The Intellectual Sword

The Intellectual Sword
Author: Bruce A. Kimball
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 881
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674737326

A history of Harvard Law School in the twentieth century, focusing on the school’s precipitous decline prior to 1945 and its dramatic postwar resurgence amid national crises and internal discord. By the late nineteenth century, Harvard Law School had transformed legal education and become the preeminent professional school in the nation. But in the early 1900s, HLS came to the brink of financial failure and lagged its peers in scholarly innovation. It also honed an aggressive intellectual culture famously described by Learned Hand: “In the universe of truth, they lived by the sword. They asked no quarter of absolutes, and they gave none.” After World War II, however, HLS roared back. In this magisterial study, Bruce Kimball and Daniel Coquillette chronicle the school’s near collapse and dramatic resurgence across the twentieth century. The school’s struggles resulted in part from a debilitating cycle of tuition dependence, which deepened through the 1940s, as well as the suicides of two deans and the dalliance of another with the Nazi regime. HLS stubbornly resisted the admission of women, Jews, and African Americans, and fell behind the trend toward legal realism. But in the postwar years, under Dean Erwin Griswold, the school’s resurgence began, and Harvard Law would produce such major political and legal figures as Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, and President Barack Obama. Even so, the school faced severe crises arising from the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, Critical Legal Studies, and its failure to enroll and retain people of color and women, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Based on hitherto unavailable sources—including oral histories, personal letters, diaries, and financial records—The Intellectual Sword paints a compelling portrait of the law school widely considered the most influential in the world.

On the Battlefield of Merit

On the Battlefield of Merit
Author: Daniel R. Coquillette
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 683
Release: 2015-10-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674967666

Harvard Law School pioneered educational ideas, including professional legal education within a university, Socratic questioning and case analysis, and the admission and training of students based on academic merit. On the Battlefield of Merit offers a candid account of a unique legal institution during its first century of influence.

Is International Law International?

Is International Law International?
Author: Anthea Roberts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2017
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190696419

This book challenges the idea that international law looks the same from anywhere in the world. Instead, how international lawyers understand and approach their field is often deeply influenced by the national contexts in which they lived, studied, and worked. International law in the United States and in the United Kingdom looks different compared to international law in China and Russia, though some approaches (particularly Western, Anglo-American ones) are more influential outside their borders than others. Given shifts in geopolitical power and the rise of non-Western powers like China, it is increasingly important for international lawyers to understand how others coming from diverse backgrounds approach the field. By examining the international law academies and textbooks of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Roberts provides a window into these different communities of international lawyers, and she uncovers some of the similarities and differences in how they understand and approach international law.

55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays

55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays
Author: Staff of the Harvard Crimson
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1250047234

"Harvard Law School is the premier law school in America. It as well as other top schools draw thousands of applicants from the best colleges and best companies from around the world. As the admissions departments become more and more selective every year, the competition becomes even fiercer, and even the best and brightest need an edge. 55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays is the best book for anyone looking for that edge. Through the most up-to-date sample essays from the Harvard Law School students who made the cut and the most insightful critiques advice from the staff at The Harvard Crimson, it teaches applicants how to: * Stand out * Argue their case effectively * Arrange their accomplishments for maximum impact * Avoid common pitfalls 55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays guides applicants toward writing essays that reveal their passion for the law, the discipline they bring to this demanding profession, and the strength of character they possess for the ethical and moral challenges that lie ahead. The no-nonsense advice and all new essays give applicants all the help they'll need to write the essays that will get them in to the best law schools in the world"--

Broken Contract

Broken Contract
Author: Richard D. Kahlenberg
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781558492349

In 1986, 70 percent of the first-year class of Harvard Law School wanted to pursue careers in public-interest law. Ten years later, the same percentage of this class was pursuing careers in private corporate firms. How is it that these students began their careers interested in using law as a vehicle for social change, but ended up in those very law firms most resistant to change? How are law students able to reconcile liberal politics with careers in corporate law? Richard D. Kahlenberg's Broken Contract serves to warn prospective law students on the transformation that happens during the second and third years. His memoir explores the intense competitiveness and insidious pressure leading to jobs that are lucrative, prestigious, and challenging-but ultimately unsatisfying. Though Broken Contract doesn't seek to convince every law student to go into public service, Kahlenberg means to challenge and restructure our social institutions to make it easier to follow our impulses toward good instead of toward the goods.

What the Best Law Teachers Do

What the Best Law Teachers Do
Author: Michael Hunter Schwartz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2013-08-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674728130

This pioneering book is the first to identify the methods, strategies, and personal traits of law professors whose students achieve exceptional learning. Modeling good behavior through clear, exacting standards and meticulous preparation, these instructors know that little things also count--starting on time, learning names, responding to emails.

Civil Rights Queen

Civil Rights Queen
Author: Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 152474719X

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century. • “Timely and essential."—The Washington Post “A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions--how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

Too Much Information

Too Much Information
Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262543915

The New York Times–bestselling co-author of Nudge explores how more information can make us happy or miserable—and why we sometimes avoid it but sometimes seek it out. How much information is too much? Do we need to know how many calories are in the giant vat of popcorn that we bought on our way into the movie theater? Do we want to know if we are genetically predisposed to a certain disease? Can we do anything useful with next week's weather forecast for Paris if we are not in Paris? In Too Much Information, Cass Sunstein examines the effects of information on our lives. Policymakers emphasize “the right to know,” but Sunstein takes a different perspective, arguing that the focus should be on human well-being and what information contributes to it. Government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general “right to know” but when the information in question would significantly improve people's lives. Of course, says Sunstein, we are better off with stop signs, warnings on prescription drugs, and reminders about payment due dates. But sometimes less is more. What we need is more clarity about what information is actually doing or achieving.

Helgoland

Helgoland
Author: Carlo Rovelli
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2022-05-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0593328892

Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian “Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator… This is the place where science comes to life.” ―Neil Gaiman “One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book” ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Anaximander. One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious. As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness. Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.

The Islamic School of Law

The Islamic School of Law
Author: Peri J. Bearman
Publisher: Islamic Legal Studies Program @ Harvard Law School
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

These selected papers from the III International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies, held in 2000 at Harvard Law School, offer building blocks toward the entire edifice of understanding the complex development of the madhhab, a development that, even in the contemporary dissolution of madhhab lines and grouping, continues to fascinate.