Washington and Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons

Follow

• 

  Crossing the River Styx: The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain (2023)

  Russ Ford, Charles Peppers, and Todd C. Peppers

  The Reverend Russ Ford, who served as the head chaplain on Virginia’s death row for eighteen years, raged against the inequities of the death penalty—now outlawed in Virginia—while ministering to the men condemned to die in the 1980s and 1990s. Ford stood watch with twenty-eight men, sitting with them in the squalid death house during the final days and hours of their lives. In July 1990 he accidentally almost became the 245th person killed by Virginia’s electric chair as he comforted Ricky Boggs in his last moments, a vivid episode that opens this haunting book.

  Many chaplains get to know the condemned men only in these final moments. Ford, however, spent years working with the men of Virginia’s death row, forging close bonds with the condemned and developing a nuanced understanding of their crimes, their early struggles, and their challenges behind bars. His unusual ministry makes this memoir a unique and compelling read, a moving and unflinching portrait of Virginia’s death row inmates. Revealing the cruelties of the state-sanctioned violence that has until recently prevailed in our backyard, Crossing the River Styx serves as a cautionary tale for those who still support capital punishment.

• 

  We Shouldn’t Need Roe, in A War on My Body; A War on My Rights (Paxton Smith et al., 2022)

  Carliss Chatman

  A War on My Body; A War on My Rights is a profoundly personal and collaborative book led by Texas high school Valedictorian Paxton Smith, with contributions from numerous reproductive rights activists and public personalities, including renowned women's rights lawyer Gloria Allred, reproductive and immigrant justice warrior Sadie Hernandez, New York Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney, victims rights attorney Judie Saunders and former Texas Senator Wendy Davis. The book will be released on January 22, 2022--49 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to protect a pregnant woman's rights to abortion in the landmark Roe vs. Wade case.

  A riveting, educational, and powerful assemblage from a multitude of global leaders, entertainers, educators, medical and legal professionals spanning several generations and walks of life. A War on My Body; A War on My Rights chronicles the history of abortion rights, its role in gender equality and its cruciality to healthcare infrastructure while offering a mosaic of raw, passionate perspective of the crisis concerning women's reproductive rights and the dire impending consequences should the right to choose wane in the United States and on a global scale. It is a tribute to leadership and advocacy, illuminating the voices of those willing to take a stand on an issue that has long been cloaked in controversy and dishonor.

• 

  Business Organizations: An Experiential Approach (2022)

  Carliss N. Chatman and Carla L. Reyes

  Business Organizations: An Experiential Approach seeks to prepare students for the bar exam, upper-level business courses, and the realities of business law practice by covering the fundamentals while also exposing students to real-world business law considerations. At heart, the book's approach marries the case study method utilized in business schools with practice documents and traditional doctrinal approaches.

  The text maintains reliance on cases, statutes, and legal summaries, but also includes an equal amount of progressively difficult problems: Q&A, case studies, problems, and chapter capstones. The chapter capstone exercises can be incorporated into the curriculum to create a hybrid doctrinal and skills class, or they can be used for evaluation purposes. The text integrates these methods into the fabric of doctrinal learning, reinforcing student learning and giving students early exposure to the practice of business law.

• 

  The International Criminal Court and Cultural Property: What Is the Crime?, in The Preservation of Art and Culture in Times of War (Claire Finkelstein et al. eds., 2022)

  Mark A. Drumbl

  Conflict over cultural heritage has increasingly become a standard part of war. Today, systematic exploitation, manipulation, attacks, and destruction of cultural heritage by state and non-state actors form part of most violent conflicts across the world. Such acts are often intentional and based on well-planned strategies for inflicting harm on groups of people and communities. With this increasing awareness of the role cultural heritage plays in war, scholars and practitioners have progressed from seeing conflict-related destruction of cultural heritage as a cultural tragedy to understanding it as a vital national security issue. There is also a shift from the desire to protect cultural property for its own sake to viewing its protection as connected to broader agendas of peace and security. Concerns about cultural heritage have thus migrated beyond the cultural sphere to worries about the protection of civilians, the financing of terrorism, societal resilience, post-conflict reconciliation, hybrid warfare, and the geopolitics of territorial conflicts. This volume seeks to deepen public understanding of the evolving nexus between cultural heritage and security in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a variety of disciplines and perspectives, the chapters in this volume examine a complex set of relationships between the deliberate destruction and misuse of cultural heritage in times of conflict, on the one hand, and basic societal values, legal principles, and national security, on the other.

• 

  Collaboration and Opportunism in Communist Czechoslovakia, in Collaboration in Authoritarian and Armed Conflict Settings (Juan Espindola & Leigh A. Payne eds., 2022)

  Mark A. Drumbl and Barbora Holá

  Who is the collaborator, or in whose eyes? What is the motivation to collaborate: for material gain, for ideology, for duty? When is collaboration betraying a hated enemy, and when is it something else: personal revenge or an instrumental, rational, or even coerced response to a situation, for example? Why do collaborators meet such harsh punishment and stigma when they are revealed as such? Can they ever atone or find redemption? Beyond the perception of the stakeholders involved, how harmful is collaboration? Does it exacerbate or abate violence? Is it always evil or can it sometimes be seen as mitigating wrongs? The chapters in Collaboration in Authoritarian and Armed Conflict Settings explore these thorny questions through a set of case studies, disciplinary approaches, and temporal and regional contexts. They show the range of the types of collaboration; the ubiquity of collaboration across time, countries, political systems, and political and cultural conflicts.

• 

  The Developing Narratives of Pandemic Surveillance, in Pandemic Surveillance: Privacy, Security, and Data Ethics (Margaret Hu ed., 2022)

  Joshua A.T. Fairfield

  As the COVID-19 pandemic surged in 2020, questions of data privacy, cybersecurity, and the ethics of surveillance technologies centred an international conversation on the benefits and disadvantages of the appropriate uses and expansion of cyber surveillance and data tracking. This timely book examines and answers these important concerns.

• 

  The German Legal System and Courts, in The Oxford Handbook of German Politics (Klaus Larres et al. eds., 2022)

  Russell A. Miller

  Few countries have caused or experienced more calamities in the 20th century than Germany. The country emerged from the Cold War as a newly united and sovereign state, eventually becoming Europe's indispensable partner for all major domestic and foreign policy initiatives. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of some of the major issues of German domestic politics, economics, foreign policy, and culture by leading experts in their respective fields. This book serves primarily as a reference work on Germany for scholars and an interested public, but through this broader lens it also provides a magnifying glass of global developments which are challenging and transforming the modern state. The growing importance of Germany as a political actor and economic partner makes this endeavor all the more timely and pertinent from a German, European, and global perspective.

• 

  Experiencing Civil Procedure (3d ed. 2022)

  James E. Moliterno

  This is the first primary text for a Civil Procedure course to incorporate skills assignments into the book. The book contains the statutes, rules, and edited cases that are the staples of traditional Civil Procedure casebooks. Beyond thoroughly covering the traditional materials, the book actively involves students in the application of civil procedure concepts. It includes three simple simulation cases: one contracts-based, one torts-based, and one blended case, all calibrated for use by first year students. Sample documents from real cases are also included, giving practical context to concepts. Reading the sample documents allows students to see how lawyers engage the civil procedure concepts in actual work. Students using this book will engage in experiential learning exercises, including drafting the jurisdictional allegations for complaints, drafting very simple pleadings and motions, and responding to supervisor email messages.

• 

  Global Issues in the Legal Profession (3d ed., 2022)

  James E. Moliterno and Katerina P. Lewinbuk

  This book is designed to facilitate the introduction of modern international, transnational, and comparative law issues into a traditional course on professional responsibility and can be used as a supplement in an otherwise domestic-only course. It can also serve as the main text for a summer-abroad, a “global lawyering” type seminar or other compressed course in comparative legal ethics and profession. The book employs a user-friendly format, logical structure, and manageable length with its chapters designed to be used in any combination or order. It also contains numerous hypotheticals to support class discussion or student presentations that can be found at the end of each section.

• 

  Analysis of the Application of the Code of Ethics of Judges and Jurors (2022)

  James Moliterno, Jemali Saiti, Ana Pavlovska-Daneva, and Andrej Bozhinovski

• 

  Global Intersectionality and Contemporary Human Rights (2021)

  Johanna Bond

  Global Intersectionality and Contemporary Human Rights argues for an expansive definition of human rights, one that encompasses the harm caused by multiple, intersecting forms of subordination. Intersectionality theory posits that aspects of identity, such as race and gender, are mutually constitutive and intersect to create unique experiences of discrimination and subordination. Perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict, of example, often target women based on both gender and ethnicity. Human rights remedies that fail to capture the intersectional nature of human rights violations do not offer comprehensive redress to victims.

  This title explores the influence of intersectionality theory on human rights in the modern era and traces the evolution of intersectionality as a theoretical framework in the United States and around the world. It draws upon feminist theory and human rights jurisprudence to argue that scholars and activists have under-utilized intersectionality theory in the global discourse of human rights. As the central intergovernmental organization charged with the protection of human rights, the United Nations has been slow to embrace the insights gained from intersectionality theory. This work argues that the United Nations and other human rights organizations must more actively embrace intersectionality as an analytical framework in order to fully address the complexity of human rights violations around the world.

• 

  Intersectionality, Women’s Rights in Africa, and the Maputo Protocol, in Patriarchy and Gender in Africa (Veronica Fynn Bruey ed., 2021)

  Johanna E. Bond

  This timely and expansive multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary collection dissects precolonial, colonial, and post-independence issues of male dominance, power, and control over the female body in the legal, socio-cultural, and political contexts in Africa. Contributors focus on the historical, theoretical, and empirical narratives of intersecting perspectives of gender and patriarchy in at least ten countries across the major sub-regions of the African continent. In these well-researched chapters, authors provide a deeper understanding of patriarchy and gender inequality in identifying misogyny, resisting male supremacy, reforming discriminatory laws, embracing human-centered public policies, expanding academic scholarship on the continent, and more.

• 

  Companies Are People Too (2021)

  Carliss Chatman

  Companies are People Too is a children's book that addresses the fundamental notion of personhood and how it enables companies to do business in the world just like human beings. It gives some everyday examples of what personhood allows a business to do—like having employees, signing contracts, and suing or being sued.

• 

  Prosecutors and Sentencing, in The Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors and Prosecution (Ronald F. Wright et al. eds., 2021)

  Nora V. Demleitner

  This Handbook connects the dots among existing theoretical and empirical research related to prosecutors. Major sections of the volume cover (1) prosecutor performance during distinct phases of a criminal case, (2) the features of the prosecutor's environment, both inside the office and external to the office, that influence the choices of individual prosecutors and office leaders, and (3) prosecutorial strategies and priorities when dealing with specialized types of crimes, victims, and defendants. Taken together, the chapters in this volume identify the founding texts, discuss leading theoretical and methodological approaches, explain the scope of unresolved issues, and preview where this field is headed. The volume provides a bottom-up view of an important new scholarly field.

• 

  Taking the Mystery Out of Examinations—The Audit Process, in Effectively Representing Your Client Before the IRS (8th ed. 2021)

  Michelle Lyon Drumbl and Tom Greenaway

  Published by the American Bar Association Tax Section and now in its 8th Edition, Effectively Representing Your Client Before the IRS is a comprehensive collection of everything a tax professional should know when dealing with the IRS. Written by some of the most experienced tax controversy lawyers in the United States, this two-volume reference provides an in-depth discussion of the law and is replete with realistic examples and hundreds of practice tips to aid tax practitioners during all stages of representation before the IRS in controversy matters, including exam, appeals, Tax Court, refund actions, and collection matters. The companion website contains select audio and video recordings, gleaned from past ABA Tax Section meetings and webinars, and is supplemented with meeting materials relevant to practice.

• 

  Runaway Technology: Can Law Keep Up? (2021)

  Joshua A.T. Fairfield

  In an era of corporate surveillance, artificial intelligence, deep fakes, genetic modification, automation, and more, law often seems to take a back seat to rampant technological change. To listen to Silicon Valley barons, there's nothing any of us can do about it. In this riveting work, Joshua A. T. Fairfield calls their bluff. He provides a fresh look at law, at what it actually is, how it works, and how we can create the kind of laws that help humans thrive in the face of technological change. He shows that law can keep up with technology because law is a kind of technology - a social technology built by humans out of cooperative fictions like firms, nations, and money. However, to secure the benefits of changing technology for all of us, we need a new kind of law, one that reflects our evolving understanding of how humans use language to cooperate.

• 

  Commentary on Pierson v. Post, in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions in Property (Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod & Elena Maria Marty-Nelson eds., 2021)

  Jill M. Fraley

  How could feminist perspectives and methods change the shape of property law? This volume assembles a group of diverse scholars to explore this question by presenting fundamental property law cases rewritten from a feminist perspective. The cases cover a broad range of property law topics, from landlord-tenant rights and obligations, patents, and zoning to publicity rights, land titles, concurrent ownership, and takings. These rewritten opinions and their accompanying commentaries demonstrate how incorporating feminist theories and methods could have made property law more just and equitable for women and marginalized groups. The book also shows how property law is not neutral but is shaped by the society that produces it and the judges who apply it.

• 

  Property: Hypotheticals, Self-Assessment Rubrics, and Tools for Success (2021)

  Jill M. Fraley

  An innovative exam preparation tool, Property: Hypotheticals, Self-Assessment Rubrics, and Tools for Success addresses crucial problems students face as they approach exams. Exam-style hypotheticals are hard to find and never have detailed grading rubrics that will produce accurate scoring and actionable feedback. This book is equally helpful as a supplement to the basic property law course, a coursebook for academic success, or a practice book for the bar.

• 

  The Corporation’s Political Purpose, in Research Handbook on Corporate Purpose and Personhood (Elizabeth Pollman & Robert Thompson eds., 2021)

  Sarah C. Haan

  Featuring contributions from leading scholars, the Research Handbook invites readers to reconsider corporate purpose and personhood by offering a perceptive route to better understand changes that are already apparent in the modern corporation across the world. It provides examples of how a 21st century lens for viewing corporate purpose and personhood will leave us with a different picture and a new understanding of these topics, as well as future directions in corporate social responsibility. Chapters offer analysis of a wide range of topics related to corporate purpose and personhood, including shareholder primacy, stakeholder governance, corporate social responsibility and benefit corporations.

• 

  The Three Fiduciaries of Delaware Corporate Law—and Eisenberg's Error, in Fiduciary Obligations in Business (Arthur B. Laby & Jacob Hale Russell eds., 2021)

  Lyman Johnson

  This chapter argues that corporate law is unique in a way that is not widely recognized, and is not unique in the way it is widely thought to be.

  First, unlike other fields of law where fiduciary obligations play a key role, in corporate law, not one, not two, but three distinct actors owe fiduciary duties—executive officers, directors, and controlling shareholders. The beneficiaries of those actors' duties, the reasons for imposing duties, and the scope and demands of fiduciary duties differ for the three actors. Thus, there is not a singular duty of care and loyalty in Delaware corporate law, but multiple variations of those duties owed by multiple actors. Delaware has a law of fiduciaries, not a fiduciary law.

  Second, this chapter challenges the supposed standard of conduct-standard of review divergence first hailed in 1993 by Professor Melvin Eisenberg as unique to corporate law. The construct was descriptively inaccurate as a matter of corporate law doctrine when Professor Eisenberg first wrote, it has been little used by the Supreme Court since then—only one Supreme Court decision since 1993 uses both "standard of conduct" and "standard of review" in the same opinion—and the standards often converge rather than diverge. Where divergence does exist—infrequently—it is doubtful that unenforced standards of conduct can properly be considered to be "law" or that such divergence serves any useful purpose.

• 

  Gilbert Law Summaries: Criminal Procedure (20th ed. 2021)

  Paul Marcus and Melanie D. Wilson

  A criminal procedure outline that highlights all of the key criminal procedure decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court in an easy-to-read and easy-to-understand format that includes check lists, visual aids, and practice exam questions (and answers) ― both essay and short answer.

  Topics covered include: Fourth Amendment search and seizure ― including arrests and other detentions; the exclusionary rule; confessions ― including the rules established by Miranda v. Arizona and the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination; and a discussion of trial rights ― such as the right to a speedy trial, the right to trial by jury, and the right to counsel. The outline also discusses bail, the government’s “Brady” obligations to disclose exculpatory evidence, the burden of proof, guilty pleas, sentencing, the death penalty, ex post facto issues, appellate rights, habeas corpus, prisoners’ rights, double jeopardy, and juvenile offenders.

  The outline is an effective supplement to all criminal procedure textbooks, and standing alone provides a sound overview of all major constitutional criminal procedure issues.

• 

  Of Courtiers and Princes: Stories of Lower Court Clerks and Their Judges (Todd C. Peppers ed., 2021)

  Todd C. Peppers

  Drawing on contributions from former law clerks and judicial scholars—including an essay by Ruth Bader Ginsburg—the book provides an inside look at the professional and personal bonds that form between lower court judges and their clerks. While the individual essays often focus on a single judge and his or her corps of law clerks, including their selection process, contributions, and even influence, the book as a whole provides a macro-level view of the law clerk’s role in the rapidly changing world of lower federal and state courts, thereby offering an unusual yet crucial perspective on the inner workings of our judicial system.

• 

  The Role of Women Entrepreneurs in Rebuilding a Nation: The Rwandan Model, in Music, Business and Peacebuilding (Constance Cook Glen & Timothy L. Fort eds., 2021)

  Abbey R. Stemler and Karen E. Woody

  Business schools are placing more emphasis on the role of business in society. Top business school accreditors are shifting to mandating that schools teach their students about the social impact of business, including AACSB standards to require the incorporation of business impact on society into all elements of accredited institutions. Researchers are also increasingly focused on issues related to sustainability, but in particular to business and peace as a field.

  A strong strain of scholarship argues that ethics is nurtured by emotions and through aesthetic quests for moral excellence. The arts (and music as shown specifically in this book) can be a resource to nudge positive emotions in the direction toward ethical behavior and, logically, then toward peace. Business provides a model for positive interactions that not only foster long-term successful business but also incrementally influences society. This book provides an opportunity for integration and recognition of how music (and other art forms) can further encourage business toward the direction of peace while business provides a platform for the dissemination and modeling of the positive capabilities of music toward the aims of peace in the world today.

• 

  Fifty States, but No Room for the Stateless, in Atlas of the Stateless: Facts and Figures about Exclusion and Displacement (Ulrike Lauerhass et al. eds, 2020)

  David C. Baluarte

  “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” says a plaque on the Statue of Liberty in New York. Since its founding, the United States has welcomed immigrants and has granted them citizenship. Their children born on American soil automatically become US nationals. The current US administration is trying to overturn this proud tradition.

• 

  Children in Armed Conflict, in The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Rights Law (Jonathan Todres & Shani M. King eds., 2020)

  Mark A. Drumbl

  This chapter addresses a particularly vulnerable population of children, namely, children associated with armed forces or armed groups. These children are colloquially known as child soldiers. This chapter begins by surveying the prevalence of child soldiering globally. It then sets out the considerable amount of international law that addresses children in armed conflict, in particular, the law that allocates responsibility for child soldiering and the law that sets out the responsibility of child soldiers for their conduct. The chapter identifies significant gaps between the law and the securing of positive outcomes for former child soldiers, notably when it comes to post-conflict reintegration. The protective impulse that envisions militarized youth as faultless passive victims may not always reflect how youthful fighters see themselves nor necessarily support an emancipatory and empowering vision of how international law should promote the rights of children.