Prosecutors are powerful figures in any criminal justice system. They decide what crimes to prosecute, whom to pursue, what charges to file, whether to plea bargain, how aggressively to seek a conviction, and what sentence to demand. In the United St...

"The Supreme Court Economic Review" is an interdisciplinary journal that provides a forum for scholarship in law and economics, public choice, and constitutional political economy. Its approach is broad-ranging, and the contributions it brings togeth...

"Clarence Darrow [was] perhaps the most effective courtroom opponent of cant, bigotry, and special privilege that our country has produced. All of Darrow's most celebrated pleas are here – in defense of Leopold and Loeb (1924), of Lieutenant Massie (...

Making extensive use of archival and other primary sources, David Schorr demonstrates that the development of the "appropriation doctrine", a system of private rights in water, was part of a radical attack on monopoly and corporate power in the arid...

Boilerplate language in contracts tends to stick around long after its origins and purpose have been forgotten. Usually there are no serious repercussions, but sometimes it can cause unexpected problems. Such was the case with the obscure pari passu...

In many regions of the world, rights guaranteed under the civil law, including rights to gender equality within marriage and rights in the distribution of family property and child custody upon divorce, are in conflict with the principles of religiou...

Now in its third edition, "Alaska Natives and American Laws" is still the only work of its kind, canvassing federal law and its history as applied to the indigenous peoples of Alaska. Covering 1867 through 2011, the authors offer lucid explanations o...

Conundrums, puzzles, and perversities: these are Leo Katz's stock-in-trade, and in "Why the Law Is So Perverse", he focuses on four fundamental features of our legal system, all of which seem to not make sense on some level and to demand explanation....

Since at least the time of Tocqueville, observers have noted that Americans draw on the language of rights when expressing dissatisfaction with political and social conditions. As the United States confronts a complicated set of twenty-first-century...

In this timely reevaluation of an infamous Supreme Court decision, David E. Bernstein provides a compelling survey of the history and background of "Lochner v. New York". This 1905 decision invalidated state laws limiting work hours and became the le...