Government Law

Carol Leonnig has been reporting on the Secret Service for The Washington Post for most of the last decade, bringing to light the secrets, scandals, and shortcomings that plague the agency today - from a toxic work culture to dangerously outdated equipment to the deep resentment within the ranks at key agency leaders, who put protecting the agency’s once-hallowed image before fixing its flaws. But the Secret Service wasn’t always so troubled.

When Scott Dozier was sent to Nevada’s death row in 2007, convicted of a pair of grisly murders, he didn’t cry foul or embark upon a protracted innocence campaign. He sought instead to expedite his execution—to hasten his inevitable death. He decided he would rather face his end swiftly than die slowly in solitary confinement. In volunteering for execution, Dozier may have been unusual. But in the tortuous events that led his death date to be scheduled and rescheduled, planned and then stayed, his time on death row was anything but.

In this very personal work - adapted from the original number one best seller, which the New York Times calls "as compelling as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so" - acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom.

“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers, explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention.

The Electoral College that governs America has been with us since 1804, when Thomas Jefferson's supporters redesigned it for his re-election. The Jeffersonians were motivated by the principle of majority rule. Gone were the days when a president would be elected by acclamation, as George Washington had been. Instead, given the emergence of intense two-party competition, the Jeffersonians wanted to make sure that the Electoral College awarded the presidency to the candidate of the majority, rather than minority, party.

Richard Hanania has come out of nowhere to become one of the best-known writers in the nation in the last few years. In this book, he directs his attention to the culture war that has driven society apart and presents a stunning new theory about what is going on. In a nation nearly evenly split between conservatives and liberals, the left dominates nearly all major institutions, including universities, the government, and corporate America. Hanania argues that this is as much a legal requirement as it is an issue of one side triumphing in the marketplace of ideas.

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the US Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and to cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve....

Lawyers don’t often admit this in mixed company, but Madiba Dennie wants to let you in on a secret: There's no one true way to interpret the Constitution. Americans saw just how subjective it can be when the Supreme Court denied basic bodily autonomy to millions of people in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, suggesting that our rights and liberties are frozen in a cherry-picked version of history. This is a line of constitutional interpretation called originalism—a framework that says we must be constrained by the meaning of the Constitution's text when it was written.

James Comey might best be known as the FBI director that Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he’s had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be - and how far afield it has strayed during the Trump presidency. In his much-anticipated follow-up to A Higher Loyalty, Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works.

Cobalt Red is the searing first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt.

"The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat is a seminal work in political philosophy and economics, offering a robust defense of individual liberty and property rights against the encroachments of government.

Candid and compelling, A Bigger Picture is the definitive narrative of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. He describes how he legalised same-sex marriage, established Snowy Hydro 2.0, stood up to Donald Trump and many achievements – remarkable in their pace and significance, and that they were delivered in the teeth of so much opposition. But it’s far more than just politics. Turnbull’s life has been filled with colourful characters and controversies, success and failure.

Although Roe v. Wade identified abortion as a constitutional right 45 years ago, it still bears stigma - a proverbial scarlet A. In public discussion, both proponents and opponents of abortion's legality tend to focus on extraordinary cases. This tendency keeps the national debate polarized and contentious. Professor Katie Watson focuses instead on the cases that happen the most, which she calls "ordinary abortion". Scarlet A gives the reflective listener a more accurate impression of what the majority of American abortion practice really looks like.

Uncover the hidden influence of FEMA and how its powers extend far beyond disaster relief! This book reveals how FEMA has quietly expanded its authority under the guise of managing crises, often in plain sight yet unnoticed by the public. This book explores FEMA's evolution, from its inception in 1979 through pivotal moments like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, to how its powers impact your daily life. Learn the truth about FEMA’s authority under the Stafford Act and executive orders, giving it the power to enforce evacuations, seize property, and suspend civil liberties during ...

We think of the FBI as America’s police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau’s first and foremost mission. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI as the most formidable intelligence force in American history. This is the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

No institution in American society generates as much curiosity, fear, and intrigue as the FBI. No institution can obtain so much information and penetrate so deeply into our private lives. And no institution plays a greater role in safeguarding our freedom - or potentially threatening it. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist Ronald Kessler provides a firsthand look at the people who run the Bureau, the methods they use, the powers they wield, and the secrets they hold.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.

In 1989, Ben Spencer, a twenty-two-year-old Black man from Dallas, was convicted of murdering white businessman Jeffrey Young—a crime he didn’t commit. From the day of his arrest, Spencer insisted that it was “an awful mistake.” The Texas legal system didn’t see it that way. It allowed shoddy police work, paid witnesses, and prosecutorial misconduct to convict Spencer of murder, and it ignored later efforts to correct this error. The state’s bureaucratic intransigence caused Spencer to spend more than half his life in prison.

In the immediate term, World Peace shows how steps to strengthen compliance with international law, improve collective action like international peacekeeping and peace-building, better regulate the flow of arms, and hold individuals legally accountable for acts of aggression or atrocity crimes can make our world more peaceful. In the long term, it shows that building strong, legitimate states that protect the rights and secure the livelihoods of their people, gender equal societies, and protecting the right of individuals to opt-out of wars can potentially establish world peace.

In this profoundly important reassessment of constitutional interpretation, the eminent legal philosopher Hadley Arkes argues that "originalism" alone is an inadequate answer to the judicial activism of the left. Without recourse to "mere Natural Law"—the moral principles knowable by all—our legal and constitutional system is doomed to incoherence. Brilliant in its analysis, essential in its argument, Mere Natural Law is a must-listen for everyone who cares about the Constitution, morality, and the rule of law.