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A Truancy Court Program Toolkit
Barbara A. Babb, Gloria Danziger, Leigh Dalton, Anthony Green, and Arion Alston
Truancy is the first and best indicator that a student is headed for trouble. Statistics show that habitual truancy is the beginning of a downward spiral: truancy, poor performance on standardized tests, falling behind socially, losing interest in and connection to school, dropping out, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse and, eventually, adult criminality. That’s why communities across the country are working hard to reduce truancy.
The University of Baltimore School of Law Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC) has developed an innovative Truancy Court Program that engages volunteer judges in an intensive, 10-week, in-school program for elementary and middle school students. Judges, counselors and education specialists team up with truant students, services providers, parents, teachers and principals to improve overall school attendance. The goal is not to punish students who miss school but to understand—and to practically address—why they are not there.
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Meeting the Legal Needs of Human Trafficking Victims: An Introduction for Domestic Violence Attorneys and Advocates
Jean Bruggeman and Elizabeth Keyes
The American Bar Association is pleased to provide you with Meeting the Legal Needs of Human Trafficking Victims: An Introduction for Domestic Violence Attorneys & Advocates, which we hope will serve as an important and timely resource for you in your practice representing human trafficking victims. This publication was developed pursuant to a generous grant from the ABA Enterprise Fund, as part of a collaborative effort by several ABA entities aiming to provide attorneys with leadership and training to better represent victims of human trafficking.
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Peyote vs. the State: Religious Freedom on Trial
Garrett Epps
The story of the constitutional showdown over Native Americans’ religious use of peyote
With the grace of a novel, this book chronicles the six-year duel between two remarkable men with different visions of religious freedom in America.
Neither sought the conflict. Al Smith, a substance-abuse counselor to Native Americans, wanted only to earn a living. Dave Frohnmayer, the attorney general of Oregon, was planning his gubernatorial campaign and seeking care for his desperately ill daughters. But before this constitutional confrontation was over, Frohnmayer and Smith twice asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the First Amendment protects the right of American Indians to seek and worship God through the use of peyote. The Court finally said no.
Garrett Epps tracks the landmark case from the humblest hearing room to the Supreme Court chamber—and beyond. This paperback edition includes a new epilogue by the author that explores a retreat from the ruling since it was handed down in 1990. Weaving fascinating legal narrative with personal drama, Peyote vs. the State offers a riveting look at how justice works—and sometimes doesn’t—in America today.
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The Internationalization of Law and Legal Education
Jan Klabbers and Mortimer N.S. Sellers
The internationalization of commerce and contemporary life has led to a globalization of legal standards and practices. The essays in this text explore this new reality and suggest ways in which the new legal order can be made more just and effective.
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Family Mediation: Theory and Practice
Jane C. Murphy and Robert Rubinson
This new innovative book provides students with the basic grounding in theories and skills of family mediation. Coverage includes:
• Approaches to mediating a range of family law disputes;
• When family mediation may or may not be appropriate;
• Family mediation legislation;
• Special family law mediation issues;
• The role of lawyers in family mediation;
• Ethical considerations; and
• How mediation fits in the context of other family law trends.
This book is appropriate for skills courses and clinics focusing on family mediation as well as family mediation seminars.
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The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective
Mortimer N.S. Sellers and Tadeusz Tomaszewski
This new volume on The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective compares the different conceptions of the rule of law that have developed in different legal cultures. Lawyers and legal scholars from various legal systems describe the social purposes and practical applications of the rule of law, and how it might be improved in the varied circumstances of their own courts and politics.
This book will be of interest to lawyers, judges, public officials, and to all those wishing to improve the fundamental structures of their own legal systems, by bringing equal justice to every person subject to the power of the state.
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Autonomy in the Law
Mortimer N.S. Sellers
By juxtaposing European and American concepts of autonomy in the law as they are applied to families, capital punishment and criminal trials, authors reveal the common values that justify all legal systems. This book sheds new light on the fundamental purpose of law by examining how European and American lawyers, judges, and citizens actually apply and should apply legal autonomy to litigation, legislation, and the law itself.
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Resolving Family Conflicts
Jana B. Singer and Jane C. Murphy
Series: The Family, Law and Society
Over the past two decades, virtually all areas of family law have undergone major doctrinal and theoretical changes - from the definition of marriage, to the financial and parenting consequences of divorce, to the legal construction of parenthood. An equally important set of changes has transformed the resolution of family disputes. This 'paradigm shift' in family conflict resolution has reshaped the practice of family law and has fundamentally altered the way in which disputing families interact with the legal system. Moreover, the changes have important implications for the way that family law is understood and taught. This volume examines the contours of this paradigm shift in family conflict resolution and explores its implications for family law scholarship and practice. The interdisciplinary compilation includes contributions from lawyers, legal academics, social scientists and mental health professionals. As the articles in the volume demonstrate, the transformation in family conflict resolution holds considerable promise for disputing families, but it also raises a number of challenges. These challenges include concerns about the institutional competence of courts, the surrender of fact-finding and decision-making to individuals without legal training, the loss of autonomy and privacy for family members subject to continuing court oversight and the disjunction between problem-solving justice and authoritative legal norms. By exploring both the promise of the new paradigm and its potential pitfalls, this volume engages family law scholars and offers insights to judges, practitioners and policy makers responsible for serving families in conflict.
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Criminal Law: Cases, Commentary And Questions
José F. Anderson and Patricia Mell
Professor Jose Felipe Anderson, Director of the University of Baltimore's School of Law's Stephen L. Snyder Center for Litigation Skills and Professor Patricia Mell, Dean of the John Marshall School of Law, have created a criminal law case book that offers both traditional and cutting-edge cases, challenging hypotheticals, historical context, and practical perspectives. All of these features combine in a manageable casebook designed to be completed in a one semester criminal law course. With material ranging from the criminal prosecution of Marcus Garvey for mail fraud to the Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted-suicide trial to Watergate, the book will hold the interest of both student and professor.
Features include interesting cases designed to combine legal principles for efficient learning; both traditional coverage of familiar principles and cutting-edge insights into emerging trends; special attention to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent activity in state criminal law; hypothetical problems of varying length and complexity to maximize the instructor's teaching options; historical notes and commentary that place the cases into context; discussion of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code; and practical perspectives for each section giving both defense and prosecution insights.
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Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living
John Bessler
Writing for Life: The Craft of Writing for Everyday Living demystifies the writing process - a process that is all too often misunderstood or feared. By breaking down and illuminating each step of that process - from pre-writing to publication - Writing for Life gives readers the know-how and tools they need to write more effectively. In this groundbreaking, inspirational guide, which draws upon the wisdom of the world's best writers, readers learn valuable techniques, such as freewriting, and discover how to best revise what they write to create high-quality writing. Part how-to and part essay, Writing for Life will revolutionize the way we write - and learn to write. As it excites readers about the possibilities of language, the book dispels the notions that writing is just for literary figures or professional writers or to be done only when work or school requires it. When properly understood, the writing process is not a chore or a burden, but a life-changing opportunity. In uncovering all of writing's personal and professional rewards and in unlocking the secrets of the craft, this book makes clear why everyone should want to write in their daily lives. Writing for Life reveals the writing process for what it is: a thinking process. Writing helps us understand things; it clarifies our thoughts and makes us better, more engaged thinkers and citizens. Because it unleashes new ideas and is such a powerful force for creativity, innovation and social change, writing - as this book so forcefully shows - should be an instrumental part of everyone's journey through life. Writing for Life will transform the lives of those who dislike, even dread, writing, even as it helps beginning and experienced writers alike better navigate the writing process.
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Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America
Garrett Epps
"Engaging . . . With a novelist's eye for biographical detail, Epps has written an . . . enthralling book."―David W. Blight, Chicago Tribune
The last battle of the Civil War wasn't fought at Appomattox by dashing generals or young soldiers but by middle-aged men in frock coats. Yet it was war all the same―a desperate struggle for the soul and future of the new American Republic that was rising from the ashes of Civil War. It was the battle that planted the seeds of democracy, under the bland heading "Amendment XIV." Scholars call it the "Second Constitution." Over time, the Fourteenth Amendment―which at last provided African Americans with full citizenship and prohibited any state from denying any citizen due process and equal protection under the law―changed almost every detail of our public life.
Democracy Reborn tells the story of this desperate struggle, from the halls of Congress to the bloody streets of Memphis and New Orleans. Both a novelist and a constitutional scholar, Garrett Epps unfolds a powerful story against a panoramic portrait of America on the verge of a new era.
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Becoming a Trial Lawyer
Steven P. Grossman, Michele E. Gilman, and Fredric I. Lederer
Trying a case is an incredibly exciting and terrifying experience. While thorough preparation is crucial to performing effectively in court, the trial is a dynamic process that often requires even the most comprehensively prepared attorneys to adapt on the spot to the shifting sands in the courtroom. This book teaches fundamental trial advocacy skills, and it helps readers both prepare systematically for what they can expect to face in the courtroom and handle those sands as they shift. The authors offer tips on how to sharpen and shape one s advocacy for different settings as well as creative strategies for trying a case with limited financial resources. An entire chapter devoted to using courtroom technology is also included.
A CD, Casefiles for Becoming a Trial Lawyer, authored by Steven Grossman and Michele Gilman, accompanies the book. It contains five full casefiles and three mini-cases designed to let readers practice the skills and strategies discussed in the substantive book.These realistic simulations include both civil and criminal cases and include a summary of the case, the relevant law, witness and expert depositions and statements, and a wide array of exhibits. The CD's detailed teacher's manual includes suggestions for how to use these materials, summaries of the particular skills that each casefile is intended to develop; and comprehensive analysis of the direct and cross-examinations of every witness in each case. Taken together, Becoming a Trial Lawyer and the casefiles provide invaluable materials for readers wanting to take that significant first step on the road to becoming an effective courtroom lawyer.
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Educating Lawyers Now and Then: An Essay Comparing the 2007 and 1914 Carnegie Foundation Reports on Legal Education; Education and a Reprint of the 1914 Report The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law Schools by Josef Redlich
James Maxeiner and Josef Redlich
In 1910 the Carnegie Foundation released its first study of graduate education: the Flexner report on medical education. American medical education is already celebrating the centennial of this report, which changed the face of medical education by emphasizing the scientific basis of practice. Four years later the Foundation authored its first report on legal education, the Redlich Report, which like the Flexner Report, emphasized the scientific basis of practice. For whatever reason perhaps because legal education was less receptive to change than was medical education, perhaps because the report s author came from one of the Central Powers with which the United States was shortly to go to war the Redlich Report did not change the face of legal education. Today, legal education is much the same as it was in 1914. In 2007 the Carnegie Foundation returned to legal education and issued a new report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Practice of Law. In analysis of American legal education, the two reports are eerily similar. But they are very different in their prescriptions for the future. The new report is intended to foster appreciation for what legal education does at its best. Its modest prescription for the future is an increase in clinical education. The Redlich Report, on the other hand, in its import is not limited to legal education. It is a calm but ambitious call to invigorat[e] the principle of social and economic justice in the life of the American people. The Redlich Report is must reading for any discussion of the future of American law. It brings to American legal education a perspective that no report before or since could. It reminds contemporary legal educators of their responsibility for the legal system. This re-issue of the Redlich Report is introduced by an essay by James R. Maxeiner that critically compares the two reports. The aim of the book is the reform of American law on a scientific basis. The book includes a reprint of the 1914 report: The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law Schools by Josef Redlich
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Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs, Second Edition 2006
Eric Easton
The aim of the Sourcebook on Legal Writing Programs establishes the parameters and common features that define successful programs for teaching legal writing skills in law school and to help improve the quality of legal writing programs across the country. The Sourcebook is the primary reference source for those designing, directing and teaching in legal writing programs.
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Republican Principles in International Law: The Fundamental Requirements of a Just World Order
Mortimer N.S. Sellers
Republican Principles in International Law considers the fundamental requirements of a just world order, as applied to public international law. This book sets the standard for legitimate government, both within and beyond the jurisdiction of separate states and nations.
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Universal Human Rights: Moral Order in a Divided World
David Reidy and Mortimer N.S. Sellers
Universal Human Rights brings new clarity to the important and highly contested concept universal human rights. The Charter of the United Nations commits nearly all nations of the world to promote, to realize and take action to achieve human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, yet this formal consensus masks an underlying confusion about the philosophical basis and practical implications of rights in a world made up of radically different national communities. This collection of essays explores the foundations of universal human rights in four sections devoted to their nature, application, enforcement and limits, concluding that shared rights help to constitute a universal human community, which supports local customs and separate state sovereignty. Rights protect the benefits of cultural diversity, while recognizing the universal dignity that every human life deserves. The eleven contributors to this volume demonstrate from their very different perspectives how human rights can help to bring moral order to an otherwise divided world.
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Naturalization and Criminal Offenses, Detention, & Removal: A Legal Guide for Immigrants & Advocates
Elizabeth Keyes and Naima Mian
Welcome to Naturalization and Criminal Offenses, Detention, & Removal: A Legal Guide for Immigrants & Advocates. The American Bar Association Commission on Immigration created this guide for educational and informational purposes only and nothing herein is to be considered the rendering of legal advice for specific cases; readers are responsible for obtaining such advice from an attorney. This guide was not prepared by any agency within the U.S. government, and it is intended to outline the process of becoming a citizen of the United States and to explain some of the obstacles to naturalization for permanent residents currently in federal immigration detention or with prior criminal offenses.
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Modern Maryland Civil Procedure, Second Edition
John A. Lynch Jr. and Richard W. Bourne
The first work to describe how the Maryland Rules interact with statutory and common law rules governing original and appellate jurisdiction, venue, trial by jury, and res judicata, Modern Maryland Civil Procedure discusses extensively the judicial interpretation of the rules. It addresses many unanswered questions about the shape and direction of Maryland law in light of the experience of other states and the federal courts. The book also discusses recent changes in Maryland law, such as subject matter jurisdiction, the right to trial by jury, and discovery rules.
The Maryland rules-authority and construction -- Forum selection : justiciability, original jurisdiction and venue -- Personal jurisdiction -- Parties and joinder -- Trial by jury -- Pleading -- Discovery -- Pretrial motions, orders and proceedings -- Trial motions, orders and proceedings -- Post-trial motions -- Appeals -- Former adjudication-consequences of a judgment -- Enforcement of judgments.
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Veering Right: How the Bush Administration Subverts the Law for Conservative Causes
Charles Tiefer
In this searing indictment of current administration policy, Charles Tiefer, a distinguished scholar of national legal affairs and former solicitor of the House of Representatives, argues that President George W. Bush methodically manipulates the law to promote right-wing causes. The beneficiaries of these machinations range from frontline pro-weapon and anti-women's rights groups to major industries that profit from lax environmental standards and military intervention in resource-rich regions. Accessibly written, legally rigorous, and meticulously documented, Veering Right demonstrates how the administration's already-ample arsenal for accomplishing ideological goals was expanded with weapons such as Attorney General John Ashcroft's social crusades and the polarizing 2004 election campaign. Tiefer lays out a compelling case for how the administration consistently erects barriers to media and congressional oversight that might expose covert motivations to public scrutiny. With an eye on the future, the White House is building a durable and potentially dominant machine for pursuing ideological goals by awarding lifetime judgeships and by exchanging favors for campaign funding. This book presents eye-opening evidence that ultra-conservatives could achieve previously unimaginable successes during a second Bush term. As a former Solicitor of the House of Representatives, Tiefer possesses a wealth of insight gleaned from decades of no-holds-barred investigations and judicial struggles. His wide-ranging perspective takes into account cultural changes, constitutional issues, partisan and electoral developments, and political personalities. The most exhaustive analysis to date of the Bush administration's real agenda, this book provides a rare insider's view of the strategic, devious, and potentially overpowering ways that presidents make ideological use of the law.
Veering Right Documents How
- President Bush's secrecy and deception undermined the democratic process by misleading Congress and the public about international and domestic matters ranging from doctored Iraq weapons intelligence to covered-up drugmaker subsidies paid for by seniors
- Bush's first term lays the groundwork for even more extreme right wing policies if he is re-elected. This agenda includes tilting the nation's tax structure against the middle class in Democratic states, weakening traditional Medicare by concentrating rising costs on poorer and sicker seniors, and exporting jobs via the trade fast track
- John Ashcroft used religiosity and race-baiting to build his political career and, after 9/11, blocked questioning of his abuses—ranging from concealed undermining of the Bill of Rights to promoting the intolerance of the religious right—by labeling it as suspicious and even treasonous
- Bush turned the public's reaction after 9/11 away from the logical Saudi suspects and against Iraq in a spectacular double-play to push his agenda in the world's oil patch
- Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton and her crew of lawyer-lobbyists ran the public's resources and its pollution controls like a candy store for pariah industries
- Bush's domestic legal gambits around big money paid off in 2004 with a historical gross campaign war chest as a quid pro quo for favors rendered
- The Bush Administration dismantled international legal regimes ranging from arms control and women's rights to global climate control and international tobacco regulation * Bush's unilateralist alienation of potential support abroad hobbled both the Iraq occupation and the effort against terrorism
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Kiss of Death: America's Love Affair with the Death Penalty
John Bessler
Few issues provoke such intense feelings and strongly held views as does capital punishment. In this text, John D. Bessler skillfully interweaves the powerful life stories of death row prisoners, his own experiences as a pro-bono attorney on death penalty cases in Texas, and historical perspective to persuade the reader that state-sanctioned executions must be abolished in the US. Bessler's narrative asks if capital punishment has less to do with crime and more to do with vengeance and swift retribution - an eye-for-an-eye, a tooth-for-a-tooth. He argues convincingly that the death penalty is just another form of violence in an already too-violent society, and contends that sentencing capital offenders to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is the best way to meet the needs of public safety while breaking the self-destructive cycle of violence. Placing the US's complex, ever-changing relationship with capital punishment within legal, cultural and historical contexts, Bessler dispels myths about the death penalty and addresses such subjects as racial discrimination in capital cases, wrongful convictions, the prominent role of guns in American life and in homicides, the issue of deterrence versus brutalization, the impact of executions on corrections officers and others in the criminal justice system, and the worldwide movement toward abolition. Also included is a call for televised executions as a means of exposing the reality of capital punishment to the public. "Kiss of Death" brings a fresh yet reasoned approach to an emotionally charged and contentious debate. It attempts to show why people should care - in fact, should be outraged - that government-sponsored killings are still taking place today.
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Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota
John Bessler
Minnesota is one of only twelve states that does not allow the death penalty, but that was not always the case. In fact, until 1911 executions in the state were legal and frequently carried out. In Legacy of Violence, John D. Bessler takes us on a compelling journey through the history of lynchings and state-sanctioned executions that dramatically shaped Minnesota's past.
Through personal accounts of those involved with the events, Bessler traces the history of both famous and lesser-known executions and lynchings in Minnesota, the state's anti-death penalty and anti-lynching movements, and the role of the media in the death penalty debate. Bessler reveals Abraham Lincoln's thoughts as he ordered the largest mass execution in U.S. history of thirty-eight Indians in Mankato after the Dakota Conflict of 1862. He recounts the events surrounding the death of Ann Bilansky, the only woman ever executed in Minnesota, and the infamous botched hanging of William Williams, which led to renewed calls for the abolition of capital punishment. He tells the story of the 1920 lynching in Duluth of three African-American circus workers-wrongfully accused of rape-and the anti-lynching crusade that followed. The significant role that Minnesota played in America's transformation to private, after-dark executions is presented in the discussion of the "midnight assassination law."
Bessler's account is made more timely by thirty-five hundred people on death row in America today-more than at any other time in our nation's history. Is Minnesota's current approach superior to that of states that have capital punishment? Bessler looks at Minnesota history to ask whether the application of the death penalty can truly solve the problem of violence in America.
John D. Bessler is an attorney at the Minneapolis law firm of Kelly & Berens and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is the author of Kiss of Death: America's Love Affair with the Death Penalty (2003) and Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America (1997).
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