New Books In Law

Who are expatriates? How do they differ from other migrants? And why should we care about such distinctions? Expatriate: Following a Migration Category (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sarah Kunz interrogates the contested category of 'the expatriate' to explore its history and politics, its making and lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, the book offers a critical reading of International Human Resource Management literature, explores the work and history of the Expatriate Archive Centre in The Hague, and studies the usage and significance of the category in Kenyan history and present-day 'expat Nairobi'. Doing so, the book traces the figure of the expatriate from the mid-twentieth-century era of decolonisation to today's heated debates about migration. The expatriate emerges as a malleable and contested category, of shifting meaning and changing membership, and as passionately embraced by some as it is rejected by others. Dr. Kunz situates the changing usage of the term

Stealing the Future is the first book to tell the true and full story of Sam Bankman-Fried and his historic crimes. It chronicles the $11 billion FTX fraud with the detail and nuance of a financial fraud expert and cryptocurrency insider – but unlike any book before it, it also traces the ideas that enabled the crime. “Effective Altruism” and related tendencies, such as longtermism and transhumanism, remain dangerously influential in today’s Silicon Valley. Despite Bankman-Fried’s pose as a cuddly liberal philanthropist, they are now center stage in the global rise of the far right, and also lie at the heart of OpenAI, the tech darling that took FTX’s place as the face of the future. In this interview, Morris explains how some of the key thought processes that drive today's techno-billionaires and how we can spot the next fraudsters in our midst.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was The Wrong Man, a bracing drama based on the real-life false arrest of Queens musician Christopher “Manny” Balestrero. Manny's ordeal is part of a larger story of other miscarriages of justice in the first half of the twentieth century.  In Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023), attorney Jason Isralowitz tells this story in a revelatory book that situates both the Balestrero case and its cinematic counterpart in their historical context. Drawing from archival records, Isralowitz delivers a gripping account of Manny’ s trial and new insights into an errant prosecution. He then examines how Hitchcock’ s film bears witness to issues that animate the contemporary innocence movement. Given the hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted in recent years, this genre-bending work of true crime and film histo

Why does Indias police force, created under British rule, still echo the priorities of a bygone empire? And what is it about this institution, tasked with maintaining the law and order, that has led to a normalization of daily violence? These are the key questions that inform the analyses in this volume by lawyers, academics and activists. Divided into four broad sections, it begins by looking at the origins of the modern police force in the 1860s and demonstrates their role in maintaining socio-cultural, economic and political hierarchies even in post-Independence India. The second section explores how the law and legal infrastructure, as well as the bureaucracy in India, work to effectively facilitate police violence and to further marginalize and criminalize certain groups, like lower castes and Muslims. The penultimate section complicates this picture, examining how police violence is shaped by historical ambivalence towards democracy, the personal and systemic dynamics between police personnel and the ac

Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society. Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership. Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalit

Why is religion today so often associated with giving and taking offense? To answer this question, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (U Chicago Press, 2023) invites us to consider how colonial infrastructures shaped our globalized world. Through the origin and afterlives of a 1927 British imperial law (Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code), J. Barton Scott weaves a globe-trotting narrative about secularism, empire, insult, and outrage. Decentering white martyrs to free thought, his story calls for new histories of blasphemy that return these thinkers to their imperial context, dismantle the cultural boundaries of the West, and transgress the borders between the secular and the sacred as well as the public and the private. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi

Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018. In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials (Simon & Schuster, 2023), Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant trials to tell the global history of witchcraft and witch-hunts. As well as exploring the origins of witch-hunts through some of the most famous trials from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, it takes us in new and surprising directions. It shows us how witchcraft was reimagined by lawyers and radical historians in France, how suspicions of sorcery led to murder in Jazz Age Pennsylvania, the effects of colonialism and Christian missionary zeal on ‘witches’ in Africa, and how even today a witch trial can come i

Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor and the Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, has a new book, Justice by Means of Democracy, that explores the foundational understanding of how humans best flourish, in particular in regard to the governmental system under which they live. Allen, author of many books that focus on questions of democracy and justice, also works on democratic reform and renovation at Partners in Democracy. Thus, Dr. Allen integrates both scholarship and democratic activism into her work as an academic and as an activist. Justice by Means of Democracy examines these different threads as well; what is justice, and how does democracy work towards achieving justice? And what is the role of the citizen in these pursuits? Allen opens up her discussion weaving together a number of threads, since politics, economics, civic engagement, and citizenship are all part of the whole when we consider both justice and democracy. Growing out of

Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857-1922 (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. In a bloody penal order, officials and judges consistently offered reduced sentences and pardons for select subjects, encouraging others to approach state institutions and confer the colonial state with greater legitimacy. Mercy was always a contested expression of sovereign power that risked exposing colonial weakness. This vulnerability was gradually recognized by colonial subjects who deployed a range of legal and political strategies to interrogate state power and question the lofty promises of British colonial justice. By the early twentieth century, the decision to break the

With rigorous scrutiny and deep care, Robin Hansen's Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow (U Regina Press, 2024) offers crucial insight into the intersections of ongoing colonial harms facing Indigenous mothers in Canada. Building from an unplanned call to Hansen from a pregnant, incarcerated Indigenous woman in 2016, Prison Born highlights how custodial prison sentences cause discriminatory and swift harm—automatically separating mothers from their children, immediately after birth. Using Access to Information requests along with extensive research, Hansen examines the legal rights of these women—the majority of whom are Indigenous—and finds that Jacquie and her son are by no means alone: automatic mother-infant separation without due process remains the norm in most jurisdictions in Canada. Prison Born calls attention to the colonial and gendered assumptions that continue to underpin the legal system—assumptions that so frequently lead to the violation of the rights and denial o

Across the globe, democracy is in crisis - in the UK alone, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypass legal norms. But how did this happen, and where might we go from here? Jonathan Sumption cuts through the political noise with acute analysis of the state of democracy today - from the vulnerabilities of international law to the deepening suppression of democracy activism in Hong Kong, and from the complexities of human rights legislation to the defence of freedom of speech. Timely, incisive and wholly original, Challenges of Democracy: And the Rule of Law (Profile Books, 2026) applies the brilliance of 'the cleverest man in Britain' to the most urgent and far-reaching political issue of our day. Jonathan Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice for six years. He is the author of the Sunday Times Bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize. Ch

During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the most creative and successful challengers in this effort was Ernst Fraenkel, who as an attorney sought to use the law as a means of opposing Nazi oppression. In Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler’s Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Douglas G. Morris describes the ways in which Frankel stood up to the Nazis and what understandings he drew from that experience. As a veteran of the First World War, Fraenkel survived the initial purge resulting from the implementation of measures designed to bar Jews from practicing law in the Third Reich. Though his legal practice suffered, Fraenkel persisted in defending people prosecuted by the Nazis, and enjoyed success in a number of cases. While the increased restrictions and growing reach of the police state ultimately forced Fraenkel to emigrate in 1938, his experiences as a lawyer played a major role in the d

During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the most creative and successful challengers in this effort was Ernst Fraenkel, who as an attorney sought to use the law as a means of opposing Nazi oppression. In Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler’s Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Douglas G. Morris describes the ways in which Frankel stood up to the Nazis and what understandings he drew from that experience. As a veteran of the First World War, Fraenkel survived the initial purge resulting from the implementation of measures designed to bar Jews from practicing law in the Third Reich. Though his legal practice suffered, Fraenkel persisted in defending people prosecuted by the Nazis, and enjoyed success in a number of cases. While the increased restrictions and growing reach of the police state ultimately forced Fraenkel to emigrate in 1938, his experiences as a lawyer played a major role in the d

International Law and Security in Indo-Pacific: Strategic Design for the Region (Routledge, 2025) edited by Dr. Joanna Siekiera uses an interdisciplinary approach to discuss international law and conflict in the Indo-Pacific region, covering topics such as maritime security, climate change and international relations. Detailing how international relations and particular state interests govern regional and global partnerships, the book provides suggestions for the future of the Indo-Pacific region. Exploring how conflict within the region has international repercussions, topics covered include the role of South-East Asian countries, and the role of statehood of small islands in Oceania. Detailing harmonization of laws and policies in the context of international security and maritime law, the book focuses on the impact of climate change and other topical issues such as cyber security and the protection of cultural identity. The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of international law, law of

Today I spoke with Senior Fellow at the Centre for Asian Law, University of Georgetown, Dr Yan-ho Lai (Eric) about his book, Legal Resistance under Authoritarianism: The Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong (Amsterdam UP, 2025). We spoke about the complexities of authoritarian consolidation by Beijing in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, and the role that lawyers have played in defending the rule of law. Uniquely positioned as both a Hong Konger and also an academic now outside Hong Kong, Dr Lai's work draws on some 77 qualitative interviews up to the period when the National Security Law was introduced in 2020. By documenting a unique transitional period in Hong Kong, this book serves as an important counterpoint to the dominant sovereign narrative and gives voice to many who are otherwise unrepresented. However, the learnings are inherently transferable in terms of bringing understanding of the role that lawyers play in defending the rule of law in situations of encroaching authoritariani

For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law'- has been marked by an intellectual quietism. Most of the scholarship tends to focus narrowly on providing 'legal' answers to 'legal' questions. For that reason, perspectives rarely engage with the insights of critical traditions of legal thought (for instance, feminist, postcolonial, or political economy-oriented perspectives) or with interdisciplinary contributions produced outside the field. Ways of Seeing International Organisations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law (Cambridge UP, 2025) edited by Dr. Negar Mansouri & Dr. Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín challenges the narrow gaze of the field by bringing together authors across multiple disciplines to reflect on the need for 'new' perspectives in international institutional law. Highlighting the limits of mainstream approaches, the authors instead interrogate international organisations as

Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands of children. These children, mostly born to African women and European men, sparked significant debate in French society about the status of multiracial people, debates historians have termed 'the métis problem.' Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research in Gabon, Republic of Congo, Senegal, and France, in Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship (Cambridge UP, 2023) Dr. Rachel Jean-Baptiste investigates the fluctuating identities of métis. Crucially, she centres claims by métis themselves to access French social and citizenship rights amidst the refusal by fathers to recognize their lineage, and in the context of changing African racial thought and practice. In this original history of race-making, belonging, and rights, Dr. Jean-Baptiste demonstrates the d

In Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford UP, 2020), Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and why two post-conflict states in Africa, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, have differed in their responses to rape and domestic violence. Specifically, she looks at the roles of the United Nations and women's movements in the establishment of specialized criminal justice sector agencies, and the referral of cases for prosecution. She argues that variation in implementation in Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire can be explained by the levels of international and domestic pressures that states face and by the favorability of domestic political and institutional conditions. Medie's study is based on interviews with over 300 policymakers, bureaucrats, staff at the UN and NGOs, police officers, and survivors of domestic violence and rape — an unprecedented depth of research into women's rights and gender violence norm implementatio

The field of employment law used to be called "master-servant law." Even if this term has fallen out of favor, a central truth has not changed: modern employment law still draws on centuries-old ideas about the rights and obligations of workers. In The Master-Servant Doctrine: How Old Legal Rules Haunt the Modern Workplace (U California Press, 2025), Elizabeth Chika Tippett combines historical context with contemporary case studies and interviews to reveal how modern law and management practices are steeped in three core master-servant principles: the right to control, the right to govern, and the duty of support. With each chapter tackling a different aspect of the workplace—including pay, time management, firing, and benefits—this startling and original story of employment law offers fresh insights for legal scholars, historians, attorneys, advocates, and anyone who's ever worked a terrible job. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, u

In The State (Princeton University Press, 2023), the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking, offering a major new account of the foundations of the state and the nature of justice. In doing so, Pettit builds a new theory of what the state is and what it ought to be, addresses the normative question of how justice serves as a measure of the success of a state, and the way it should operate in relation to its citizens and other people. Philip Pettit is L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law