by Charles Gardner Geyh (2006)
"Efforts to check the power of the courts have come and gone throughout American history, from the Jeffersonian Congress's struggle to undo the work of the Federalists, to FDR's campaign to pack the Supreme Court, to the epic Senate battles over the Bork and Thomas nominations. If legislators were solely concerned with curbing the courts, Charles Gardner Geyh suggests, they would use direct means, such as impeaching uncooperative judges, gerrymandering their jurisdictions, stripping the bench's oversight powers, or slashing judicial budgets." "Yet, while Congress has long been willing to influence judicial decision-making indirectly by blocking the appointments of ideologically unacceptable nominees, it has, with only rare exceptions, resisted employing more direct methods of control. When Courts and Congress Collide is the first work to demonstrate that this balance is governed by a "dynamic equilibrium": a constant give-and-take between Congress's desire to control the judiciary and its respect for historical norms of judicial independence." "It is this dynamic equilibrium, Geyh says, rather than what the Supreme Court or the Constitution says about the separation of powers, that defines the limits of the judiciary's independence. When Courts and Congress Collide requires all of us to consider whether we are on the verge of radically disrupting our historic balance of governance."--BOOK JACKET.
Paul Moon
Against the background of a people in almost terminal crisis, Ngapua emerges as a potential saviour, with a career plagued by powerful opponents who at times conspire to defeat him. This epic journey into the life of one of the greatest Maori leaders of the last two centuries also offers what is, at times, a major reinterpretation of Maori politics.
Jomo K.S
"One of two self-contained companion volumes, this unusual collection surveys the transformation of the major regions of the South, during the course of the 'long twentieth century'. Individual essays examine the transformation of particular regions of the South, highlighting not only the uneven development in the region, but also the unequal relations between North and South, often, but not necessarily, associated with political dimensions during the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present."--BOOK JACKET.
Scholastique Mukasonga
"Imagine being born into a world where everything about you--the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth--designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people. Scholastique Mukasonga's Cockroaches is the story of growing up a Tutsi in Hutu-dominated Rwanda--the story of a happy child, a loving family, all wiped out in the genocide of 1994. A vivid, bitterwsweet depiction of family life and bond in a time of immense hardship, it is also a story of incredible endurance, and the duty to remember that loss and those lost while somehow carrying on. Sweet, funny, wrenching, and deeply moving, Cockroaches is a window onto an unforgettable world of love, grief, and horror"--
Patrick M. Garry
A Nation of Adversaries: How the Litigation Explosion Is Reshaping America brilliantly examines why our culture has been increasingly crowding courthouses and fueling the growth of the lawyer population, pitting us against each other. Dr. Patrick Garry, an expert on the effect of the courts on American society, insightfully points out that our growing litigant-oriented mindset is reinforcing a self-centered culture of undue expectation and entitlement. The workplace, the classroom, the bedroom, and even the playground are becoming more combative. With increasing gridlock, acrimony, and ideological warfare, the political arena has especially come to resemble more a courtroom than an arena for concordance. The values supporting democracysuch as compromise and consensus - have been subverted by tenacity and aggressiveness. In light of the new litigation democracy, the individual's right to sue is valued more than his or her right to vote. The author also analyzes how the publicity bestowed upon specific lawsuits "teaches" the public to identify and assert new ways of being a victim. As a result, employees are victims of their employers, children victims of their parents, and students victims of their teachers. In encouraging new types of victim-plaintiffs and promising lucrative rewards to potential victims, litigation also fuels the fire of therapy culture. For a society obsessed with psychic healing and emotional recovery, litigation is seen as a logical continuation of the healing process begun in a therapist's office. Increasingly open to novel theories of psychological injuries, the courts are reinforcing the therapeutic bent so prevalent in sensationalistic talk shows and recovery programs. A Nation of Adversaries is a candid look at litigation's invasion into our once formally mindful society, and is a shrewd commentary on the creation of a new culture of identity in America.