referencebooks

Homosexuality: Discrimination, Criminology, and the Law

Edited by Wayne R. Dynes and Stephen Donaldson

Published by Garland, 1992

This is a 7" by 10" clothbound book running to 600 pages including the index and appendices, plus a lengthy introduction.

Part of Garland's series, "Studies in Homosexuality," this is essentially a handbook of articles discussing homosexuality and the law in U.S. history. 24 articles make up the book:

• AIDS and Mr. Korematsu: Minorities in Times of Crisis
  
• The Legal Enforcement of Morals and the So-Called Hart-Devlin Controversy
  
• From Constitutional Psychopathic Inferiority to AIDS: What Is in the Future for Homosexual Aliens?
  
• Judicial Homophobia: Gay Rights Biggest Roadblock
  
• Gay Aliens and Immigration: Resolving the Conflict Between Hill and Longstaff
  
• History, Homosexuality, and Political Values: Searching for the Hidden Determinants of Bowers v. Hardwick
  
• Gratuitous Language in Appellate Cases Involving Gay People: "Queer Baiting" from the Bench
  
• Permitting Prejudice to Govern: Equal Protection, Military Deference, and the Exclusion of Lesbians and Gay Men from the Military
  
• Hate Crimes against Lesbians and Gay Men: Issues for Research and Policy
  
• Custody Rights of Lesbian Mothers: Legal Theory and Litigation Strategy
  
• Homosexuality and the European Convention on Human Rights: What Rights?
  
• A Comparative Analysis of Dudgeon v. United Kingdom and Bowers v. Hardwick
  
• The Impact of Parental Homosexuality in Child Custody Cases: A Review of the Literature
  
• Employment Discrimination against Persons with AIDS
  
• Discrimination against Lesbians in the Work Force
  
• From this Day forward: A Feminine Moral Discourse on Homosexual Marriage
  
• There May Be Harm in Asking: Homosexual Solicitations and the Fighting Words Doctrine
  
• Lifestyles and Violence: Homosexual Victims of Assault and Murder
  
• The AIDS Epidemic and Gay Bathhouses: A Constitutional Analysis
  
• Constitutional Privacy and Homosexual Love
  
• Sexual Identity and the Constitution: Homosexual Persons as a Discrete and Insular Minority
  
• Police Harrassment of Homosexual Women and Men in New York City, 1960-1980
  
• Labouchere's Amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill
  
• Non-Commercial Sexual Solicitations: The Case for Judicial Invalidation
  

Lots of important legal issues are covered, but some legal issues of great interest to gay people are not. I notice, in particular, the lack of chapters on gay marriage and legal rights and privileges afforded to domestic partners (recognition as next of kin, medical benefits, etc.). The book is nearly fifteen years old; perhaps a more updated edition would cover these issues.

Within the legal issues it covers, however, the book is very thorough and substantial. It could be used as a monograph but functions well as a reference to the law. A good reference book.

Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court, 2nd Edition

By Tony Mauro

Published by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 2006.

This is an 8.5" by 11" hardcover book running to 415 pages including the bibliography, index, and appendices relating to the Supreme Court, plus an alphabetical list of cases that supplements their topical arrangement in the book.

"Great" in the title doesn't indicate the author's strong approval for the Supreme Court decisions he talks about so much as an estimation of their significance in setting legal precedents and shaping some aspect of society. The book takes 108 important Supreme Court decisions and summarizes them, providing some of the historical background, excerpts from the actual decisions, explanations of some of the decisions' highlights, and explorations of the decisions' impact on American society.

The book groups the cases into twenty-four topical sections. ("Voting Rights," "Commerce Power," "Free Excercise of Religion" and "Gay Rights" are some examples.) Opening the book at random, and I'm looking at the entry for Lochner v. New York, in the section on Property Rights. The first information given is the date of the decision (April 17, 1905), the legal citation (198 U.S. 45), and the URL for the actual decision on the Findlaw website. Then the decision is summarized in two sentences, and then we have about a half a page of background info, a couple of sentences on the vote, a half a page of highlights, a few sentences excerpted from the majority opinion, and then just under a page on the impact of the case. There is also a photograph of "Lochner's Home Bakery," the business whose owner was a party to the case, which connects the case to its concrete meaning in history.

The book does a good job of connecting the decisions of the Supreme Court to the flow of American history and to their real implications in people's lives, but doesn't do quite as good a job in explaining the legal reasoning involved and the implications of the decisions in terms of the interpretation of legal principles. The author placed emphasizes accessibility and relevance over depth, which is not unreasonable but should be noted.

A useful and interesting reference book with a place in public and academic libraries.

Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2004

Compiled by the Treaty Affairs Staff, Office of the Legal Adviser, Department of State.

Published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

This is a bright yellow paperback book measuring 8.5" by 11" and running to 531 pages.

The title page states,

This publication lists treaties and other international agreements of the United States on record in the Department of State on January 1, 2004 which had not expired by their terms or which had not been denounced by the parties, replaced or superseded by other agreements, or otherwise definitely terminated.

The book (which is an annual publication) is arranged in two major parts, plus an appendix. The first part lists bilateral treaties and agreements, and the second part lists multilateral treaties and agreements. The appendix tabulates documents affecting international copyright relations of the U.S., including treaties and also proclamations. For each country that has a copyright treaty or agreement with the U.S. there is a "see" reference from the topic of copyright to this appendix.

Each of the two parts has sections for each country in the world alphabetically. Under each country there are headings for subject areas covered by treaties (Mapping, Meteorological Research, Military Cemeteries and Monuments, Mutual Security, Narcotic Drugs, Occupied Territory, and Oceanography are examples of subjects of treaties between the U.S. and the United Kingdom). For each subject covered there are one or more treaties listed. A treaty citation looks like this:

Agreement providing for a meteorological research program in Barbados. Exchange of notes at Bridgetown January 7 and 15, 1963; entered into force January 15, 1963.
14 UST 109; TIAS 5276; 466 UNTS 181

That's a treaty between the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

This is an extremely important reference book, since treaties and agreements form the basis of international law, which is playing a greater role in people's lives as the world becomes more globalized. Ideally it would be an online resource with simple hyperlinks directly to the actual treaties. Some things are too obvious to do right away.

The Shorter Encyclopedia of Real Estate Terms

By Damien Abbott.

Published by Delta Alpha Publishing, 2004.

Subtitled: "Based on English and North American Practice, including Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, Scots Law, Civil Law and Latin terms."

This is a 7" by 9" paperback running to 973 pages, plus a preface, acknowledgments and a user guide.

Though called an encyclopedia of Real Estate terms, definitions are mostly on the short side, so it could equally be called a dictionary. What makes it a "shorter" encyclopedia, though, is not the brevity of the entries but the fact that French terms and lengthy references were removed from the 2nd edition of the full Encyclopedia of Real Estate.

There are about 7,500 terms defined in the book. Definitions have markers that give a special indication if the term has a geographically limited usage. Terms defined elsewhere in the Encyclopedia are indicated with bold text. There are also frequent see also references and references for further reading, as well as in-text citations to relevant statutes and case law.

The first fifteen entries in the "R" sequence are:

• rachmanism
  
• rack rate
  
• rack rent
  
• Radburn
  
• radical title
  
• radius clause or radius restriction clause
  
• range
  
• range land
  
• range line
  
• ransom strip
  
• ratable estate
  
• ratable value
  
• ratchet clause
  
• rate
  
• rate cap
  

As you can see, this book goes far beyond what someone needs to know to buy or sell a house, or even to be successful Realtor, especially because of its international scope. It seems most useful as an adjunct reference work for those studying the history or background to real estate practice and law, or wanting to get into real estate in a different English-speaking country.

Labor Guide to Labor Law, Fourth Edition

By Bruce Feldacker.

Published by Prentice Hall, 2000.

This is a 7" by 9.5" hardbound book running to 652 pages including the index and appendix, plus a long table of contents, a preface, and sections titled "About the Fourth Edition" and "Explanation of Legal Case and Statutory Citations."

The preface explains that this book aims to fulfill a previously unmet need for a text on labor law from the labor, rather than the management, perspective, for use in labor studies programs. It's intended to be used as a textbook, but it works well as a reference book due to its handy divisions into chapters and subchapters for various areas of labor law. The chapters are as follows:

1. Federal Regulation of Labor-Management Relations: A Statutory and Structural Overview
   
2. The Collective Bargaining Unit and Representation Elections
   
3. Union Organizing Rights and Election Campaigns
   
4. Protection of the Employee's Right to Union Representation
   
5. The Duty to Bargain
   
6. Strikes, Striker Rights, and Lockouts
   
7. Picketing, Boycotts, and Related Activity
   
8. Union Regulation of Work and the Antitrust Laws: Hot Cargo Agreements, Jurisdictional Disputes, and Featherbedding
   
9. Enforcement of Collective Bargaining Agreements and the Duty to Arbitrate
   
10. Union Membership and Union Security
    
11. Rights and Responsibilities of Union Members
    
12. The Duty of Fair Representation
    
13. Equal Employment Opportunity
    
14. Federal-State Relationships in Labor Relations
    

The text explains the law through reference to the statutes (included in the appendix) and detailed but not overly-long discussion of NLRB decisions. The explanations of the law are necessarily involved, since the law is complex, but they are clearly written, without much legal jargon.

The book only covers Federal law. State laws also govern labor relations, but are not included in this text, which is understandable. If you want to contribute to decisionmaking in a union at a level that requires detailed knowledge of labor law you also need a resource that covers the law in your state.

This seems to be a very well done book that fills an important need.

Dictionary of Law, Third Edition

Peter Collin Publishing, 2000.

This is a compact, 5" by 8" paperback running to 398 pages, with a very brief preface and a pronunciation guide.

The book briefly defines 7,500 terms in British, American, and European Union law. It covers formal terminology, including Latin terms, as well as more common words and even some prison slang. Pronunciations are given using the International Phonetic Alphabet (which won't help most readers very much, but is highly accurate).

The definitions of words are written very clearly and in layman's language. This means that they are easy to understand, but don't provide the technical legal nuances of definition on which lawyers rely.

Definitions don't state whether a term belongs to U.S., British, or European Union Law, and don't provide different technical definitions when a word is used differently in the legal contexts of different countries.

Most of the words in the book, contrary to expectations, are ordinary words defined according to their ordinary, as opposed to their technical legal, meaning. There are a smattering of technical terms, but most most of the words defined could be looked up in an ordinary dictionary for equally useful defitions.

What this means is that the book doesn't cover much ground in terms of the need to make the legal world more accessible to laypeople by demystifying legal jargon. This is partly a consequence of the fact that the book aims to cover the legal systems of two continents and therefore can't be very specific.

The book is somewhat useful in terms of defining common technical legal terms, so that if you have the book at hand while trying to make sense of a legal document it will generally be of help. It will not, however - unlike the great publications of NOLO Press, for example - allow a person to do some things for themselves for which they would otherwise have to hire and attorney.

Religion and American Law: An Encyclopedia

Edited by Paul Finkelman

Published by Garland, 2000.

This is a hardbound, 7" X 10" volume of 601 pages including the Subject index and the indexes of cases, in fairly small type. The list of contributors and the introduction only run a few pages.

The book gives comprehensive coverage (as near as I can tell) to the treatment of religion in American jurisprudence.

There are entries on specific cases and laws as well as on all kinds of topics that have a religious angle.

The entry on Labor Law and Religion runs five pages, as does the entry on Lemon v. Kurtzman, which was a landmark test established by the Supreme Court, for determining whether legislation encroaches on the separation of church and state.

The entry on Mormon Free Exercise in Nineteenth-Century America runs for eight and a half pages, while the entry on Tax Law and American Religion runs about fifteen and a half pages.

The articles themselves are written for a general educated audience and don't require knowledge of legal jargon, but at the same time are quite detailed about the intricacies of the legal decisions being discussed. They are pretty fascinating.

This is a really valuable reference book for anyone interested in either the free practice of religion or the separation of church and state.