Carolina Academic Press

Closing the circle; environmental justice in Indian country.

Grijalva (law, U. of North Dakota) traces the limited influence that American Indian tribes have had on the national dialogue and implementation of federal environmental programs. This lack of input results from the confluence of three separate bodies of federal law — environmental, administrative, and Indian law — which both exacerbates environmental injustice in Indian law and offers its most promising solution. Coverage includes a comparison of environmental justice issues facing Indian country and other communities; the origins of the EPA's Indian program; the application to Indian country of specific regulatory programs for water quality, air quality, and solid waste management, and the unique challenges for each; and the author's recommendations for the creation of tribal environmental management programs within the rubric of federal environmental law, which would allow tribes to be involved in decision making in a culturally relevant manner. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Directory of environmental law education opportunities at American law schools, 2d ed.

This directory, an update to the 1997 edition, lists information on environmental law education at law schools in each US state, including 15 new schools. Each school's entry includes department contacts, information on specialized environmental law programs (if present); courses; and related clubs, journals, and externships. National journals and programs are also listed. Environmental law is considered by the authors to encompass pollution control, natural resources, energy, and land use laws. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Exchange and sacrifice.

Anthropologists were invited to present ethnographic studies from the Pacific that relate in some manner to the influential theories of French anthropologist Daniel de Coppet (1933-2002) on relationships between death, exchange, sacrifice, the ancestors, and concepts of society and person. Nine papers resulted, including one by him on the monetary transfiguration of socio-cosmic relations in the Solomon Islands. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The five types of legal argument, 2d ed.

Huhn (law, U. of Akron) provides a clearly written and practical guide to legal reasoning intended for law students, lawyers, and judges. The author illustrates how to identify, create, attack, and evaluate the five types of legal argument: text, intent, precedent, tradition, and policy. He also offers instruction on how to bring the different types of argument together to make them more effective and persuasive. This, the second edition, more fully develops the theoretical and practical themes described in the book. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The interpretation game; how judges and lawyers make the law.

Benson (law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles) contends that objective interpretation of law is impossible, and that the language of interpretation contains within it "legal mysticism" that obscures the fact that traditional methods of legal interpretation are unavoidably subjective. Through text, case studies, and other examples, he explains theories of legal interpretation, including the old, the modern, the postmodern, and the "version judges use to fool themselves." Benson also looks at the practice in real life, including how laws (including the Constitution) and case laws really get their meaning. In appendices he gives information such as a review of Brown v. Board of Education and Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad. Particularly interesting is his commentary on the possibilities of finding interpretations that are not based upon personal preference or limited experience. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Legal rights and interests in the workplace.

Summers (U. of Pennsylvania), Dau-Schmidt (Indiana U.) and Hyde (Rutgers U.) offer this textbook for law students that combines collective labor law and individual employment law, two separate areas that have been examined separately in the past. The authors maintain that the purpose of merging these two areas is to show how labor laws have always been designed to protect individual workers from trends and motivation in the labor market. Minimum wage laws, health and safety laws and discrimination laws are also thoroughly examined. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The lost population; status offenders in America.

McNamara (criminal justice, The Military College of South Carolina) points out that truancy or curfew violations are "status offenses," crimes based on age. He also points out that the differences between status offenders and true delinquents have become more ambiguous as status offenders are considered to be on the verge of delinquency or are punished as if they were actually delinquent. He indicates that immediate incarceration or entry into the juvenile justice system may not be the best way of dealing with the offense or the offender. McNamara argues that although committing status offenses indicates the youth in question may be on a slippery slope, individual situations are often very complex and and may be related to a number of unresolved issues. He suggests that the current treatment of status offenders likely ensures that some youth will be detained and punished for being mistreated or neglected by parents rather than for their actual offenses and that these youths could better be served by counseling and other less severe types of intervention. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Malcolm X; a historical reader.

Malcolm X was easily one of the most important and influential black leaders of the 20th century. Editors Conyers (African American studies, U. of Houston) and Smallwood (Africana Studies, Austin Peay State U.) offer a collection of essays intended to challenge scholars in Africana studies to re-examine Africana leadership in the 19th and 20th centuries. The articles, written by approximately 25 expert contributors, also offer readers interdisciplinary tools for restoring, reconnecting, and retaining the cultural setting of Africana accomplishments. The authors take a historical perspective in providing a contemporary approach to appraising the life of Malcolm X, which provides very interesting reading. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The origins of African-American interests in international law.

Concentrating on the slave trade in North America from 1619, when the first African-Americans arrived at Jamestown, to around 1820, this book studies the development of international law and how it affected both slaves and Free Blacks. Richardson (Temple U.) draws parallels between legal matters concerning the flourishing slave trade in the New World and the rise of international law around the Atlantic Ocean basin. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The scripting of domination in medieval Catalonia; an anthropological view.

Mendonsa, a retired anthropologist, states in his introduction that this work on the development of domination by governments and the elite in medieval Catalonia is part of a larger study of domination in Europe as a whole. He chose to begin with Catalonia, because there is more documentation. His interpretation of the subject is colored by his thesis that there was organized institutional oppression throughout the period; but it is impossible to judge the validity of this thesis, because there are no referential footnotes citing sources. A bibliography at the end of each chapter includes few primary sources, mostly in translation; perhaps in the expanded study the author will rectify this deficiency.   (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)