Professions Books

This book is a riveting account of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, from the view of one of the defense lawyers. Why is this book so good? The author is exceptionally candid: He openly discusses conflicts with the judge, with fellow defense counsel, with his client, and within himself. Rather than being self-serving -- as many of these memoirs are -- Precht gives us insight into the daily problems of defense counsel and the larger issue of trying accused terrorists within our criminal justice system. This book is easy to understand & leaves a lasting impression. If you are a current or future lawyer, or just interested in terrorism and civil liberties issues, read this book.

Precht has done a remarkable thing: He's made the courtroom drama of this trial both personal and a fascinating case study of justice in modern America. Perhaps more important today than when the trial took place a decade ago (the first foreign terrorist trial in the US), the book made me think about our current administration, the abridgement of our rights, and the constant balance of rights and protections in a democracy. Thanks.

This book was extremely helpful regarding legal matters, concerns and how to successfully handle your case or claim without the necessity of paying an attorney to assist you. It also gave important information regarding what you should expect in the event that an attorney is ultimately necessary and how to ensure that the attorney ultimately hired is doing his/her job effectively. I would recommend this book to anyone with a legal problem and also to anyone who is contemplating entering the legal profession as either a lawyer or a paralegal. This book also provides examples of forms and letters which are necessary to successfully negotiate a claim or prosecute a lawsuit which I found to be extremely helpful.

This is probably the best book I ever bought. I purchased it to help me with a small claims case (I won that case--thanks, Timothy). That chapter was really beneficial in my case. Then I just read the rest of it, and it was really easy to read, and even had some humor. This guy doesn't write like a lawyer! And the information is really accessible and helpful. I think everyone should have a copy of this book, save us all money by not paying lawyers to do the things we can do ourselves.

According to American labor law,does an employee has a right to legal representative during disciplinary hearing in private companies.

Anyone working with the NLRA needs to have this text close at hand. It is the most complete work detailing the history and application of U.S. labor laws. It is complete with case citations.

For serious students and working court interpreters, this Spanish law dictionary is essential.

For serious students and working court interpreters, this Spanish law dictionary is essential.

Starting with the Supreme Court's decision in _Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS_, Graglia shows that the emperor has no clothes. Claiming to be acting against racial discrimination, the Court first disallowed race-neutral policies, then actively enforced racial discrimination. The one hopeful element of Graglia's tale is that while people in Washington, DC proved supine in their unwillingness to oppose the Supreme Court's misdeeds, average people from Denver to Boston took to the streets in defense of self-government. The politics of the last 23 years owe much to the arrogations chronicled in Graglia's book.

Lino Graglia's career has been devoted to decrying usurpation by federal judges. Unlike most of the tenured cowards in academia, Graglia has used his insulation from politics in the way tenured professors are supposed to: as a license to point out uncomfortable truths. His honesty and opposition to the Left trends in legal "scholarship" cost him a prestigious appointment to a federal appeals court, but that didn't silence this model citizen. Too bad there aren't hundreds more like him. Bravo! Lino. This is a truly great book by one of the few remaining devotes of limited government and the rule of democratically-enacted law (not judges).

This is an important, but disturbing book. To be sure, it contains a great deal of useful information, distilled from the author's earlier studies. It is safe to say that no other author could do this with such authority and precision.


In his earlier published books Eskridge had seemed to ally himself with the radical gay faction. Now, it seems, he has morphed into something like a social conservative.

Eskridge believes that, even after our remarkable legal progress, gays are being held back by formidable reserves of disgust and fear of social pollution. These stark terms, for which he offers little documentation, seem to me to go too far. Still a mass of reservations, all the more persistent for not being (often) avowed, linger among the general public. As Eskridge puts it, many have not been able to bring themselves to acknowledge that homosexuality is a b e n i g n variation. We can have all the legal advances anyone could possibly require without achieving this.

In a pivotal sentence (p. 382) Eskridge makes the following point. "Lawrence [the 2003 Supreme Court decision] should . . . be understood as a challenge for gay people. Recalling an old-fashioned conception of citizenship as entailing obligations as well as freedoms, Lawrence should stir LGBT people to commit themselves to families, communities, and institutions (including religious ones) from which they have been alienated because of sodomy laws, social stigma, and other disabilities."

I readily confess that I am one of those who has been so alienated. I don't see why I should now have to commit myself to a family or a religious institution in order to secure my full civil rights. Still, I would agree that it would help if substantial numbers of gay and lesbian people did so.

But how much would it help? The disgust that homosexuality evokes is a product of several layers of experience and ideology. Ultimately, it is religiously based, since the Bible presents toleration of homosexual behavior as a danger to the body politic. (Yes, I know that John Boswell and others have sought to erase the sting of these texts. For most religious people, however, the sting persists.) Then a wave of psychotherapy crested fifty years ago. Even though most psychiatrists have changed their tune, the notion persists that same-sex behavior is somehow abnormal. Finally, there was the AIDS crisis. Drugs are helping a great many HIV people to lead productive and rewarding lives. And yet, allowing for some monocausal exaggeration, gay people are centrally implicated in this disease, and they will continue to be so perceived.

In short the likely scenario is that in the long term gay and lesbian people will experience a kind quasipariah status. The laws that have been holding us back will finally be abrogated. Vicious name calling, of the sort that prevailed until recently, will be unfashionable. But still, for the foreseeable future, "virtually normal" will be the best we can claim.

Eskridge Jr, William N. "Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003", Viking, 2008.

The Right to Sex

Amos Lassen

Long overdue on our bookshelves is a look at American sodomy laws and now that William Eskridge's "Dishonorable Passions" is published; we have that information right at our fingertips. Gay rights are the hot issue in our country right now but there is really nothing new about that. During the early periods of America--the colonial period and early statehood--sodomy was prohibited as a "crime against nature". Here was a country built on democratic ideals and it was telling its people what they could do in their private homes and behind closed doors. Even as late as the twentieth century homosexuals were labeled as degenerates and during the McCarthy era, many homosexual lives were splashed on the pages of the press and lives were ruined,
The laws prohibiting sodomy were bases on the English common law which took its impetus from a Christian Biblical interpretation of several small passages from the book of Leviticus. In 2003 the Supreme Court struck down these antiquated laws in the "Lawrence vs. Texas" decision. Finally it was no longer criminal for two consenting adults to practice the sexual relations that they chose.
Eskridge looks at how the laws which regulated sodomy from the decade of the 1930's were used as a legal tool for the denial of public assembly and jobs to homosexuals. But Eskridge does more than just look at the laws; he also includes legal discussions, personal stories and looks at the social history of the times. He brings in the stories of those targeted by the laws such as Margaret Mead and Walt Whitman and of those who were responsible for the targeting (J. Edgar Hoover and Earl Warren). In doing this, we get a look at America's changing view of homosexuals and homosexuality and we see the rise of personal freedom and tolerance in this country.
I do not think that this is a book that will just sit on the shelf of bookstores and libraries but I believe that it will bring about debate among thinking Americans who care about their freedoms and rights. Furthermore the book is not just about the sodomy laws but a history of American sexuality and the way it has been regulated and challenged. The title suggests that this is simply a reference book but it is much more than that. It is an extremely well-written and readable book that deals with a major issue and it seems to me that anyone who values freedom will want to have a look at it.

.......WE BOUGHT THE BOOK FOR OUR DAUGHTER WHO IS STUDYING..... ...LAW.....AND SHE FOUND IT ...WELL MARKED...AND INDEX ....SHE WAS VERY HAPPY...........WE RECEIVE IT ON TIME FOR REPORT SHE IS SUPPOST TO GIVE ON THE 14 OF MARCH.....THANK YOU TO THE SELLER......

Excellent text. Should be required reading of all law students. Packed with insightful essays from prominent scholars and practicioners in the field of dispute resolution. One of the most painless law books I have read so far.

Congrats and good luck Newt!

With cover art like this, the book will sell itself! And it'sbeen chosen by Newtloot.com as one of a select handful of officialwedding gifts for Newt Gingrich's upcoming third trip to the altar.

Created by attorney Daniel Sitarz, and part of the Nova Publishing Company's oustanding "Legal Self-Help Series", Divorce Yourself is a "No-Fault" divorce kit that spouses can use to obtain a divorce without resorting to lawyers. With careful instructions, legal forms, questionnaires, checklists, courtroom guidelines, and up-to-date in this fifth edition (which is legally valid in all 50 American states and Washington DC), Divorce Yourself is the recommended do-it-yourself guide for divorcing couples who wish to remain on speaking terms. An accompanying CD contains copies of the various forms described in the text.

I used this book when I went through my divorce and I would recomend it to anyone. So many people think you have to pay for a high priced lawyer to get divorced but you don't. All you need is the information accessable to you and you can do it yourself. It has so much information you can't go wrong.

I am the author of this book and I hope that by giving everyone in an abusive situation a voice we can stop this growing problem in our society. I felt it was really important to help these people, this is not just their problem...this is societies problem. Please, let's all hear their voices.

Other books by me:
Domestic Abuse Our Stories and Murder in New England & Closing the Circle

Finally a book that covers all of the victims! It made me cry and really feel for these people. The children's stories really affected me, I hadno idea things could get that bad for the children. I also had my eyes opened to the fact that men are abused quite ofetn. Keep writing M. Webb! You are doing a wonderful thing for many people. Can't wait for the next book.
I also read Domestic Abuse Our Stories...just as good!