Prosecuting Heads of State

edited by Ellen L. Lutz and Caitlin Reiger

Since 1990, 67 former heads of state or government have been legitimately prosecuted for serious human rights or financial crimes. Many of these leaders were brought to trial in reasonably free and fair judicial processes, and some served time in prison as a result. This book explores the reasons for the meteoric rise in trials of senior leaders and the motivations, public dramas, and intrigues that accompanied efforts to bring them to justice.

Drawing on an analysis of the 67 cases, the book examines the emergence of regional trends in Europe and Latin America and contains eight case studies of high-profile trials of former government leaders: Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Alberto Fujimori (Peru), Slobodan Milosevic (former Yugoslavia), Charles Taylor (Liberia and Sierra Leone), and Saddam Hussein (Iraq) - studies written by experts who closely followed their cases and their impacts on wider societies. This is the only book that examines the rise in the number of domestic and international trials globally and tells the tales in readable prose and with fascinating details.

The Perils of Global Legalism

by Eric A. Posner

The first months of the Obama administration have led to expectations, both in the United States and abroad, that in the coming years America will increasingly promote the international rule of law—a position that many believe is both ethically necessary and in the nation’s best interests.

With The Perils of Global Legalism, Eric A. Posner explains that such views demonstrate a dangerously naive tendency toward legalism—an idealistic belief that law can be effective even in the absence of legitimate institutions of governance. After tracing the historical roots of the concept, Posner carefully lays out the many illusions—such as universalism, sovereign equality, and the possibility of disinterested judgment by politically unaccountable officials—on which the legalistic view is founded. Drawing on such examples as NATO’s invasion of Serbia, attempts to ban the use of land mines, and the free-trade provisions of the WTO, Posner demonstrates throughout that the weaknesses of international law confound legalist ambitions—and that whatever their professed commitments, all nations stand ready to dispense with international agreements when it suits their short- or long-term interests.

Provocative and sure to be controversial, The Perils of Global Legalism will serve as a wake-up call for those who view global legalism as a panacea—and a reminder that international relations in a brutal world allow no room for illusions.

Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble

by Herman M. Schwartz

In his exceedingly timely and innovative look at the ramifications of the collapse of the U.S. housing market, Herman M. Schwartz makes the case that worldwide, U.S. growth and power over the last twenty years has depended in large part on domestic housing markets. Mortgage-based securities attracted a cascade of overseas capital into the U.S. economy. High levels of private home ownership, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, have helped pull in a disproportionately large share of world capital flows.

As events since mid-2008 have made clear, mortgage lenders became ever more eager to extend housing loans, for the more mortgage packages they securitized, the higher their profits. As a result, they were dangerously inventive in creating new mortgage products, notably adjustable-rate and subprime mortgages, to attract new, mainly first-time, buyers into the housing market. However, mortgage-based instruments work only when confidence in the mortgage system is maintained. Regulatory failures in the U.S. S&L sector, the accounting crisis that led to the extinction of Arthur Andersen, and the subprime crisis that destroyed Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and damaged many other big financial institutions have jeopardized a significant engine of economic growth. Schwartz concentrates on the impact of U.S. regulatory failure on the international economy. He argues that the "local" problem of the housing crisis carries substantial and ongoing risks for U.S. economic health, the continuing primacy of the U.S. dollar in international financial circles, and U.S. hegemony in the world system.

Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World

by David L. Bosco

From the Berlin Airlift to the Iraq War, the UN Security Council has stood at the heart of global politics. Part public theater, part smoke-filled backroom, the Council has enjoyed notable successes and suffered ignominious failures, but it has always provided a space for the five great powers to sit down together.

Five to Rule Them All tells the inside story of this remarkable diplomatic creation. Drawing on extensive research, including dozens of interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the Council, the book chronicles political battles and personality clashes as it opens the closed doors of its meeting room. What emerges here is a revealing portrait of the most powerful diplomatic body in the world.

When the five permanent members are united, David Bosco points out, the Council can wage war, impose blockades, redraw borders, unseat governments, and levy sanctions. There are almost no limits to its authority. Yet the Council exists in a world of realpolitik. Its members are, above all, powerful states with their own diverging interests. Time and again, the Council's performance has dashed the hope that its members would somehow work together to establish a more peaceful world. But if these lofty hopes have been unfulfilled, the Council has still served an invaluable purpose: to prevent conflict between the Great Powers. In this role, the Council has been an unheralded success. As Bosco reminds us, massacres in the Balkans and chaos in Iraq are human tragedies, but conflicts between the world's great powers in the nuclear age would be catastrophic.
In this lively, fast-moving, and often humorous narrative, Bosco illuminates the role of the Security Council inthe postwar world, making a compelling case for the enduring importance of the five who rule them all.

Affirmative Action for the Future

by James P. Sterba

At a time when private and public institutions of higher education are reassessing their admissions policies in light of new economic conditions, Affirmative Action for the Future is a clarion call for the need to keep the door of opportunity open. In 2003, U.S. Supreme Court's Grutter and Gratz decisions vindicated the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action program while striking down the particular affirmative action program used for undergraduates at the university. In 2006 and 2008, state referendums banned affirmative action in some states while upholding it in others.

Taking these developments into account, James P. Sterba draws on his vast experience as a champion of affirmative action to mount a new moral and legal defense of the practice as a useful tool for social reform. Sterba documents the level of racial and sexual discrimination that still exists in the United States and then, arguing that diversity is a public good, he calls for expansion of the reach of affirmative action as a mechanism for encouraging true diversity. In his view, we must include in our understanding of affirmative action the need to favor those who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of race and sex. Elite colleges and universities could best facilitate opportunities for students from working-class and poor families, in Sterba's view, by cutting back on legacy and athletic preferences that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy white applicants.

Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars

by William Patry

Metaphors, moral panics, folk devils, Jack Valenti, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, predictable irrationality, and free market fundamentalism are a few of the topics covered in this lively, unflinching examination of the Copyright Wars: the pitched battles over new technology, business models, and most of all, consumers.

In Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, William Patry lays bare how we got to where we are: a bloated, punitive legal regime that has strayed far from its modest, but important roots. Patry demonstrates how copyright is a utilitarian government program—not a property or moral right. As a government program, copyright must be regulated and held accountable to ensure it is serving its public purpose. Just as Wall Street must serve Main Street, neither can copyright be left to a Reaganite "magic of the market."

The way we have come to talk about copyright—metaphoric language demonizing everyone involved—has led to bad business and bad policy decisions. Unless we recognize that the debates over copyright are debates over business models, we will never be able to make the correct business and policy decisions.

A centrist and believer in appropriately balanced copyright laws, Patry concludes that calls for strong copyright laws, just like calls for weak copyright laws, miss the point entirely: the only laws we need are effective laws, laws that further the purpose of encouraging the creation of new works and learning. Our current regime, unfortunately, creates too many bad incentives, leading to bad conduct. Just as President Obama has called for re-tooling and re-imagining the auto industry, Patry calls for a remaking of our copyright laws so that they may once again be respected.

Terrorism: How to Respond

by Richard English

Richard English argues here that the post-9/11 War on Terror has spectacularly failed and that we now need a radically new approach to dealing with international terrorism. Recent policies have ignored the lessons of the past, and Terrorism: How to Respond seeks to remedy this lack of vision by looking at the long history of terrorism and assessing why such violence emerges, how it is sustained, and—most crucially of all—how and why it ends.

Written by an historian who has long studied Irish terrorism and politics, this book argues that we cannot adequately respond to the practical challenge of terrorist violence around the world unless we are more honest about the precise nature of the phenomenon, and about explaining its true and complex causes. Drawing on first-hand research into terrorist organizations, Richard English offers an authoritative and accessible analysis of arguably the most urgent political problem of the twenty-first century—and how we can successfully respond to it.

Louis D. Brandeis: A Life

by Melvin Urofsky

The first full-scale biography in twenty-five years of one of the most important and distinguished justices to sit on the Supreme Court–a book that reveals Louis D. Brandeis the reformer, lawyer, and jurist, and Brandeis the man, in all of his complexity, passion, and wit.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis had at least four “careers.” As a lawyer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he pioneered how modern law is practiced. He, and others, developed the modern law firm, in which specialists manage different areas of the law. He was the author of the right to privacy; led the way in creating the role of the lawyer as counselor; and pioneered the idea of pro bono publico work by attorneys. As late as 1916, when Brandeis was nominated to the Supreme Court, the idea of pro bono service still struck many old-time attorneys as somewhat radical.

Brandeis took his seat when the old classical jurisprudence still held sway, and he tried to teach both his colleagues and the public– especially the law schools–that the law had to change to keep up with the economy and society. Brandeis often said, “My faith in time is great.” Eventually the Supreme Court adopted every one of his dissents as the correct constitutional interpretation.

A huge and galvanizing biography, a revelation of one man’s effect on American society and jurisprudence, and the electrifying story of his time.

Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security

by Gregory D. Koblentz

Biological weapons are the least well understood of the so-called weapons of mass destruction. Unlike nuclear and chemical weapons, biological weapons are composed of, or derived from, living organisms. In Living Weapons, Gregory D. Koblentz provides a comprehensive analysis of the unique challenges that biological weapons pose for international security.

At a time when the United States enjoys overwhelming conventional military superiority, biological weapons have emerged as an attractive means for less powerful states and terrorist groups to wage asymmetric warfare. Koblentz also warns that advances in the life sciences have the potential to heighten the lethality and variety of biological weapons. The considerable overlap between the equipment, materials and knowledge required to develop biological weapons, conduct civilian biomedical research, and develop biological defenses creates a multiuse dilemma that limits the effectiveness of verification, hinders civilian oversight, and complicates threat assessments.

Living Weapons draws on the American, Soviet, Russian, South African, and Iraqi biological weapons programs to enhance our understanding of the special challenges posed by these weapons for armscontrol, deterrence, civilian-military relations, and intelligence. Koblentz also examines the aspirations of terrorist groups to develop these weapons and the obstacles they have faced. Biological weapons, Koblentz argues, will continue to threaten international security until defenses against such weapons are improved, governments can reliably detect biological weapon activities, the proliferation of materials and expertise is limited, and international norms against the possession and use of biological weapons are strengthened.

The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power

by Benjamin A. Kleinerman

George W. Bush's use of the war on terror to justify the creation of a unitary executive, acting outside and even against the law, was a source of praise and blame for his administration. Immediately after 9/11, a constitutionalist would have worried about the peril of executive power, but today he might worry that we ignore its promise and distrust discretionary actions that truly ought to be taken by presidents in times of peril.

Benjamin Kleinerman addresses the fundamental question of what role discretionary executive power should play in a constitutional order, reexamining what has become an intractable debate to show that what can destroy our Constitution also has the potential to save it. Kleinerman traces this problem from Hobbes through Lincoln to address one of the central dilemmas of our post-9/11 age: how to empower the president to respond to legitimate threats without endangering the constitutional order. He stakes out a middle ground in this highly contentious debate, affirming that a president has the discretionary power to act for the public good without statutory authorization—but warning that, to remain constitutional, it must be truly discretionary power that could not be legalized.
Kleinerman articulates and defends a "constitutional politics of necessity," best exemplified by Lincoln, in which opponents should call on presidents to defend the necessity of exceptional actions and explain why they had to be taken outside the existing legal framework, beyond simply being "for the public good." He observes that Lincoln acknowledged the illegality of his actions while claiming their necessity but that Bush claimed powers as if they were permanent. He also reexamines separation of powers in light of executive discretion, suggesting that, during times of insecurity, discretionary executive power can be devoted to preservation of the Constitution so long as the other branches remain vigilant.

Kleinerman argues for a president sufficiently strong to take actions without which we cannot be secure yet sufficiently circumscribed that such actions do not become the norm. His book delineates the tough distinctions citizens need to make between the necessary exercise of extraordinary powers and the dangerous aggrandizement of unnecessary power.

Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan

by Salah M. Hassan and Carina E. Ray

The ongoing conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur has received unprecedented attention from the international media and human rights organizations, and it has captured the attention of millions of people around the world. Those seeking to learn about the conflict, as well as those who have reported on it, often rely on information produced by the various organizations that are addressing the humanitarian crises spawned by the conflict. In turn, most coverage of the Darfur crisis provides only a cursory understanding of the historical, economic, political, sociological, and environmental factors that contribute to the conflict. Moreover, the perspectives of the people of Darfur and the Sudan have not been adequately heard. As a result, Sudanese civil society's active engagement in resolving the country's problems goes unrecognized.

Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan remedies this situation by bringing together a diverse group of contributors from Sudan and beyond-scholars, activists, NGO and aid workers, members of government and the Darfurian rebel movements, and artists-who share a deep knowledge of the situation in Darfur and Sudan. Together, they provide the most comprehensive, balanced, and nuanced account yet published of the conflict's roots and the contemporary realities that shape the experiences of those living in the region. The cross-disciplinary dialogue fostered by Salah M. Hassan and Carina E. Ray yields a comprehensive understanding of the causes, manifestations, and implications of the ongoing conflict. Many of the contributors emphasize that despite the international attention Darfur has received, it is those within Darfur and Sudan-both inpreexisting organizations and in newly formed alliances-who have taken the lead in seeking local solutions.

This book features a portfolio of affecting full-color photographs of daily life in Darfur by the acclaimed photographer Issam A. Abdelhafiez and, significantly, an extensive appendix of official local and international documents about the conflict-laws, decrees, resolutions, reports, and governmental statements-that have shaped both the crisis and its global perception. Collected here for the first time, these documents are invaluable as primary sources for researchers, students, activists, NGOs, and anyone else trying to understand the complexities of the crisis.