divided church and state should be.

This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series.

Price: $15.95

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Modern American Remedies: Cases & Materials

This classroom-tested casebook provides a thorough and accessible examination of the overarching policy themes and principles behind remedies law. Modern American Remedies: Cases and Materials, Fourth Edition, doesn’t hide the ball – students are given the information they need to participate in classroom discussions that will broaden their understanding.

Among the features that make this text a success:

• A strong and logical organization based on remedies categories and concepts, with daily teaching units of roughly equal length, each exploring a central theme.
• A balanced presentation of public and private law.
• Explanations of basic law and economics that provide necessary background without dominating the primary themes of the book.
• Memorable cases and well written notes.
• An excellent Teacher’s Manual that includes daily teaching units, suggested assignment sheets for a variety of courses from one hour to five hours, and suggestions for teaching the cases.

The carefully edited Fourth Edition features:

• New cases, including:
  
  o In re September 11th Litigation (S.D.N.Y. 2008) (on the measure of damages for the destruction of the World Trade Center)
  o In re Trans World Airlines (2d Cir. 1998) (on liquidated damages)
  o Oden v. Chemung County Industrial Development Agency (N.Y. 1995) (on modern statutes modifying the collateral source rule)
  o Arbino v. Johnson & Johnson (Ohio 2007) (on the constitutionality of damage caps)
  o Whitlock v. Hilander Foods (Ill. App. 1999) (on undue hardship)
  o Almurbati v. Bush (D.D.C. 2005) (on the ripeness of perceived threats to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to countries where they
  would be tortured)
  o Pepsico v Redmond (7th Cir. 1995) (on prophylactic injunctions)
  o Horne v. Flores (U.S. 2009) (on modification of injunctions)
  o eBay v. MercExchange LLC (U.S. 2006) (on the prerequisites to an injunction, or on undue hardship, depending on the point of
  view)
  o Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council (U.S. 2008) (on preliminary injunctions)
  o Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker (U.S. 2008) (on the federal common law standard for measuring punitive damages)
  o Philip Morris USA v. Williams (U.S. 2007) (on the constitutional limits on punitive damages)
  o Van de Kamp v. Goldstein (U.S. 2009) (on prosecutorial immunity)
  o And more in later chapters

• Substantial reworking of Chapter 8, on restitution, in light of the Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust EnrichmentA thorough updating of Notes throughout and of the Teacher’s Manual
• Modern American Remedies: Cases and Materials, Fourth Edition, offers students a clear, logical approach to the study of Remedies while offering instructors a flexible approach to teaching it.

Price: $172.00

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