Resource
Book on TRIPS and Development
By
UNCTAD-ICTSD
Cambridge
University Press, 2005
Call number: K1401.R47
2005
From the Publisher
The
Resource Book, conceived as a practical guide to the TRIPS Agreement,
provides detailed analysis of each of its provisions, aiming
at a sound understanding of WTO Members' rights and obligations.
The purpose is to clarify the implications of the Agreement
especially highlighting the areas in which the treaty leaves
leeway to Members for the pursuit of their own policy objectives,
according to their respective levels of development. In doing
so, the book does not produce tailor-made prescriptions but
gives guidance on the implications of specific issues and on
the options available. The book is not limited to the analysis
of the TRIPS Agreement but to the consideration of related questions
and developments at the national, regional, and international
level.
With a special
focus on development implications of intellectual property
regimes, the text provides a practical guide to every provision
of the WTO-TRIPS Agreement, in particular with respect to
negotiating history and possible interpretations.
About
the Authors
Established in 1964, the United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD)
is the organization principally responsible for coordinating
UN system activity in the areas of sustainable development,
trade, finance, and sustainable development.
Based in Geneva,
the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
(ICTSD) is a
non-governmental organization that seeks to develop a worldwide
dialog on issues of trade and sustainable development.
Additional
Information Online
 Jury
Trials and Plea Bargaining
A
True History
By
Michael McConville and Chester L. Mirsky
Oxford;
Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2005
Call number: KF9223.M33
2005
From the Publisher
This
book is a study of the social transformation of criminal justice,
its institutions, its method of case disposition and the source
of its legitimacy. The text focuses upon the apprehension,
investigation and adjudication of indicted cases in New York
City’s main trial tribunal in the nineteenth century
- the Court of General Sessions. It traces the historical
underpinnings of a lawyering culture which, in the first half
of the nineteenth century, celebrated trial by jury as the
fairest and most reliable method of case disposition and then
at the middle of the century dramatically gave birth to plea
bargaining, which thereafter became the dominant method of
case disposition in the United States.
The book demonstrates
that the nature of criminal prosecutions in everyday indicted
cases was transformed, from disputes between private parties
resolved through a public determination of the facts and law
to a private determination of the issues between the state
and the individual, marked by greater police involvement and
public prosecutorial discretion. As this occurred, the structural
purpose of criminal courts changed – from individual
to aggregate justice – as did the method and manner
of their dispositions - from trials to guilty pleas. Contemporaneously,
a new criminology emerged, which was to transform the way
in which crime was viewed as a social and political problem.
The book, therefore, sheds light on the relationship of the
method of case disposition to the means of securing social
control of an underclass.
About
the Authors
Mike McConville is Professor of Law at the University of Warwick,
and a specialist in empirical research in the area of criminal
justice in both England and the United States of America.
He has conducted studies on issues such as policing, criminal
defense services, juries, prosecution services and public
defenders.
Emeritus Professor
of Clinical Law, Chester L. Mirsky, New York University, has
specialized in clinical legal practice and has written widely
on American and English procedure and evidence in criminal
courts.
Additional
Information Online
 Revolution
by Judiciary
The Structure of
American Constitutional Law
By Jed Ruebenfeld Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Call number: KF
4550.R83 2005
From the Publisher
Although constitutional law is supposed to be fixed and enduring,
its central narrative in the twentieth century has been one
of radical reinterpretation--Brown v. Board of Education,
Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore. What, if anything,
justifies such radical reinterpretation? How does it work
doctrinally? What, if anything, structures it or limits it?
Jed Rubenfeld finds
a pattern in American constitutional interpretation that answers
these questions convincingly. He posits two different understandings
of how constitutional rights would apply or not apply to particular
legislation. One is that a right would be violated if certain
laws were passed. The other is that a right would not be violated.
He calls the former "Application Understandings"
and the latter "No-Application Understandings." He finds
that constitutional law has almost always adhered to all of
the original Application Understandings, but where it has
departed from history, as it did in the Brown decision,
it has departed from No-Application Understandings. Specifically,
the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit racial segregation,
so Rubenfeld argues that the Supreme Court had no problem
reinterpreting it to prohibit it. It was a No-Application
Understanding.
This is a powerful
argument that challenges current theories of constitutional
interpretation from Bork to Dworkin. It rejects simplistic
originalism, but restores historicity to constitutional theorizing.
About
the Author
Jed Rubenfeld is Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law, Yale
Law School.
Additional
Information Online
 Interpreting
State Constitutions
A
Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System
By
James A. Gardner Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Call number: KF4552.G37
2005
From the Publisher
Interpreting State Constitutions examines and proposes
a solution to a problem central to contemporary debates over
the enforcement of civil liberties: how courts, government
officials, and lawyers should go about interpreting the constitutions
of the American states.
With the Supreme
Court's retreat from the aggressive protection of individual
rights, state courts have begun to interpret state constitutions
to provide broader protection of liberties. This development
has reversed the polarity of constitutional politics, as liberals
advocate unimpeded state power while conservatives lobby for
state subordination to a constitutional law controlled centrally
by the Supreme Court.
James A. Gardner
here lays out the first fully developed theory of subnational
constitutional interpretation. He argues that states are integral
components of a national system of overlapping and mutually
checking authority and that the purpose of this system is
to protect liberty and defend against federal domination.
The resulting account provides valuable prescriptive advice
to state courts, showing them how to fulfill their responsibilities
to the federal system in a way that strengthens American constitutional
discourse.
About
the Author
James A. Gardner received his B.A. from Yale in 1980 and his
J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984. From 1984 to
1988, he practiced law in the Civil Division of the United
States Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. Before joining
the University at Buffalo faculty in 2001, he taught law at
Western New England College, William and Mary, and the University
of Connecticut.
Additional
Information Online
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