New Books in Law
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field. The podcast covers a wide range of legal topics and is part of a larger network with over 150 channels and 28,000 episodes. Listeners can explore more content on the New Books Network website and subscribe to a free weekly newsletter.
Episodes
Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability with Moritz A. Schramm (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Social media giants like Meta and transnational regulators such as the European Union are transforming private governance by creatively emulating public law frameworks. Drawing on exclusive interviews and in-depth analysis of Meta's Oversight Board and the EU's Digital Services Act, Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountabilit
Civil Societies, Uncivil States: Government Repression of NGOs with Suparna Chaudhry (Cornell UP, 2026)
Why would a government bother to go after groups that carry no weapons and hold no power? Suparna Chaudhry argues that the answer says a lot about where politics is heading. In Civil Societies and Civil States: Government Repression of NGOs (Cornell University Press, 2026), she shows that states are targeting advocacy organizations less often with violence and more often with laws. These laws
Immoral Traffic An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India with Vibhuti Ramachandran (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Immoral Traffic: An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India (Cambridge UP, 2025) delves into the complex intersection of India's anti-prostitution law and global anti-trafficking campaigns, and how they impact sex workers in both voluntary and involuntary situations. Immoral Traffic examines the role of legal actors and NGOs in implementing these interventions, r
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice with Federica Coppola (Cambridge UP, 2026)
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge UP, 2026) highlights the concept of 'belonging' as an unprecedented lens for critically interrogating the legitimacy of incarceration across penal theory, sentencing practice, and human rights frameworks. The chapters chart pathways for bridging the gap between the normative idea of punishmen
Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control with Kelly Lytle Hernández (Norton, 2026)
Kelly Lytle Hernández joins Michael Stauch to discuss how the US immigration system has always been “racist by design.” Many Americans’ understanding of the immigration system begins with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late nineteenth century. In Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control (Norton, 2026), Lytle Hernández expands that history by a full century, showing
Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey's Kurdish Borderlands with Fırat Bozçalı (Stanford UP, 2025)
The Kurdish-populated Wan/Van Province is a major smuggling hub between Turkey and Iran. Kurdish smugglers cross this 180-mile-long land border, transporting everyday consumer goods—fuel, tobacco, sugar, and tea—as well as more illicit goods, and the province supports the financial, technical, and labor capacities that sustain these smuggling economies. As the Turkish state has enacted increasingl
Sara C Bronin, "Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World" (Norton, 2024)
For those concerned with how city hall can shape the look and feel of a neighborhood, the mere mention of zoning may invite denunciation of zoning practices that contributed substantially to the housing crisis and so limited neighborhood development that you have to get in your car to pick up a quart of milk.In her readable Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (Norton, 2024), Sara Bronin,
Lee M. Panich and Gustavo Flores, "We Will Receive Justice: Native Histories of the Collapse of the California Missions" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
We Will Receive Justice: Native Histories of the Collapse of the California Missions (U Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Lee M. Panich & Gustavo Flores explores how Native people in the southern San Francisco Bay Area—the ancestors of today’s Ohlone community—navigated the collapse of the California mission system. The volume spans from Mexican independence in 1821 through the region’s annexation
Samantha Barbas, "Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma" (U California Press, 2026)
The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma (U California Press, 2026), acclaimed legal historian Samantha Barbas chronicles the country’s legal and cultural battles over the regulation of hate speech in the last hundred years. Charting the hist
Tom Hulme, "Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Professor Tom Hulme's second book reconstructs the erotic and romantic lives of queer men in Belfast across roughly seventy years, from the recriminalisation of sex between men in the 1880s to the emergence of a mainstream public debate about homosexuality in the 1950s. It follows men cruising the city centre, reading and passing around homosexual novels, forging relationships across the lines of
Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor,
Janos Fiala-Butora, "Implementing the Right to Decide Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Supporting the Legal Capacity of All Persons with Disabilities" (Hart, 2025)
Implementing the Right to Decide Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Supporting the Legal Capacity of All Persons with Disabilities (Hart, 2025) addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary human rights law: how can persons with severe cognitive disabilities make their own decisions?Historically, vulnerable persons have been considered incapable, a
Charles Lachman, "They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted" (Diversion Books, 2026)
May 1945. The Reich is in ruins. Hitler is dead. Yet for the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, the real war has just begun.
They Shall Not See the Dawn: The Manhunt for the Third Reich's Most Wanted (Diversion Books, 2026) by Charles Lachman is the true historical thriller following a secret unit of American agents, drawn from every walk of life, hunting Hitler’s inner circle—the d
Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North " (FSG, 2025)
Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken
Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)
From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture came to govern the lives of enslaved and free people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent. She
Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)
They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet (MIT Press, 2026), Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climat
Nikhil Kalyanpur, "Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets" (Cornell UP, 2026)
In Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets
(Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Nikhil Kalyanpur examines a
striking feature of today's global legal order: the use of foreign
courts by elites to settle domestic disputes. On the surface, the
"outsourcing" of disputes by elites from countries with fragile
judiciaries looks like a search for fair treatm
Valeria Vázquez Guevara, "Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Truth Commissions and International Law: Jurisdiction, Representation, Authority
(Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines how truth commissions
construct authoritative accounts of conflict, and how they account for
the plurality of accounts across affected communities. Dr. Valeria
Vázquez Guevara examines three of the earliest and most influential
truth commissions: Argentina (1983–1984),
Holly N. S. White, "Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States" (U Virginia Press, 2026)
Edward Blum interviews Holly White on her new book Constructing American Childhood: Age-Based Laws and the Illusion of Protection in the Early United States.
As of 2025, in the United States an eleven-year-old child can be charged with a federal crime while in many states it’s illegal to leave a twelve-year-old home alone. Twenty-six states allow children younger than sixteen to marry while t
Jonathan Quong, "Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice (Princeton UP, 2026), Jonathan Quong considers central issues in political philosophy through the lens of this single question. He explores and evaluates recent influential work on this topic and then proposes a novel approach of his own. The puzzle at the hea
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Court: The Bern Trial (1933-1935) and the "Antisemitic International"
Between 1933 and 1935, a trial was held in Bern against members of the Swiss extreme right-wing National Front who had distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a widely disseminated antisemitic publication that spread lies about Jews. The real target of the Jewish organizations that initiated the trial, however, was the pamphlet itself, its origin, its dissemination, and its use in Europ
Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels, "Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law" (NYU Press, 2026)
The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and tensions. Law has cultivated both the planet’s biggest environmental threats and its most creative innovations for protecting human and ecological health. U.S. laws have driven both exploitation and temperance; destruction and restoration; an
Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, "'PS: Burn after Reading': The Kellock-Taschereau Commission and Soviet Espionage" (U Toronto Press, 2026)
After
Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected in 1945, Canada was shocked
by the revelation that its own citizens were engaged in espionage for
the Soviet Union. "P.S. Burn after Reading": The Kellock-Taschereau Commission and Soviet Espionage in Canada
(University of Toronto Press, 2026) explores how the Canadian
government used the controversial Kellock-Taschereau
Commission—sometimes j
Diego Galego, "Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on
heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually
changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key
players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) examines these
Encore - Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hippocratic oaths, as long as they acted with compassion and wisdom, then all expectations were met.
Life is more complicated today, and so is healthcare: an undertaking, like all others, that is influenced by social, political, legal and cultural factors.
Elizabeth J. Letourneau and Luke Malone, "One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It" (Basic Books, 2026)
One in five children will be sexually abused before their
eighteenth birthday. This isn't a problem confined to a single country,
city, or neighborhood. It's something that happens everywhere, and what
it costs can be enormous: depression, PTSD, and elevated long-term risk
for physical illness, including heart disease and cancer.
In One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public He
Sandeep Vaheesan, "Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Sandeep Vaheesan recounts the rather overlooked story of how electricity spread across the U.S. economy during the 20th century. This book sheds careful light on the varied institutions and interests mediating the process, including investor-owned utilities and the rura
Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)
Ganja
is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian
languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species
Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's
colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how
ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in t
Matias E. Margulis, "Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security
(Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Matias E. Margulis is the
first book to demonstrate that United Nations (UN) organizations have
intervened to influence the discourse, agenda, and outcomes of
international trade lawmaking at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While UN organizations lack a seat a
James Loeffler, "Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America" (Metropolitan Books, 2026)
A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the
United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it
has long served as a frontline in our wars over freedom of speech and
the nature of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as
antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college
campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtroo
Rick Ramseyer, "Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship" (Purdue UP, 2026)
Should willingness to kill be a requirement for U.S. citizenship? Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship (Purdue University Press, 2026) by Rick Ramseyer tells the compelling, confounding story of Martha Graber—a Mennonite, registered nurse, and conscientious objector who in 1929 was twice denied citizenship because she refused to say she would
Kathleen J. Frydl, "Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation" (Oxford UP, 2025)
This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorous
David N. Gellman, "Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Edward Blum interviews David N. Gellman on his book Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York (Cornell UP, 2022).
In Liberty's Chain, David N. Gellman shows how the Jay family, abolitionists and slaveholders alike, embodied the contradictions of the revolutionary age. The Jays of New York were a preeminent founding family. John Jay, diplomat, Supreme
Yana Skorobogatov, "Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Yana Skorobogatov about her book, Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union
(University of Chicago Press, 2026). From 1954 to 1991 in the Soviet
Union, nearly 40,000 citizens were executed after the death penalty was
reinstated as a punishment for homicide. Fate in My Hands
introduces readers to the many citizens in this period—women and
Ryan Schweitzer, "Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope" (B&N Press, 2026)
Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope
(Barnes and Noble Press, 2026) is Ryan Michael Schweitzer's collection
of first-hand narratives from LGBTQ individuals across Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Drawing on years
of fieldwork in the region, Schweitzer gathers stories of violence,
blackmail, forced marriage, surveillance, and exile alongs
Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity" (New Press, 2026)
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests
positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her
newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children
they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend
nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager
takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—an
Asher Emanuel, "The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City" (Bridget Williams Books, 2026)
There were two days to Christmas
and Lewis felt like everything was spinning out of control. He wondered
what he would say to the judge this time. His client, Rikihana, was
already on multiple shoplifting charges. What’s a few more? Lewis thought. These supermarkets were still making a killing.
It’s
late 2020. Rikihana Wallace, a prolific shoplifter of no fixed abode,
is back in prison with
Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book, American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2026). Since the first permanent Protestant settlement in Jamestown in 1607, Protestant Christ
Michelle Bigenho and Henry Stobart, "Heritage Fever: Law and Cultural Politics in a Decolonizing State" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The
early twenty-first century ushered in a period of change in Bolivia.
The country welcomed its first Indigenous president, a new constitution,
and a profusion of laws that recognized individual music and dance
expressions as intangible cultural heritage. Using cultural heritage
lawmaking as a window through which to view the de-centered workings of the Indigenous-focused Plurinational Boli
Samuel Moyn, "Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It" (FSG, 2026)
A leading social critic identifies our least-discussed major crisis, and sets out to solve it.
As Americans debate President Biden’s infirmities and President Trump’s erratic behavior, we’ve neglected the bigger problem before us: a massive transfer of power and wealth to the oldest among us, and the curtailment of the prospects of the young. In Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Po
Mitra Sharafi, "Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia
(Cornell University Press, 2026) uncovers colonial South Asia's
critical role in the development of forensic science. Around 1900, the
government of British India created a web of institutions for the
scientific detection of crime. Driven by anxieties about "native
mendacity," newly minted forensic analysts focus
Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration
In Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2026), civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of us and should be judged in a spirit of forgiveness. He explains that American society is too often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable by fixating narrowly on
Dana Burchardt, "The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework" (Hart Publishing, 2026)
Why do some international courts wield broad authority while others face pushback or fade into irrelevance? The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework
(Hart Publishing, 2026) by Dr. Dana Burchardt provides novel
theoretical and empirical insights into this question. It offers a
fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the authority of international
courts, drawing from law,
Debolina Dutta, "A Jurisprudence of Conversations: Law, Life and Feminism in Post-colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Grounded in empirical studies, this book is both a history of the
emergence of feminist jurisprudence in post-colonial India and a model
of innovative legal research. The book inaugurates a creative practice
of scholarly activism that engages a new way of thinking about law and
feminist jurisprudence, one that is geared to acknowledge and take
responsibility for the hierarchies in I
Gabriella Soto, "Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting (University of Arizona Press, 2026) begins
with the undocumented individuals who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico
border—deaths that are both preventable and politically produced. Moving
between the practical and the philosophical, forensic anthropologist
and author Gabriella Soto asks
Renisa Mawani, "Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire" (Duke UP, 2018)
In 1914 the British-built and Japanese-owned steamship Komagata Maru
left Hong Kong for Vancouver carrying 376 Punjabi migrants. Chartered
by railway contractor and purported rubber planter Gurdit Singh, the
ship and its passengers were denied entry into Canada and two months
later were deported to Calcutta.
In Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empir
Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, "Animals and the Right to Politics" (Oxford UP, 2026)
The assumption that only humans can engage in politics—that only
humans are 'zoon politikon'—is foundational to the Western tradition of
political philosophy. While there is increasing recognition of animals'
moral status (both within moral philosophy and at the level of public
opinion), animals are not recognized as political subjects. This
carefully researched but accessibly written volume—
What are the Limits of Political Speech? A Conversation with Erik J. Olsen
A New Approach to Political Speech: Democratic Theory, Constitutional Law, and Public Liberty After January 6 (de Gruyter, 2026) challenges conventional understandings of political speech and its relationship to democracy. Through a focused case study of Donald Trump's role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election and the prosecutions stemming from it, Erik Olsen develops a criti
Are Capitalism and Democracy Fundamentally Incompatible? A Conversation with Mordecai Kurz
Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to comple
Lila Corwin Berman, "Who Is American? Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The history of Jews in the United States is often told as if they
immigrated, gained citizenship, and almost immediately achieved full
legal rights. Yet this story fundamentally misses how citizenship rights
worked for Jews and countless others who arrived on American shores. In
Who Is American? Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship, Lila
Corwin Berman draws on case law, statu
Paul Osterman, "Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment" (Harvard UP, 2026)
A revealing look at the decline in formal employment in favor of
hiring contractors, freelancers, temps, and marginal workers, who are
excluded from traditional benefits and career ladders.
Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly
reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and
protections that have traditionally come with employee status,
businesse
Kate Dannies, "Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Kate Dannies examines the gender and family dimensions of mobilisation for the First World War in the Ottoman Empire, situating the war in a long-nineteenth-century social history of Ottoman military reform for the first time. It focuses on the military legal concept of muinsizlik (so
Jeremy D. Popkin, "The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France (Princeton UP, 2026) is a dramatic account of how slavery and race profoundly influenced the course of the French Revolution and had a central impact on the lives of key leaders, including Mirabeau, Robespierre, Toussaint Louverture, and Napoleon. Acclaimed historian Jeremy D. Popkin brings this often-for
Daniel Krcmaric, "Above the Law" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
The United States has traditionally been a great promoter of international justice – forging the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after World War II and leading the way in creating tribunals to address genocides in Yugoslavia and Rwanda after the Cold War. Yet the US views the International Criminal Court – the culmination of the tribunal-building process – as a dire threat.
The US voted against its
Cyanne E. Loyle, "Escaping Justice: Impunity for State Crimes in the Age of Accountability" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Now more than ever, the international community plays a central role in pressing governments to hold themselves to account. Despite pressure to adhere to global human rights norms, governments continue to benefit from impunity for their past crimes. In an age of accountability, how do states continue to escape justice?
Escaping Justice: Impunity for State Crimes in the Age of Accountability (
Jonathon W. Penney, "Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jonathon W. Penney explores the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremist actors using big data, cyber-mobs, AI, and other threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling e
Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
A woman miscarries and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administers and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work and is s
Anna O. Law, "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Anna O. Law, the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights in the Department of Political Science at City University of New York-Brooklyn Campus, has a deeply researched and important new book that weaves together different approaches to understanding American citizenship, especially in context of immigration and migration in the first century of the U.S. republic. Migration and the Origins
Jake Dyble, "Managing Maritime Risk in Early Modern Europe: General Average in Law and Practice in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany" (Boydell Press, 2025)
Commercial seafaring, both dangerous and with large amounts of capital at stake, was the source of the risk-management institutions that still undergird the global economy today. A key institution of early modern risk management was General Average, a procedure used to redistribute extraordinary costs arising from a maritime venture between all financially interested parties. For example, should o
Stephanie Coontz, "For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage" (Viking, 2026)
Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far
from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage
as the highest commitment they can imagine. Most Americans say they want
to marry eventually, and couples who do marry have a lower chance of
divorce than at any time since the 1970s. Increasingly, though, people
tell pollsters they “have no idea” if the
Ann Carlson, "Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air" (U California Press, 2026)
Los Angeles and smog have been synonymous for decades. From the 1940s
through the 1980s, children breathed air so heavy with lead that their
blood was poisoned with it. In 1970, officials declared smog alerts on
235 days. But the last smog alert happened in 2003, and lead has
virtually disappeared from the air. This is the story of how Los Angeles
cleaned up its air.
In Smog and Sunshine: Th
Delia Duong Ba Wendel, "Rwanda's Genocide Heritage: Between Justice and Sovereignty" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Rwanda's Genocide Heritage: Between Justice and Sovereignty (Duke UP, 2025), Delia Duong Ba Wendel contends with the forms of justice and sovereignty enacted through sites of violent memory. Drawing from oral histories and a visual archive of memory work after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, she explores the human rights and government priorities that preserved killing sites and victims
Lawrence Douglas, "The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice (Princeton University Press, 2026) offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold
Julie J. Park, "Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era" (Harvard Education Press, 2026)
In Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era (Harvard Education Press, 2026), Julie J. Park offers deft analysis of the changes to college admissions and campus life since the US Supreme Court ruled to restrict race-conscious policies in two 2023 cases: Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Park off
David Petruccelli, "A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
As the First World War came to a chaotic end, Europeans feared that a wave of crime and anarchy would sweep across their continent. The upheavals of the war and of the subsequent violent breakup of the Habsburg, German, and Ottoman empires magnified longstanding fears that an increasingly interconnected world offered the enterprising and unscrupulous new opportunities to break the law and evade ca
Amy Thomas, "Copyright, Contract, and Video Games: Terms of Play" (Hart Publishing, 2026)
Copyright, Contract, and Video Games: Terms of Play (Hart Publishing, 2026) uncovers how video game contracts act as monologues of power, moulding players to align with proprietary ideologies.
In the era of interactive technologies, the player emerges as a vital yet curiously overlooked figure. While copyright law governs the creation and distribution of these technologies, it sidesteps
Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)
In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured―as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for eq
Anna O. Law, "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Since the late nineteenth century, the US federal government has enjoyed exclusive authority to decide whether someone has the ability to enter and stay in US territory. But freedom of movement was not guaranteed in the British colonies or early US. By contrast, voluntary migrants were met with strict laws and policies created by colonies and states, which denied free mobility and settlement in th
Debating the Constitution: On Originalism's Most Pressing Quarrels with Sherif Girgis
Here in Episode 8 of Season 5, I interview Professor Sherif Girgis. A graduate of Princeton University, the University of Oxford, and Yale Law School, Girgis is a tenured professor of law at the Notre Dame Law School and a Spring 2026 visiting professor at Harvard Law School. A former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito and member of the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, he is co-author
Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026)
Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026), his new book on policing in Jim Crow Mississippi, told through the lens of that state’s highway patrol. Using oral history and a wide range of archival sources, Randolph narrates effort
Under the Tenement Rooftops: Immigrant and Migrant Families in New York
The Tenement Museum preserves and interprets the personal stories of residents of two buildings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ninety-seven Orchard Street opened in 1863 and housed a succession of European immigrants until the double blow of the Great Depression and the impact of the 1924 Johnson Reed Act forced the landlord to evict the tenants. Down the block, 103 Orchard, built in 1888, k
Olivier Sylvain, "Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back" (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)
Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap
Mark Peterson, "The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
A provocative new history of America's constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined
The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain's constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain's had faltered, planning for co
James Q. Whitman, "Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands: The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Today we think of land as the paradigmatic example of property, while in the past, the paradigmatic example was often a slave. In this seminal work, James Q. Whitman asserts that there is no natural form of ownership. Whitman dives deep into the long Western history of this transformation in the legal imagination – the transformation from the ownership of humans and other living creatures to the
Charles W. A. Prior, "Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
In Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic (U Nebraska Press, 2026), Professor Charles W. A. Prior offers a new account of the sovereign claims of Native Americans, the Crown, and colonies in early America, arguing that Native American diplomacy shaped how sovereignty was negotiated and contested among all three, from Virginia’s founding to
Roundtable on Genocide Studies on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Genocide Studies International
2026 marks the 20th year of publishing Genocide Studies International. The journal's first issue was a special issue on genocide in Darfur. Twenty years later, newspapers and podcasts are talking again about mass violence in Sudan.
So I thought it would be a good time to host a discussion among current and former editors of the journal about the state of genocide studies and about how academi
Radio ReOrient 14:5: Racial Justice, Human Rights and Surveillance, with Alba Kapoor, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas
In this episode Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Alba Kapoor. Kapoor is the racial justice lead at Amnesty International UK and previously led the policy team at the Runnymede Trust. Alba Kapoor shared the cutting edge work that Amnesty International UK is leading around racial justice, the surveilling of black and brown communities in the UK through existing policy infrastructu
Nikki Luke, "Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy" (MIT Press, 2026)
Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Nikki Luke traces the intertwined history of Atlanta’s racialized uneven development and growing electricity use to show how electricity infrastructure shapes everyday life. Nikki Luke looks at how quotidian relationships with the electric utility catalyze intersectional organizing for energy democra
How Bolsonaro was Convicted: The Role of the Judiciary During and After Autocratization
Former Brazilian president Bolsonaro was found to have attempted a coup after losing the 2022 presidential elections, and he was convicted to 27 years in prison. Such a conviction is unusual both for Brazil and in global comparison and speaks to the difficult but crucial role the judiciary can play when an elected leader tries to concentrate power and exceed constitutional constraints. In this sec
Masako Ichihara, "Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law" (Brill, 2026)
Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law (Brill, 2026) provides the details of Japanese climate litigation, positioning them both within the global trends of climate litigation and on the trajectory of Japanese past pollution lawsuits. It identifies the barriers that hinders the number of climate cases in Japan, a country known with a sign
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