Prosecutors and Democracy

Prosecutors and Democracy
Author: Máximo Langer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2017-10-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107187559

The first sustained, scholarly examination of the relationship between prosecutors and democracy from a cross-national, cross-disciplinary perspective. Written by a team of internationally distingushed contributors, this is an ideal resource for legal scholars and reformers, political philosophers, and social scientists.

Prosecutors and Democracy

Prosecutors and Democracy
Author: Máximo Langer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-12-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781316638149

Focusing on the relationship between prosecutors and democracy, this volume throws light on key questions about prosecutors and the role they should play in liberal self-government. Internationally distinguished scholars discuss how prosecutors can strengthen democracy, how they sometimes undermine it, and why it has proven so challenging to hold prosecutors accountable while insulating them from politics. The contributors explore the different ways legal systems have addressed that challenge in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. Contrasting those strategies allows an assessment of their relative strengths - and a richer understanding of the contested connections between law and democratic politics. Chapters are in explicit conversation with each other, facilitating comparison and deepening the analysis. This is an important new resource for legal scholars and reformers, political philosophers, and social scientists.

Doing Justice

Doing Justice
Author: Preet Bharara
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0525521135

*A New York Times Bestseller* An important overview of the way our justice system works, and why the rule of law is essential to our survival as a society—from the one-time federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, and host of the Doing Justice podcast. Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, he argues, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws both in our justice system and in human nature. Bharara uses the many illustrative anecdotes and case histories from his storied, formidable career—the successes as well as the failures—to shed light on the realities of the legal system and the consequences of taking action. Inspiring and inspiringly written, Doing Justice gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can help us achieve truth and justice in our daily lives. Sometimes poignant and sometimes controversial, Bharara's expose is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system as well as in our society.

Prosecutors and Democracy

Prosecutors and Democracy
Author: Máximo Langer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2017-10-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1316949931

Focusing on the relationship between prosecutors and democracy, this volume throws light on key questions about prosecutors and the role they should play in liberal self-government. Internationally distinguished scholars discuss how prosecutors can strengthen democracy, how they sometimes undermine it, and why it has proven so challenging to hold prosecutors accountable while insulating them from politics. The contributors explore the different ways legal systems have addressed that challenge in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. Contrasting those strategies allows an assessment of their relative strengths - and a richer understanding of the contested connections between law and democratic politics. Chapters are in explicit conversation with each other, facilitating comparison and deepening the analysis. This is an important new resource for legal scholars and reformers, political philosophers, and social scientists.

Ruling by Cheating

Ruling by Cheating
Author: András Sajó
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108956319

There is widespread agreement that democracy today faces unprecedented challenges. Populism has pushed governments in new and surprising constitutional directions. Analysing the constitutional system of illiberal democracies (from Venezuela to Poland) and illiberal phenomena in 'mature democracies' that are justified in the name of 'the will of the people', this book explains that this drift to mild despotism is not authoritarianism, but an abuse of constitutionalism. Illiberal governments claim that they are as democratic and constitutional as any other. They also claim that they are more popular and therefore more genuine because their rule is based on conservative, plebeian and 'patriotic' constitutional and rule of law values rather than the values liberals espouse. However, this book shows that these claims are deeply deceptive - an abuse of constitutionalism and the rule of law, not a different conception of these ideas.

Captured

Captured
Author: Sheldon Whitehouse
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2017-02-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1620972085

A U.S. senator, leading the fight against money in politics, chronicles the long shadow corporate power has cast over our democracy In Captured, U.S. Senator and former federal prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse offers an eye-opening take on what corporate influence looks like today from the Senate Floor, adding a first-hand perspective to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. Americans know something is wrong in their government. Senator Whitehouse combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide the first hands-on, comprehensive explanation of what's gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. Captured reveals an original oversight by the Founders, and shows how and why corporate power has exploited that vulnerability: to strike fear in elected representatives who don’t “get right” by threatening million-dollar "dark money" election attacks (a threat more effective and less expensive than the actual attack); to stack the judiciary—even the Supreme Court—in "business-friendly" ways; to "capture” the administrative agencies meant to regulate corporate behavior; to undermine the civil jury, the Constitution's last bastion for ordinary citizens; and to create a corporate "alternate reality" on public health and safety issues like climate change. Captured shows that in this centuries-long struggle between corporate power and individual liberty, we can and must take our American government back into our own hands.

Tried and Convicted

Tried and Convicted
Author: Michael D. Cicchini
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2012-07-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1442217197

When an individual is accused of a crime he is provided, at least in theory, with numerous constitutional rights throughout the legal process. These constitutional rights, however, are soft and flexible, and are subject to a tremendous amount of manipulation by police, prosecutors, and judges. The result is that these government agents are easily able to bypass, and in fact destroy, our constitutional protections. This abuse of our fundamental rights is extremely dangerous. Far from being mere technicalities, constitutional rights benefit all citizens, not just the factually guilty, in ways that go unappreciated by most of us. In today’s hyper-vigilant, tough-on-crime climate, many good people from all walks of life find themselves charged with serious crimes for behaving in ways that most of us would be shocked to learn are criminal. For these reasons, it is in all of our interests to ensure strong constitutional safeguards for everyone. Tried and Convicted explains several individual constitutional rights that are intended to protect us from the vagaries of the criminal justice system, and gives detailed examples of how government agents routinely circumvent those rights. It also exposes the underlying problems that enable government agents to circumvent the constitution, and concludes by offering potential solutions to these problems. Using real life examples throughout, Cicchini provides a wake-up call for all of us.

Stealing Our Democracy

Stealing Our Democracy
Author: Don Siegelman
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1588384306

In a searing political memoir, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman explodes the myth of an impartial U.S. justice system. He should know. Arguably the most successful and promising politician in modern Alabama history, his three-decade career in public service ran afoul of Republican opponents who used the federal judicial system to take him out of contention in Alabama and nationally. Siegelman ultimately was sentenced to 88 months in federal prison and served five years, with long stretches in solitary confinement during which he was a literal political prisoner, cut off from interviews and outside contact. Stealing Our Democracy reveals how Siegelman’s enemies — including politicized prosecutors and a corrupt judge — stripped him of his freedom, his career, and his law license, and deprived him of his family and friends. His is an intensely personal account of how our system can fail and be abused for political greed. And if it could happen to him, he writes, it can happen to any of us, particularly in an era when Donald Trump is abusing his power and using the Department of Justice as a political weapon to defend himself and to destroy those who oppose him. Siegelman draws on his experience as a public servant and an inmate to show why the nation’s prisons must be reformed along with our system of indictment, prosecution, and sentencing. Finally, Stealing Our Democracy offers a blueprint for voters in 2020 of what must be done to preserve democracy.

Core Concepts in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice

Core Concepts in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice
Author: Kai Ambos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 507
Release: 2020-01-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108483399

A comparative and collaborative study of the foundational principles and concepts that underpin different domestic systems of criminal law.