The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws

The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws
Author: Peter Goodrich
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2021-06-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000396908

Returning to the map of the island of utopia, this book provides a contemporary, inventive, addition to the long history of legal fictions and juristic phantasms. Progressive legal and political thinking has for long lacked a positive, let alone a bold imaginary project, an account of what improved institutions and an ameliorated environment would look like. And where better to start than with the non-laws or imaginary legislations of a realm yet to come. The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws is a collection of fictive contributions to the theme of conceiving imaginary laws in the vivid vein of jurisliterary invention. Disparate in style and diverse in genres of writing and performative expression, the celebrated and unknown, venerable and youthful authors write new laws. Thirty-five dissolute scholars, impecunious authors and dyspeptic artists from a variety of fields including law, film, science, history, philosophy, political science, aesthetics, architecture and the classics become, for a brief and inspiring instance, legislators of impossible norms. The collection provides an extra-ordinary range of inspired imaginings of other laws. This momentary community of radial thought conceives of a wild variety of novel critical perspectives. The contributions aim to inspire reflection on the role of imagination in the study and writing of law. Verse, collage, artworks, short stories, harangues, lists, and other pleas, reports and pronouncements revivify the sense of law as the vehicle of poetic justice and as an art that instructs and constructs life. Aimed at an intellectual audience disgruntled with the negativity of critique and the narrowness of the disciplines, this book will appeal especially to theorists, lawyers, scholars and a general public concerned with the future of decaying laws and an increasingly derelict legal system.

How to Leave Prison Early

How to Leave Prison Early
Author: Reggie Garcia
Publisher:
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2015-01-30
Genre: Parole
ISBN: 9781937918835

Florida has nearly 101,000 inmates in 49 major state prisons and numerous correctional facilities called annexes and work camps.A clemency commutation of sentence and parole are alternate paths to the same goal, which is to release the inmate early. Both involve compassion, redemption, and forgiveness, and are the ultimate grant of a second chance. To get either, you must convince elected or appointed officials that the inmate will never commit another serious crime. However, clemency and parole involve different decision-makers, rules and timeframes.Here is the so-called secret sauce (the actual "how-to" steps to leave prison early), written by one of Florida's most distinguished clemency lawyers.

Behind Closed Doors

Behind Closed Doors
Author: Yan Campagnolo
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774867116

In an era where government transparency and accountability are considered fundamental values, does Cabinet secrecy still have a place? The legal and political rules that protect the confidentiality of collective decision-making at the highest level of the state executive have come under increasing scrutiny in Canada. Behind Closed Doors: The Law and Politics of Cabinet Secrecy is the first comprehensive work on this controversial doctrine. Yan Campagnolo defends the practice of Cabinet secrecy by demonstrating that it is essential to the proper functioning of responsible government, while finding that the statutory provisions that support secrecy at the federal level are excessively broad and possibly unconstitutional. Employing a comparative analysis of the rules that apply provincially in Canada and in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, this meticulous work proposes a feasible solution: specific reforms that would achieve a better balance between transparency and confidentiality.

No Contest

No Contest
Author: Ralph Nader
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 461
Release: 1998-12-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0375752587

The legal rights of Americans are threatened as never before. In No Contest, Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith reveal how power lawyers--Kenneth Starr perhaps the most notorious among them--misuse and manipulate the law at the expense of fairness and equity. Nader and Smith document how corporate lawyers File baseless lawsuits Use court secrecy to their unfair advantage Engage in billing fraud Nader and Smith sound the warning that this system-wide abuse is eroding our basic legal rights, and propose a positive, commonsense vision of what should be done to reverse the corporate-inspired corruption of civil justice. Timely, incisive, and highly readable, this is a book for all citizens who believe that prompt access to justice is the backbone of democracy, and a precious right to be reclaimed.

The Cabinet

The Cabinet
Author: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674986482

The US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet—the delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected the idea. So how did George Washington create one of the most powerful bodies in the federal government? On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries—Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph—for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Washington was on his own. Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections, and constitutional challenges—and finding congressional help lacking—Washington decided he needed a group of advisors he could turn to. He modeled his new cabinet on the councils of war he had led as commander of the Continental Army. In the early days, the cabinet served at the president’s pleasure. Washington tinkered with its structure throughout his administration, at times calling regular meetings, at other times preferring written advice and individual discussions. Lindsay M. Chervinsky reveals the far-reaching consequences of Washington’s choice. The tensions in the cabinet between Hamilton and Jefferson heightened partisanship and contributed to the development of the first party system. And as Washington faced an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body to summon as needed, greatly expanding the role of the president and the executive branch.