Law Without Justice

This book is a ... for thoughtful legislators and all the rest of us who seek justice for persons charged with crimes-proportional punishment of the guilty, and exculpation of the morally blameless. The authors demonstrate, with remarkable lucidity, how and why the criminal law sometimes deliberately sacrifices justice for other goals, and they provide thoughtful, controversial, and often persuasive suggestions on how we can redesign our legal system to give people their just deserts. [In the book, the authors offer an] account of how the American criminal justice system fails to give offenders their just deserts in a number of different contexts. From the refusal to allow partial exoneration for defenses like mistake of law and insanity to the practicallimitations on detecting and prosecuting offenders, [they also] demonstrate through ... discussions of actual cases the many areas where criminal sentencing fails to do justice. -Dust jacket.

An examination of various types of litigation - arbitration, mediation, and conciliation.

In the minds of many, the provision of justice and security has long been linked to the state. To ask whether non-state institutions could deliver those services on their own, without the aid of coercive taxation and a monopoly franchise, runs the risk of being branded as naive anarchism or dangerous radicalism. Defenders of the state's monopoly on lawmaking and law enforcement typically assume that any alternative arrangement would favor the rich at the expense of the poor—or would lead to the collapse of social order and ignite a war. Questioning how well these beliefs hold up to scrutiny, this book offers a powerful rebuttal of the received view of the relationship between law and government. The book argues not only that the state is unnecessary for the establishment and enforcement of law, but also that non-state institutions would fight crime, resolve disputes, and render justice more effectively than the state, based on their stronger incentives.

Albert Alschuler's study of Holmes is very different from other books about him, in that it is an exercise in debunking him.

This book explores concrete situations in which judges are faced with a legislature and an executive that consciously and systematically discard the ideals of the rule of law. It revolves around three basic questions: What happen when states become oppressive and the judiciary contributes to the oppression? How can we, from a legal point of view, evaluate the actions of judges who contribute to oppression? And, thirdly, how can we understand their participation from a moral point of view and support their inclination to resist?

The Chinese have, since ancient times, professed a non-litigious outlook. Similarly, their preference for mediation has fascinated the West for centuries. Mediation has been popularized by the Chinese who subscribe to the Confucian notions of harmony and compromise. It has been perpetuated in the People's Republic of China and by the overseas Chinese communities elsewhere, such as in Malaysia and Taiwan. Seen as the chief contributing factor in their litigation-averse nature, as well as the reason behind the significant role given to traditional mediation, this compelling book traces the cultural tradition of the Chinese. It uses rural Chinese Malaysians as illustrative examples and offers new insights into the nature of mediation East and West. It is an important reference and essential resource for anyone keen to learn about traditional Chinese concepts of law, justice and dispute settlement. Equally, it makes a unique contribution to the existing ADR literature by undertaking a socio-legal study on traditional Chinese mediation.

First published a decade ago, No Equal Justice is the seminal work on race- and class-based double standards in criminal justice. Hailed as a ''shocking and necessary book'' by The Economist, it has become the standard reference point for anyone trying to understand the fundamental inequalities in the American legal system. The book, written by constitutional law scholar and civil liberties advocate David Cole, was named the best nonfiction book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and the best book on an issue of national policy by the American Political Science Association. No Equal Justice examines subjects ranging from police behavior and jury selection to sentencing, and argues that our system does not merely fail to live up to the promise of equality, but actively requires double standards to operate. Such disparities, Cole argues, allow the privileged to enjoy constitutional protections from police power without paying the costs associated with extending those protections across the board to minorities and the poor. For this new, tenth-anniversary paperback edition, Cole has completely updated and revised the book, reflecting the substantial changes and developments that have occurred since first publication.

Freedom without Justice is the compelling story of Chol Soo Lee’s wrongful imprisonment and his years of survival in prison, while political activists fought to win his freedom. His saga took place against a backdrop of great historical change in Asian American communities following the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. In 1973, less than a decade after he immigrated to the United States from Korea at the age of twelve, Lee is convicted of murder and given a life sentence. Four years later, his case became a nationwide rallying point for an extraordinary pan–Asian American movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s, bringing together people from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds for a common political cause. This diverse grassroots activism organized a six-year “Free Chol Soo Lee!” campaign that led to his release from San Quentin’s Death Row in 1983. While the case inspired newspaper headlines, TV specials, and even a Hollywood movie, until now the full story has never been told in Chol Soo Lee’s own voice. Freedom without Justice reveals the race and class dimensions of US correctional institutions from the perspective of convicts who fiercely refuse to be victims. As a chronicle of the life of a youth at risk, during a time when Asian American inmates were scarce, and Korean Americans even scarcer, Lee's memoir draws readers into a variety of worlds—war-torn Korea, the streets of San Francisco, the criminal justice system, prison gang politics, and death row.