Mercy And The Rule Of Law

“A stylish whodunit . . . Lescroart [is] in his best form yet.”—People Once Dismas Hardy was a cop. Now he spends his days in a lawyer’s suit, billing hours to a corporate client in a downtown San Francisco office. Hardy’s wife and kids like it that way. Then one client changes everything. Graham Russo, a former baseball star, is charged with murdering his dying father. Was it suicide, the last desperate act of a dying man? Was it murder? Or mercy? Now, as a carnival of reporters, activists, cops, lovers, and families throng around the case, Dismas Hardy is going to trial with a client he doesn’t trust, a key witness he cannot believe, and a system that almost destroyed him once. For Dismas, this case will challenge everything he believes about the law, about his family, and about himself. Because a chilling truth is beginning to emerge about an old man’s lonely death. And what Dismas knows could put him next in line to die. . . . Praise for The Mercy Rule “Very entertaining . . . a large and emotionally sprawling novel.”—Chicago Tribune “As usual in a Lescroart novel, character dominates plot as the author proves, yet again, that resonant drama can be found in family.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “An edge-of-the-seat legal thriller that has it all—hot-button issues, deception, greed, corruption, and a labyrinthine plot that will keep you guessing until the very last page.”—Faye Kellerman

A passionate call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not. This book is a passionate call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not. Arguing that post-9/11 legislation and foreign policy severed the executive branch from the will of the people, Elaine Scarry in Rule of Law, Misrule of Men offers a fierce defense of the people's role as guarantor of our democracy. She begins with the groundswell of local resistance to the 2001 Patriot Act, when hundreds of towns, cities, and counties passed resolutions refusing compliance with the information-gathering the act demanded, showing that citizens can take action against laws that undermine the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. Scarry, once described in the New York Times Sunday Magazine as “known for her unflinching investigations of war, torture, and pain,” then turns to the conduct of the Iraqi occupation, arguing that the Bush administration led the country onto treacherous moral terrain, violating the Geneva Conventions and the armed forces' own most fundamental standards. She warns of the damage done to democracy when military personnel must choose between their own codes of warfare and the illegal orders of their civilian superiors. If our military leaders uphold the rule of law when civilian leaders do not, might we come to prefer them? Finally, reviewing what we know now about the Bush administration's crimes, Scarry insists that prosecution—whether local, national, or international—is essential to restoring the rule of law, and she shows how a brave town in Vermont has taken up the challenge. Throughout the book, Scarry finds hope in moments where citizens withheld their consent to grievous crimes, finding creative ways to stand by their patriotism.

Given the Catholic Church’s complex history concerning divorce and remarriage, it’s not surprising that the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia in 2016 caused such a stir among the laity, the press, some theologians, and even some bishops. This book endeavors to introduce concepts and contexts that will help all these groups understand the document in a new light, explaining what the rule of law actually means, and hopefully open a door to further discussion among theologians and clergy whose critical comments have so often missed the point of Francis’s apostolic exhortation.

"Dismas Hardy knows something is amiss with his trusted secretary, Phyllis. Her out-of-character behavior and sudden disappearances concern Hardy, especially when he learns that her convict brother--a man who had served twenty-five years in prison for armed robbery and attempted murder--has just been released. Things take a shocking turn with Phyllis is suddenly arrested at work for allegedly being an accessory to the murder of Hector Valdez, a coyote who'd been smuggling women into this country from El Salvador and Mexico. That is, until recently, when he was shot to death--on the very same day that Phyllis first disappeared from work. The connection between Phyllis, her brother, and Hector's murder is not something Dismas can easily understand, but if his cherished colleague has any chance of going free, he needs to put all the pieces together--and fast"--

The rule of law, once widely embraced and emulated, now faces serious threats to its viability. To get our bearings we must return to first principles. This book articulates and defends a comprehensive, coherent, and compelling conception of the rule of law and defends it against serious challenges to its intelligibility, relevance, and normative force. The rule of law's ambition, it argues, is to provide protection and recourse against the arbitrary exercise of power using the distinctive tools of the law. Law provides a bulwark of protection, a bridle on the powerful, and a bond constituting and holding together the polity and giving public expression to an ideal mode of association. Two principles immediately follow from this core: sovereignty of law, demanding that those who exercise ruling power govern with law and that law governs them, and equality in the eyes of the law, demanding that law's protection extend to all bound by it. Animating law's rule, the ethos of fidelity commits all members of the political community, officials and lay members alike, to take responsibility for holding each other accountable under the law. Part I articulates this conception and locates its moral foundation in a commitment to common membership of each person, recognizing their freedom, dignity, and status as peers. Part II addresses serious challenges currently facing law's rule: finding a place in the legal system for equity, mercy, and effective responses to emergencies, taming the new leviathans of the digital world, and extending law's rule beyond national borders.

Written by a renowned literary critic and legal historian, Practice Extended illuminates the intricacies of legal language and thought and the law's relationship to society, literature, and culture. Robert A. Ferguson details how judicial opinions are written, how legal thought and philosophy inform ideas, and how best to appreciate a courtroom novel. With chapters touching on a wide range of subjects, including immigration, eloquence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court case over James Joyce's Ulysses, Practice Extended provides an ambitious argument for the importance of language in law and a much-needed analysis of the often vexed relationship between law and literature. Ferguson challenges the notion of law as a hermetic enterprise only accessible to experts. He reveals the discipline's relationships to history, religion, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and the visual arts, offering a rich account of how the law has shaped and has been shaped by communal thought. He also recognizes the critical role of literature and other outside views in showcasing the social problems that law takes up. Practice Extended reflects Ferguson's crucial role as a pioneer in developing the field of law and literature. His writing reminds us of the need for a critical approach to the law that draws on the insights of literature to better understand political and legal history and the documents, laws, and arguments that shape our present. At the same time, this volume also showcases the ways in which the law has been integrated into works of literature, from Billy Budd to contemporary courtroom thrillers.

Is there room for mercy in a system of justice?

The rule of law has been celebrated as “an unqualified human good," yet there is considerable disagreement about what the ideal of the rule of law requires. When people clamor for the preservation or extension of the rule of law, are they advocating a substantive conception of the rule of law respecting private property and promoting liberty, a formal conception emphasizing an “inner morality of law,” or a procedural conception stressing the right to be heard by an impartial tribunal and to make arguments about what the law is? When are exertions of executive power “outside the law” justified on the ground that they may be necessary to maintain or restore the conditions for the rule of law in emergency circumstances, such as defending against terrorist attacks? In Getting to the Rule of Law a group of contributors from a variety of disciplines address many of the theoretical legal, political, and moral issues raised by such questions and examine practical applications “on the ground” in the United States and around the world. This timely, interdisciplinary volume examines the ideal of the rule of law, questions when, if ever, executive power “outside the law” is justified to maintain or restore the rule of law, and explores the prospects for and perils of building the rule of law after military interventions.