Civil Law

“Janina Edwards narrates in a compelling tone, a vivid style, and a clear sense of the importance of this action.”—AudioFile The epic story of Detroit's struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a...

What is the alt-right? What do they believe, and how did they take center stage in the American social and political consciousness? Historian Alexandra Minna Stern excavates the alt-right memes that have erupted online and digs to the root of the far right’s motivations: their deep-seated fear...

A USA TODAY Bestseller! Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Public Library “Duncan’s story is so incredible it strains belief. It is so heartwarming and hopeful that it will stay with you for a long time.” —John Grisham "This brilliantly told story—at once maddening and...

As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, 1861 presents a gripping and original account of how the Civil War began. 1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents' faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal.

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) gives us an engaging and...

The most cited legal scholar in America and the architect of the two biggest ideas to reshape the American conversation—intersectionality and critical race theory—offers the intimate story of how her life gave birth to these ideas. It is not very often that a public intellectual comes along...

The powerful story of how a prominent white supremacist changed his heart and mind. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, this is a book to help us understand the American moment and to help us better understand one another. “Rising Out of Hatred proclaims if the successor to the white...

Millions of people end up in civil court each year. They assume going to court is the next logical step in their fight, but they often have little idea about how the court system works or what they can reasonably expect of it. In Make Your Case, Tanya Acker cuts straight to the essentials, providing curated, targeted information based on her extensive experience regarding exactly what people want to know: what happens during court proceedings and why, and how to best prepare for it - or how to avoid court entirely and find a better way.

Activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice.

From America’s foremost constitutional scholar, the definitive history of how the ideal of birth equality reshaped the American Constitution, from antebellum debates over slavery and secession, to the Civil War and emancipation, to women’s suffrage In 1840, millions of Black Americans...

For readers of Caste, Sapiens, and The Dawn of Everything, a page-turning deep-dive into how bias is learned—plus a strikingly original and highly effective set of tools to un-learn it. Imagine a world without bias. A world where all human beings can truly be just as they are and unleash their...

The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. Even as state violations of political rights garnered unprecedented attention due to human rights campaigns, a commitment to material equality disappeared. In its place, market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force in national and global economies. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn analyzes how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of a broader social and economic justice.

Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life. Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights.

A memoir by one of America’s most accomplished public servants and legal thinkers—who spent years denying and working around his blindness, before finally embracing it as an essential part of his identity. David Tatel has served nearly 30 years on America’s second highest court, the United...

As with any specialized field, the language and terminology used in the legal profession can be complex and specific. Without a solid grasp of legal terminology, it can be difficult for law students to understand the material they are studying, communicate effectively with their professors and classmates, and ultimately practice law with confidence.

Ginsburg and Amanda Tyler, Berkeley Law professor and former Ginsburg law clerk, bring together RBG's most penetrating opinions - many previously unpublished - sharing details from Justice Ginsburg's family life and long career.

The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless—and how we can fight back—from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread “In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari, one of the leading thinkers of our...

New York Public Library Best of 2022 A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement...

A timely anthology that explores power, privilege, and oppression and their relationship to marginalized bodies Asserting that the body is the main site of oppression in Western society, the contributors to this pioneering volume explore the complex issue of embodiment and how it relates to...

Free speech as we know it comes less from the First Amendment than from a most unexpected source: Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. A lifelong skeptic, he disdained all individual rights, including the right to express one's political views. But in 1919, it was Holmes who wrote a dissenting opinion that would become the canonical affirmation of free speech in the United States.