The Featured Book of the Week

This Week's Feature book is Dracula Was a Lawyer by Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo and published by Conari Press.

“It’s no laughing matter that many of us are fascinated by the legal system and the people within it. In Dracula Was a Lawyer, trivia experts Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo offer tidbits about the lawyers we love to hate (until we need one!), the pitfalls in our legal system, celebrity lawyers, and more. This curious compendium puts lawyers and legal history on trial and exposes more than 500 little-known facts and outrageous oddities from the wild world of law” - Book Description

Dracula Was a Lawyer will be available to borrow after Friday, November 2, 2007

This Week's Featured Book

The Featured Book of the Book is Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior by Lawrence Baum and published by Princeton University Press.

“What motivates judges as decision makers?.. The conventional scholarly wisdom holds that judges on higher courts seek only to make good law, good policy, or both. In these theories, judges are influenced by other people only in limited ways, in consequence of their legal and policy goals. In contrast, Baum argues that the influence of judges' audiences is pervasive. This influence derives from judges' interest in popularity and respect, a motivation central to most people… Judges and Their Audiences uses research in social psychology to make the case that audiences shape judges' choices in substantial ways. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship on judicial decision-making and an array of empirical evidence, the book then analyzes the potential and actual impact of several audiences, including the public, other branches of government, court colleagues, the legal profession, and judges' social peers. Engagingly written, this book provides a deeper understanding of key issues concerning judicial behavior on which scholars disagree, identifies aspects of judicial behavior that diverge from the assumptions of existing models, and shows how those models can be strengthened.” - Book Description

“An original contribution to the study of judicial politics that draws from the field of social psychology to suggest a radically new approach to the study of decisional behavior.”- Sheldon Goldman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Judges and Their Audiences will be available to borrow after Friday, October 19, 2007

This Week's Featured Book

The Featured Book of the Week is The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design and a School Board in Dover, PA by Gordy Slack and published by John Wiley & Sons.

“A compelling eyewitness account of the recent courtroom drama in Dover, Pennsylvania that put evolution on trial. Journalist Gordy Slack offers a riveting, personal, and often amusing first-hand account that details six weeks of some of the most widely ranging, fascinating, and just plain surreal testimony in U.S. legal history—a battle between hard science and religious conservatives wishing to promote a new version of creationism in schools. During the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Areas School Board trial, the members of the local school board defended their decision to require teachers to present intelligent design alongside evolution as an explanation for the origins and diversity of life on earth. The trial revealed much more than a disagreement about how to approach science education. It showed two essentially different and conflicting views of the world and the lengths some people will go to promote their own. The ruling by George W. Bush-appointed Judge John Jones III was unexpected in its stridency: Not only did he conclude that intelligent design was religion and not science and therefore had no place in a science classroom, he scolded the school board for wasting public time and money…” - Book Description

“Gordy Slack's beautifully written The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything should be on absolutely everyone's must read list. Although Slack does not conceal his own evolutionary commitments, he is balanced and fair, showing above all that this is a cultural battle and not simply one of science versus religion. The book is a terrific read.”- Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University

The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything will be available to borrow after Friday, October 12, 2007