In Pursuit of Right and Justice chronicles the life of the United States District Court's Judge Edward Weinfeld, from his humble Lower East Side origins to his distinction as one of the nation's most respected federal judges. Judge Edward Weinfeld's personal growth and socio-economic mobility provides an excellent illustration of how Catholics and Jews descended from turn-of-the-century immigrants were assimilated into the mainstream of New York and American life during the course of the twentieth century. Weinfeld left a rich collection of personal papers that William E. Nelson examines, which depict the compromises and sacrifices Weinfeld had to make to attain professional advancement. Weinfeld's jurisprudence remained closely tied to his own personal values and to the historical contexts in which cases came to his court. Nelson aptly describes how Weinfeld strove to avoid making new law. He tried to make decisions on preexisting rules or bedrock legal principles; he achieved just results by searching for and finding facts that called those rules into play. Weinfeld's vision of justice was simultaneously a liberal one that enabled him to develop law that reflected societal change, and an apolitical one that did not rest on contested policy judgments.

Ralph Nader is one of America’s most controversial—and uncompromising— public figures. He is a man on a mission who believes that taking on the powers that be involves more than just talking about it—it also means taking action. From car safety in the 1960s to opposition to the World Trade Organization in the 1990s, Nader’s work has increased government responsiveness to citizens, served as a check against the abuse of power by big business, and shaped the political consciousness of a nation. Nader’s sense of mission is infused in all of his work, especially his weekly columns. In Pursuit of Justice, a collection of Nader’s most recent, trenchant articles written in the years immediately following the publication of The Ralph Nader Reader, Nader addresses a broad array of issues, among them: corporate crime and power, government accountability, media control, consumer rights, healthcare, congressional reform, nuclear power and energy, racial discrimination, poverty, food and drug safety, air and water pollution, fair taxation, product liability protection, union democracy, living family wage, unfair lending practices, community radio, industrial hemp, banking, pension law, telecommunications and the importance of character. Nader has even sponsored consumer initiatives to reform university governance, educational testing, daily newspapers, women's health care, legal services, and professional sports—all of which are reflected in these sharp and sometimes humorous essays. As informative as it is pleasurable to read, section after section of In Pursuit of Justice slices through government and corporate propaganda and reveals the corruption, bias and injustice that all too often connect politics with big business, thereby impeding the pursuit of justice. Collecting more than one hundred of his most recent writings, In Pursuit of Justice conveys Nader's inimitable sense of both the global political economy and our nation's democratic promise.

The book offers articles by senior jurists on important aspects of judicial independence and judicial process in many jurisdictions, including indicators of justice. It comes at the time of serious challenges to the judiciary, the rule of law and democracy.

As Justice William Brennan observes in his foreword, state courts are in some critical ways more important than federal courts in deciding controversies which affect the lives of ordinary citizens. Yet, outside of technical legal materials, little attention is paid to their role in shaping the law. Joseph R. Grodin seeks to fill this vacuum. A law professor and former justice of the California Supreme Court, Grodin was removed from the bench in 1986 along with Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justice Cruz Reynoso after a highly publicized campaign that focused on their decisions in death penalty cases. Drawing on his own experience, and in a lively style spiced with anecdotes and aimed at a general audience, Grodin writes about state appellate courts with insights that only a former justice could provide. Grodin begins with a reflection on the perspective of the bench, addressing such questions as how judges view the arguments of lawyers and how appellate courts cope with an ever-increasing caseload. He describes his own elevation up the judicial ladder and points out significant aspects of the landscape along the way. In Part Two he discusses the judicial functions that are more or less distinctive to state courts, using case descriptions to illustrate the history and development of the common law, the significance of state constitutions for the protection of individual liberties, the special problems posed by enactment of laws through the initiative process, and the dilemmas surrounding the administration of the death penalty. In Part Three he confronts a perennial and vastly important question--do judges make law? Grodin argues that in a sense they do, but only within a framework of constraints that make the process quite different from legislative lawmaking. Moreover, the nature of judicial lawmaking varies from context to context, and it has different dimensions in the state systems than in the federal. Finally, Grodin discusses the election process which is used in most states to decide upon selection or retention of judges. He argues that elections pose a threat to judicial independence, and he considers several alternatives to the current system. This engaging book offers a fascinating look at the courts and will appeal to anyone interested in how judges think about the law.

This book discusses the intersection of philosophy, politics and law and how judges’ ideological outlook may influence the decision of the court. The author teases out the underlying influences that drive judges to decide matters in a particular way, especially in highly-contentious legal questions that have far-reaching national consequences, such as in cases of abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. The book interrogates, in the most thought-provoking manner, the question of whether a judge’s background, values and education matter at all in the adjudicatory process. Whilst the author concedes the point that a judge must respect the chains that bind him as a judge, he also makes the equally-fascinating argument that every judge processes the controversies serving before him with his own mind and not the mind of any other person. Every judge is a product of his own circumstances and time. He may grow up with certain prejudices and stereotypes that do not magically disappear soon after taking the oath of office. As is often said, no judge ascends to the bench as an ideological virgin. As Justice Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel once observed, “A person who is appointed as a judge is neither required nor able to change his skin.” The author also discusses with breathtaking clarity the role of a judge as a lawmaker Essentially, the book discusses the tensions and anxiety around the judicialization of politics and the politicization of the law.

Explores the role of linguistics in promoting justice and equality with regard to ethnic minorities, legal matters and civil rights.

Reviews and discusses landmark cases heard by the United States Supreme court from 1803 through 2000.

When the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right to vote, it seemed as if a new era of political equality was at hand. Before long, however, white segregationists across the South counterattacked, driving their black countrymen from the polls through a combination of sheer terror and insidious devices such as complex literacy tests and expensive poll taxes. Most African Americans would remain voiceless for nearly a century more, citizens in name only until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act secured their access to the ballot. In Bending Toward Justice, celebrated historian Gary May describes how black voters overcame centuries of bigotry to secure and preserve one of their most important rights as American citizens. The struggle that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act was long and torturous, and only succeeded because of the courageous work of local freedom fighters and national civil rights leaders -- as well as, ironically, the opposition of Southern segregationists and law enforcement officials, who won public sympathy for the voting rights movement by brutally attacking peaceful demonstrators. But while the Voting Rights Act represented an unqualified victory over such forces of hate, May explains that its achievements remain in jeopardy. Many argue that the 2008 election of President Barack Obama rendered the act obsolete, yet recent years have seen renewed efforts to curb voting rights and deny minorities the act's hard-won protections. Legal challenges to key sections of the act may soon lead the Supreme Court to declare those protections unconstitutional. A vivid, fast-paced history of this landmark piece of civil rights legislation, Bending Toward Justice offers a dramatic, timely account of the struggle that finally won African Americans the ballot -- although, as May shows, the fight for voting rights is by no means over.

Few people have had a greater impact on the lives of Canadians than the late Supreme Court judge Justice Emmett Hall. At the forefront of several important judgements in the 1960s and 70s ? such as Truscott and Calder ? Hall is perhaps best known for his role in the adoption of universal health care at the federal level in 1968. Based on extensive interviews with Hall and people who knew him, Frederick Vaughan's Aggressive in Pursuit tells Hall's remarkable story. Born in Quebec in 1898 and raised in Saskatchewan, Hall had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer. In 1957, former law school classmate Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed Hall to the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench, and four years later to the office of Chief Justice of Saskatchewan. In 1963, Diefenbaker elevated Hall to the Supreme Court of Canada, where he took up the task of universal health care and showed himself to be an aggressive defender of native causes. Aggressive in Pursuit traces Hall's career from his earliest days of private practice in Saskatchewan to the end of his career, and death, in 1994. It shows how one prairie lawyer made a difference in the life of Canada.