The American Law Institute describes itself as “the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law.” From the bedrock Restatements on contracts, property and torts to the influential Uniform Commercial Code to the current project on Children and the Law, ALI’s legal experts have crafted (and continue to develop) key documents to aid courts, legislatures, agencies and law teachers/students. As ALI celebrates one hundred years of codifying and developing law, BLS librarians are proud to note that ALI’s history is Brooklyn Law School’s history. Many BLS current and emeritus faculty are ALI members: William D. Araiza, Miriam H. Baer (Vice-Dean), Anita Bernstein, Dana Brakman Reiser, Neil B. Cohen, James A. Fanto, Marsha Garrison, Andrew Gold, William E. Hellerstein, Alexis J. Hoag-Fordjour, Edward J. Janger, Beryl R. Jones-Woodin, Roberta S. Karmel, Brian A. Lee, David D. Meyer (President and Dean), Samuel K. Murumba, Norman S. Poser, David Reiss, Alice Ristroph, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Winnie F. Taylor, Aaron D. Twerski and Joan G. Wexler (Dean and President Emerita). We invite you to view a display highlighting ALI and BLS faculty’s work on noted ALI texts and projects in the third-floor Nash reading room.
BLS patrons also can review the texts featured in this display through HeinOnline’s American Law Institute Library (a subscription database accessible on campus through the BLS network or off campus through a web browser that communicates with the BLS proxy server).
On Monday at 6 pm, BLS Professor Andrew Gold and his co-editor Robert W. Gordon (Professor of Law Emeritus, Stanford Law School) will lead a book talk and discussion in the BLS Subotnick Center on their new work: The American Law Institute: A Centennial History. As noted in its introduction, this book is a collection of essays on certain ALI undertakings. Essay authors include a number of current and former Reporters involved in Restatement projects. The chapters raise questions like: What does it really mean to “restate” the law? How does a Restatement change the direction of law? Chapter 5 has the intriguing title: “Canon and Fireworks: Reliance in the Restatements of Contracts and Reliance on Them.” BLS patrons can access a digital version of this book on campus or off campus through the BLS proxy server.
Check out their new books on the first floor of Brooklyn Law School Library.
Brooklyn Law School Library is featuring our faculty’s new books in a rotating display at the first-floor circulation desk. All of these books are available for BLS patrons to check out. Many of these sources also are accessible digitally.
The first display showcases (in alphabetical order by author):
Miriam Baer, Vice Dean and Centennial Professor of Law, author of:
Myths and Misunderstandings in White-Collar Crime (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
For digital access, click: here > in the library’s catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – CAMBRIDGE. Remote access requires implementation of the BLS proxy server instructions. Call number and location of the circulating print copies: KF9350 .B34 2023 in cellar-level Main collection. Also, there is a copy on first-floor Reserve.
Upcoming event: Book discussion featuring Vice Dean Baer – more details coming soon.
Date/location: Oct. 17, 2023, Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn NY
Cambridge University Press book description:
“Myths and Misunderstandings in White Collar Crime uses real world examples to explore the pathologies that hamper our ability to understand and redress white-collar crime. The book argues that several misinterpretations about white-collar crime continue to impede its enforcement, including: its failure to be classified according to degrees of severity in many jurisdictions; its failure to statutorily parse groups of defendants into major and minor players; and the failure of statutes to effectively define crimes, leading to the prosecution of ‘unwritten’ crimes. Miriam Baer offers a step-by-step framework, informed by theories of institutional design and behavioral psychology, for redressing these misunderstandings through ‘code design,’ or paying greater attention to how we write, frame, and lay out our federal criminal code, as a roadmap to more coherent and useful laws. A clearer, subdivided criminal code paves the way for a discussion of white-collar crime unmarred by myths and misunderstandings.”
Andrew Gold, Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Business Law and Regulation, co-editor (with Robert Gordon) of:
The American Law Institute: A Centennial History (Oxford University Press, 2023)
For digital access, click: here > in the library’s catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – OXFORD. Remote access requires implementation of the BLS proxy server instructions. Call number and location of the circulating print copy: KF294.A5 A513 2023 in cellar-level Main collection.
“This book collects together a series of original essays in honor of the American Law Institute’s (ALI’s) Centennial. The essays are authored by leading experts in their fields, often including current and former Restatement Reporters. The essays also provide a wide range of perspectives on both methodology and the law. The volume coverage focuses on specific ALI undertakings, including some of the more important Restatements and Codes; several leading Principles projects; statutory projects such as the Model Penal Code and the Uniform Commercial Code; themes that cut across substantive fields of law (such as Restatements and codification or Restatements and the common law); and the ALI’s institutional history over the past century. The resulting book is a unique and compelling contribution to its fields of study.”
Coming in October 2023: A BLS Library display commemorating American Law Institute’s 100th year anniversary and highlighting BLS faculty’s key contributions to ALI’s Projects.
Susan Herman, Centennial Professor of Law and former President of the American Civil Liberties Union, author of:
Advanced Introduction to US Civil Liberties (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023)
Call number and location of the circulating print copy: JC599.U5 H47 2023 in cellar-level Main collection. Also, there is a copy on first-floor Reserve.
Upcoming event: Civil Liberties: The Next Hundred Years (in-person/virtual (via Zoom) panel discussion featuring Professor Herman and other civil libertarians)
Date/time/location: Oct. 13, 2023, 5:00 pm ET, Brooklyn Law School, Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn NY
Edward Elgar Publishing book description:
“This insightful Advanced Introduction provides a kaleidoscopic overview of key US civil liberties, including freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion, limitations on search and seizure, due process in criminal proceedings, autonomy rights, rights of equality, and democratic participation.”
Jocelyn Simonson, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship, author of:
Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People are Dismantling Incarceration (The New Press, 2023)
For digital access, click: here > in the library’s catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – EBSCO. Remote access requires implementation of the BLS proxy server instructions. Call number and location of the circulating print book: KF9632 .S56 2023 in cellar-level Main collection. Also, there is a copy on first-floor Reserve.
Date/time/location: Oct. 23, 2023, 6:30 pm ET, Center for Brooklyn History, 128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn NY
The New Press book description:
“From reading books on mass incarceration, one might conclude that the way out of our overly punitive, racially disparate criminal system is to put things in the hands of experts, technocrats able to think their way out of the problem. But, as Jocelyn Simonson points out in her groundbreaking new book, the problems posed by the American carceral state are not just technical puzzles; they present profound moral questions for our time.
Radical Acts of Justice tells the stories of ordinary people joining together in collective acts of resistance: paying bail for a stranger, using social media to let the public know what everyday courtroom proceedings are like, making a video about someone’s life for a criminal court judge, presenting a budget proposal to the city council. When people join together to contest received ideas of justice and safety, they challenge the ideas that prosecutions and prisons make us safer; that public officials charged with maintaining “law and order” are carrying out the will of the people; and that justice requires putting people in cages. Through collective action, these groups live out new and more radical ideas of what justice can look like.
In a book that will be essential reading for those who believe our current systems of policing, criminal law, and prisons are untenable, Jocelyn Simonson shows how to shift power away from the elite actors at the front of the courtroom and toward the swelling collective in the back.”
Feel free to email askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu, text (718) 734-2432, or visit the circulation desk for help accessing these new books.
