Book Review

In “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices,” Feldman focuses on four men with remarkably diverse resumes, who, despite shared links to Roosevelt, often found themselves at odds once they joined the Court.

For generations, the assumption that selfishness drives human behavior has shaped the design of social systems in which we live and work. In his new book “The Penguin and the Leviathan: The Triumph of Cooperation Over Self-Interest,” Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler ’94 rejects this assumption as a “myth” and proposes an alternative, refreshingly optimistic model that asserts our human traits of cooperation and collaboration.

Part of the American Presidents Series, this volume, excerpted below, examines the life and political career of Andrew Johnson, possibly the nation’s worst president, according to Gordon-Reed.

Vermeule and Posner set out to explain why the traditional separations of power confining the executive have weakened over time—and why that’s not necessarily worrisome.

In her long career as a law professor, Mary Ann Glendon has seen students struggle to stay idealistic in an imperfect world. Will they lose their moral compass if they choose a life in politics? Risk irrelevance if they stick to academia? Glendon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, has explored how great statespersons and philosophers grappled with similar questions.

Assistant Professor Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03 is a specialist in the laws of war. Professor Philip Heymann ’60 is an expert in domestic law enforcement. With these different backgrounds, they decided to teach a course together on counterterrorism.

In his essays, Samuel Moyn considers topics such as human rights and the Holocaust, international courts, and liberal internationalism. Skeptical of humanitarian justifications for intervention, he writes,“[H]uman rights history should turn away from ransacking the past as if it provided good support for the astonishingly specific international movement of the last few decades.”

“Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror” (Norton, 2010) by father-and-son authors Charles Fried and Gregory Fried, explores three issues presented by Bush administration policies, primarily from ethical but also from historical and legal perspectives: torture; eavesdropping, surveillance and the right to privacy; and executive prerogative.

When, in February, Internet law expert Professor John G. Palfrey ’01 spoke at a gathering of the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society, he asked his audience to consider this trio of circumstances.

The title of Professor Mark Tushnet’s “Why the Constitution Matters” is something of a misnomer.

In his book "Negotiauctions: New Dealmaking Strategies for a Competitive Marketplace,” Professor Guhan Subramanian says that, traditionally, academics have looked at deals through one of two lenses. One branch of research examines auction theory, with roots in game theory and microeconomics. Another looks at negotiations, combining microeconomics with experimental economics, social psychology, behavior economics and law.

In the most recent U.S. presidential election, the candidates debated the wisdom of negotiating with enemies. But such a debate is not confined to political leaders. Whether it’s a dispute between countries, businesses or family members, the parties involved face a crucial decision. And Robert Mnookin ’68 offers a guide to making the right one in his new book, “Bargaining With the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight” (Simon & Schuster).

“The Road to Abolition?: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States” (New York University Press, 2009), edited by Professor Charles Ogletree Jr. ’78 and Austin Sarat, takes on an interdisciplinary exploration of the debate surrounding the death penalty at the turn of the 21st century.

“Stubborn as a Mule,” is set at a small liberal arts college in Maine. The school’s president, a right-wing economist, tries to unseat a Republican Senate moderate (and HLS grad).

“No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador” (Harvard University Press, 2009), by Clinical Professor James Cavallaro and Spring Miller ’07, analyzes the…

Professor Adrian Vermeule’s newest book is likely to raise a few judicial eyebrows. “Law and the Limits of Reason,” just published by Oxford University Press, is a broad-based criticism of the dominant role played by courts in the American lawmaking process.

At first, the notion that Israel could sit down with its sworn enemies and achieve a limited agreement to protect civilians seemed far-fetched to Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03. The year was 1997, Blum was a young officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and she’d just been assigned to a group with the task of monitoring that noble, if dubious, effort.

For all his eloquence and conviction, Jack Goldsmith is a quiet man. For three years, he remained silent about his brief and controversial stint as head of the Office of Legal Counsel in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. And even following the much-publicized publication of his book “The Terror Presidency” in September, Goldsmith does not relish the steady demand for comment about his Department of Justice tenure.

Faced with important decisions about their lives, people often make pretty bad choices—choices they would not have made if they paid full attention and possessed complete information, unlimited cognitive abilities, and complete self-control. To take just one example, many people never get around to joining their employer’s retirement savings plan, even when it is heavily subsidized.

“City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation,” forthcoming from Cornell University Press in December, examines how state laws shackle cities. Barron and Frug look at how state law determines what cities can and cannot do to raise revenue, control land use and improve schools.