New Books: U.S. Government

The founding and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints run parallel to the rise of the modern tax system and administrative state. Samuel D. Brunson looks at the relationships between the Church and various federal, state, local, and international tax regimes. The church and its members engage with the state as taxpayers and as members of a faith exempt from taxes. As Brunson shows, LDS members and the Church have at various times enacted, enforced, and collected taxes while also challenging taxes in the courts and politics. Brunson delves into the ways LDS members used their status as taxpayers to affirm themselves as citizens and how outsiders have attacked the Church's tax-exempt status to delegitimize it. Throughout, Brunson uses the daily interactions between the Latter-day Saints and taxation to explain important and inevitable holes in the wall between church and state. Enlightening and informed, Between the Temple and the Tax Collector provides general readers and experts alike with a new perspective on a fundamental issue.

A uniquely broad and fair-minded guide to making immigration policy ethical.Immigration is now a polarizing issue across most advanced democracies. But too much that is written about immigration fails to appreciate the complex responses to the phenomenon. Too many observers assume imaginary consensus, avoid basic questions, or disregard the larger context for human migration. In Borders and Belonging, Hiroshi Motomura offers a complex and fair-minded account of immigration, its root causes, and the varying responses to it. Taking stock of the issue's complexity, while giving credence to the opinions of immigration critics, he tackles a series of important questions that, when answered, will move us closer to a more realistic and sustainable immigration policy. Motomura begins by affirming a basic concept--national borders--and asks when they might be ethical borders, fostering fairness but also responding realistically to migration patterns and to the political forces that migration generates. In a nation with ethical borders, who should be let in or kept out? How should people forced to migrate be treated? Should newcomers be admitted temporarily or permanently? How should those with lawful immigration status be treated? What is the best role for enforcement in immigration policy? To what extent does the arrival of newcomers hurt long-time residents? What are the "root causes" of immigration and how can we address them? Realistic about the desire of most citizens for national borders, this book is an indispensable guide for moving toward ethical borders and better immigration policy.

From the Cold War era to the current century, the United States has wielded substantial authority in imposing sanctions. This book delves into the intricate and multifaceted landscape of US economic and financial sanctions, unravelling their historical development, legal foundations, and geopolitical motivations. Case studies on five of the most-sanctioned countries in the world - Russia, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela--provide a deeper understanding of how the sanctioning measures allow the US to extend its reach beyond its national boundaries through extraterritorial laws, sophisticated enforcement mechanisms, and the pervasive dollar-denominated global economic structure. Meticulous and nuanced, this book is a go-to resource for understanding sanction regimes from both multilateral and unilateral perspective and the relevant international laws and jurisprudence.

Homeland Security Law: Issues and Analysis provides readers with a comprehensive examination of the legal aspects of homeland security within the United States. It explores the balance between national security measures and the protection of individual liberties as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. The book is structured into four main parts, each addressing different constitutional issues as they relate to homeland security. Part I discusses the definitions and foundations of homeland security, as well as the relationship between the Supremacy Clause and state police powers. Part II explores the separation of powers, focusing on the roles of Congress, the courts, and the executive branch. Part III examines homeland security in the context of the Bill of Rights, analyzing free speech, the right of association, searches and surveillance, and due process, among other related topics. Part IV addresses other constitutional issues such as habeas corpus, immigration, border security, and governmental emergency powers. The book also includes appendices on the case briefing method and selected excerpts of U.S. Supreme Court cases, providing practical insights into the application of legal principles in homeland security. Homeland Security Law is an essential and invaluable resource for courses and programs in American laws and policies related to homeland security.

In Homelessness, Liberty and Property, Terry Skolnik establishes a novel theory about the government's duties to end homelessness, maintain public property's value, and legitimize laws that regulate public space. In doing so, Skolnik provides new insight into how the property law system and the regulation of public space limit unhoused persons' freedom and political equality. The book deepens our understanding of how various areas of law, such as constitutional law, legal philosophy, criminal law, and property law, approach the reality of homelessness and advances original arguments to provide new justifications for the right to housing. Skolnik concludes by offering a set of concrete proposals for how the government can reduce the incidence of homelessness and treat unhoused persons with greater concern and respect. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available open access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

An influential legal scholar argues that the Supreme Court played a pivotal role in the rise of mass incarceration in America. With less than 5 percent of the world's population and almost a quarter of its prisoners, America indisputably has a mass incarceration problem. How did it happen? Tough-on-crime politics and a racially loaded drug war are obvious and important culprits, but another factor has received remarkably little attention: the Supreme Court. The Constitution contains numerous safeguards that check the state's power to lock people away. Yet since the 1960s the Supreme Court has repeatedly disregarded these limits, bowing instead to unfounded claims that adherence to the Constitution is incompatible with public safety. In Justice Abandoned, Rachel Barkow highlights six Supreme Court decisions that paved the way for mass incarceration. These rulings have been crucial to the meteoric rise in pretrial detention and coercive plea bargaining. They have enabled disproportionate sentencing and overcrowded prison conditions. And they have sanctioned innumerable police stops and widespread racial discrimination. If the Court were committed to protecting constitutional rights and followed its standard methods of interpretation, none of these cases would have been decided as they were, and punishment in America would look very different than it does today. More than just an autopsy of the Supreme Court's errors, Justice Abandoned offers a roadmap for change. Barkow shows that the originalist methodology adopted by the majority of the current Court demands overturning the unconstitutional policies underlying mass incarceration. If the justices genuinely believe in upholding the Constitution in all cases, then they have little choice but to reverse the wrongly decided precedents that have failed so many Americans.

Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most children who enter youth sport are driven to quit by the time they enter adolescence, and many more are sidelined by its high financial burdens. Until now, there has been little legal scholarly attention paid to youth sport or its reform. Dionne Koller sets the stage for a different approach by illuminating the law and policy assumptions supporting a model that puts children's bodies to work in an activity that generates significant surplus value. In doing so, she identifies the wide array of beneficiaries who have a stake in a system that is much more than just play--and the political choices that protect these parties' interests at children's expense.

Each year in the United States, about 1 in 170 births is a stillbirth, a rate that has remained stagnant for most of this century even as other high-income countries have dramatically reduced their already lower rates. Jill Wieber Lens, the nation's foremost expert on stillbirth and the law, blends personal experience and legal analysis to bring us an original, essential guide to this all-too-often unrecognized public health crisis. By exposing how the law inhibits prevention, affects the experience of stillbirth for birthing parents, and shapes broader notions of unborn life, Lens argues for a series of pragmatic, data-driven changes to the legal landscape that could enjoy broad popular support and strengthen reproductive justice and reproductive rights.

One of the most common complaints about the tax system in the United States is that rich taxpayers are able to lower their tax liabilities through abusive tax practices, often outmaneuvering the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Untaxed offers a fresh perspective on the long-standing dilemma of tax avoidance and evasion by the rich by proposing a new legal response: means-based adjustments to the tax compliance rules. These compliance rules govern interactions between taxpayers and the IRS, from filing tax returns to responding to audit letters to paying tax penalties. Untaxed shows how tax compliance rules can be adjusted based on taxpayers' means to level the playing field between the rich and everyone else. Timely and innovative, this book is a must-read for legal scholars, policymakers, tax students, and anyone interested in tax policy and administration.

A riveting account of one death row inmate's quest to die--and a fearless look at how America's system of punishment has failed the public it claims to serve. When Scott Dozier was sent to Nevada's death row in 2007, convicted of a pair of grisly murders, he didn't cry foul or embark upon a protracted innocence campaign. He sought instead to expedite his execution--to hasten his inevitable death. He decided he would rather face his end swiftly than die slowly in solitary confinement. In volunteering for execution, Dozier may have been unusual. But in the tortuous events that led his death date to be scheduled and rescheduled, planned and then stayed, his time on death row was anything but. In The Volunteer, Emmy award-winning investigative reporter Gianna Toboni traces the twists and turns of Dozier's story, along the way offering a hard look at the history and controversy that surround the death penalty today. Toboni reveals it to be a system rife with black market dealings and supply chain labyrinths, with disputed drugs and botched executions. Today's death penalty, generally carried out through lethal injection, has proven so cumbersome, ineffective, and potentially harrowing that some states have considered a return to the electric chairs and firing squads of the past, believing those approaches to be not only more effective but more humane. No matter where you stand on the morality of capital punishment, there's no denying that the death penalty is failing the American public. With costs running into the billions and countless lives kept in limbo, it has proven incapable of achieving its desired end: executing the inmates that fellow Americans have deemed guilty of the most heinous crimes. With The Volunteer, Toboni offers an insightful and profound look at how the death penalty went so terribly wrong. A spellbinding story down to its shocking conclusion, it brings to light the horrifying realities of state-sanctioned killings--realities that many would prefer to ignore.

In a nation whose Constitution purports to speak for "We the People," too many of the stories that powerful Americans tell about law and society include only We the Men. A long line of judges, politicians, and other influential voices have ignored women's struggles for equality or distorted them beyond recognition by wildly exaggerating American progress. Even as sexism continues to warp constitutional law, political decision making, and everyday life, prominent Americans have spent more than a century proclaiming that the United States has already left sex discrimination behind. Jill Elaine Hasday's We the Men is the first book to explore how forgetting women's struggles for equality--and forgetting the work America still has to do--perpetuates injustice, promotes complacency, and denies how generations of women have had to come together to fight for reform and against regression. Hasday argues that remembering women's stories more often and more accurately can help the nation advance toward sex equality. These stories highlight the persistence of women's inequality and make clear that real progress has always required women to disrupt the status quo, demand change, and duel with determined opponents. America needs more conflict over women's status rather than less. Conflict has the power to generate forward momentum. Patiently awaiting men's spontaneous enlightenment does not. Transforming America's dominant stories about itself can reorient our understanding of how women's progress takes place, focus our attention on the battles that are still unwon, and fortify our determination to push for a more equal future.

A leading legal scholar asks a fundamental question: Do we need a theory of constitutional interpretation? Do we need a theory of constitutional interpretation? It is a common argument among originalists that however objectionable you may find their theory, at least they have one, whereas their opponents do not have any theory at all. But as Mark Tushnet argues, for most of the Supreme Court's history, including some of its most exceptional periods, the Court operated without a theory. In this book, Tushnet shows us what a constitutional theory actually is; what judges need from it and why they probably can't get what they need; and the great harm that results when judges allow theory to dictate bad policy. It is not theory that matters, Tushnet argues. The vitally important, indispensable quality in a judge is good judgment.

When did the federal government's self-appointed, essentially limitless authority over Native America become constitutional? The story they have chosen to tell is wrong. It is time to tell a better story. Thus begins Keith Richotte's playful, unconventional look at Native American and Supreme Court history. At the center of his account is the mystery of a massive federal authority called plenary power. When the Supreme Court first embraced plenary power in the 1880s it did not bother to seek any legal justification for the decision - it was simply rooted in racist ideas about tribal nations. By the 21st century, however, the Supreme Court was telling a different story, with opinions crediting the U.S. Constitution as the explicit source of federal plenary power. So, when did the Supreme Court change its story? Just as importantly, why did it change its story? And what does this change mean for Native America, the Supreme Court, and the rule of law? In a unique twist on legal and Native history, Richotte uses the genre of trickster stories to uncover the answers to these questions and offer an alternative understanding. The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told provides an irreverent, entertaining synthesis of Native American legal history across more than 100 years, reflecting on race, power, and sovereignty along the way. By embracing the subtle, winking wisdom of trickster stories, and centering the Indigenous perspective, Richotte opens up new avenues for understanding this history. We are able, then, to imagine a future that is more just, equitable, and that better fulfills the text and the spirit of the Constitution.

Although the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals are the final word on 99 percent of all federal cases, there is no detailed account of how these courts operate. How do judges decide which decisions are binding precedents and which are not? Who decides whether appeals are argued orally? What administrative structures do these Courts have? The answers to these and hundreds of other questions are largely unknown, not only to lawyers and legal academics, but by many within the judiciary itself. Written and Unwritten is the first book to provide an inside look at how these courts operate. An unprecedented contribution to the field of judicial administration, the book collects the differing local rules and internal procedures of each Court of Appeals. In-depth interviews of the Chief Judges of all thirteen circuits and surveys of all Clerks of Court reveal previously undisclosed practices and customs.