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Writers of fiction have always confronted topics of crime and punishment. This age-old fascination with crime on the part of both authors and readers is not surprising, given that criminal justice touches on so many political and psychological themes essential to literature, and comes equipped with a trial process that contains its own dramatic structure. This volume explores this profound and enduring literary engagement with crime, investigation, and criminal justice. The collected essays explore three themes that connect the world of law with that of fiction. First, defining and punishing crime is one of the fundamental purposes of government, along with the protection of victims by the prevention of crime. And yet criminal punishment remains one of the most abused and terrifying forms of political power. Second, crime is intensely psychological and therefore an important subject by which a writer can develop and explore character. A third connection between criminal justice and fiction involves the inherently dramatic nature of the legal system itself, particularly the trial. Moreover, the ongoing public conversation about crime and punishment suggests that the time is ripe for collaboration between law and literature in this troubled domain. The essays in this collection span a wide array of genres, including tragic drama, science fiction, lyric poetry, autobiography, and mystery novels. The works discussed include works as old as fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy and as recent as contemporary novels, memoirs, and mystery novels. The cumulative result is arresting: there are "killer wives" and crimes against trees; a government bureaucrat who sends political adversaries to their death for treason before falling to the same fate himself; a convicted murderer who doesn't die when hanged; a psychopathogical collector whose quite sane kidnapping victim nevertheless also collects; Justice Thomas' reading and misreading of Bigger Thomas; a man who forgives his son's murderer and one who cannot forgive his wife's non-existent adultery; fictional detectives who draw on historical analysis to solve murders. These essays begin a conversation, and they illustrate the great depth and power of crime in literature.
"A client savagely kills a man to protect a friend. A lawyer with secrets must prove it was justified. Attorney Nate Shepherd left a big firm to go out on his own. He sees nothing but opportunity when an out-of-town lawyer wants to hire him as local counsel on a high-profile murder case. Though his family worries that the case hits too close to home, Nate joins the defense team. When circumstances force him to take on a bigger role, Nate ignores his family’s fears and throws himself into his client’s defense. But as he digs deeper, every aspect of the case raises memories of a terrible event that Nate has tried his best to bury. Battling an aggressive prosecutor in court and a dogged reporter outside it, Nate fights to prove that his client’s brutal, bloody slaying of an evil victim was right. But when Nate’s own story is exposed, it threatens his client’s freedom ... and Nate’s carefully constructed life"--Amazon.com.
Chris Van Aller demonstrates that a better understanding of the complicated civil-military relationship in the United States is prerequisite to reforming the expensive and often inefficient military establishment maintained since World War II. Arguing that reduced defense expenditures and adequate national security are both possible, this book illustrates how American political culture remains deeply ambivalent about national security. Though significant budget cuts have been implemented over the past five years, Van Aller takes a closer look at the fact that no true reorganization or reconceptualization has taken place. For policy makers, historians of American military history and anyone who cares about this complex topic, The Culture of Defense will be indispensable reading.
A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.
We continue to face a choice with respect to nuclear weapons - either to move safely toward their elimination or to remain their victim. A forty-year effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons is breaking down, and the likely acquisition of these weapons by terrorist groups is growing. In Fatal Choice, Richard Butler, a well-known and respected voice on the subject of nuclear weapons, argues that we are poised on the verge of a second and much more threatening nuclear arms race than the one experienced throughout the Cold War. This threat is clearly reflected in nuclear weapons development by India, Pakistan, Iraq, and North Korea. The revival by the Bush administration of missile defense will not deal with the problem but worsen it. Butler outlines the steps that can be taken to give effect to the right choice on nuclear weapons.
Includes the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the Appellate Courts of Alabama and, Sept. 1928/Jan. 1929-Jan./Mar. 1941, the Courts of Appeal of Louisiana.

Lethal Loopholes

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Subcommittee on Domestic Policy

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 192


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This is the first book to examine the deadly history and potential apocalyptic future of both natural and man-made lethal gases that threaten our world. Fatal Airs: The Deadly History and Apocalyptic Future of Lethal Gases That Threaten Our World relates the fascinating—and appalling—stories of the discovery, development, applications, and occupational and public health hazards of natural and man-made gases. Some of these gases have figured in mass extinctions. Others have created havoc through their use in chemical warfare or their accidental release. Among the hundreds of man-made lethal gases, several have been singled out for attention, including chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, lewisite, hydrogen cyanide, and the nerve agents tabun, sarin, soman, VX, and methyl isocyanate. The book also examines some naturally occurring gases, such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, methane, and radon. Colorful accounts capture the characteristics and history of each of these mysterious substances, focusing on key episodes in scientific discovery and exploration since World War I.