Faculty Publications

2021 

In this lively analysis, Daniel Wirls examines the Senate in relation to our other institutions of government and the constitutional system as a whole, exposing the role of the "world’s greatest deliberative body" in undermining effective government and maintaining white supremacy in America. Read more.

Hiroshi Fukurai and Richard Krooth, Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law: The Quest for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Nature in the Age of Anthropocene (2021)

In contrast to traditional and canonical state-centric narratives, the Original Nation scholarship offers a diametrically distinct “on-the-ground” and “bottom-up” portrait of the struggle, resistance, and defiance of the nation and peoples. It exposes persistent global patterns of genocide, ecocide, and ethnocide that have resulted from attempts by the state to occupy, suppress, exploit, and destroy the nation. The Original Nation scholarship offers a powerful and widely applicable intellectual tool to examine the history of resilience, emancipatory struggles, and collective efforts to build a vibrant alternative world among the nation and peoples across the globe. Read more.

Mark Fathi Massoud, Shari‘a, Inshallah
Finding God in Somali Legal Politics (2021)

Western analysts have long denigrated Islamic states as antagonistic, even antithetical, to the rule of law. Mark Fathi Massoud tells a different story: for nearly 150 years, the Somali people have embraced shari'a, commonly translated as Islamic law, in the struggle for national identity and human rights. Lawyers, community leaders, and activists throughout the Horn of Africa have invoked God to oppose colonialism, resist dictators, expel warlords, and to fight for gender equality - all critical steps on the path to the rule of law. Shari'a, Inshallah traces the most dramatic moments of legal change, political collapse, and reconstruction in Somalia and Somaliland. Massoud upends the conventional account of secular legal progress and demonstrates instead how faith in a higher power guides people toward the rule of law. Read more.

Awards: (1) Choice Outstanding Academic Title; (2) Ralph J. Bunche Award, American Political Science Association; (3) Hart SLSA Book Prize, Socio-Legal Studies Association; (4) Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion, American Sociological Association; (5) BKFS Prize for Best Book in Middle East Studies; (6) PROSE Award Finalist, Association of American Publishers

2020

Craig Haney, Criminality in Context: The Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform (2020)

In this groundbreaking book that is built on decades of work on the front lines of the criminal justice system, expert psychologist Craig Haney encourages meaningful and lasting reform by changing the public narrative about who commits crime and why.

Based on his comprehensive review and analysis of the research, Haney offers a carefully framed and psychologically based blueprint for making the criminal justice system fairer, with strategies to reduce crime through proactive prevention instead of reactive punishment. Read more.

2019

Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora, Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures (2019)

In Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoki and Kalindi Vora trace the way s in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy.

Analyzing myriad technologies, from sex robots and military drones to sharing-economy platforms, Atanasoski and Vora show how liberal structures of antiblackness, settler colonialism, and patriarchy are fundamental to human---machine interactions, as well as the very definition of the human. Read More.

2017

Jon D. Daehnke, Chinook Resilience: Heritage and Cultural Revitalization on the Lower Columbia River (2017)

Chinook Resilience is a collaborative ethnography of how the Chinook Indian Nation, whose land and heritage are under assault, continues to move forward and remain culturally strong and resilient.

Jon Daehnke focuses on Chinook participation in archaeological projects and sites of public history as well as the tribe’s role in the revitalization of canoe culture in the Pacific Northwest. Read more.

2015

 Elizabeth Beaumont, The Civic Constitution: Civic Visions and Struggles in the Path toward Constitutional Democracy (2015)

How have generations of Americans debated and shaped the constitutional meanings of liberty, equality, justice, and “We, the people”? What roles have engaged citizens and social movements played in advancing transformative constitutional change? These questions are at the heart of The Civic Constitution. Beaumont's compelling study explores four crucial struggles to imagine -- and reinvent -- the terms, structure, and membership of American democracy: the broad swath of revolutionaries who catalyzed the Declaration of Independence and first state constitutions; the conflicting voices and critics who influenced the national Constitution and Bill of Rights; the white and black abolitionists whose prefigurative arguments and actions paved the way for the Reconstruction Amendments during the antebellum and Civil War eras; and the conflicting schools of nineteenth- and twentieth-century suffragists whose ideas and efforts sparked the Nineteenth Amendment. 

 Throughout, she argues that these groups should be recognized as civic founders of the U.S. Constitution. Through “newspaper wars” and petitions, conventions and speeches, sermons, boycotts, and protests, these men and women worked to redefine fundamental law.  Challenging established authority, they advocated vital new understandings of popular self-governance, rights, and citizenship. Indeed, though their roles are often overlooked in contemporary debates, these civic reformers shaped the legal texts and terms of modern constitutionalism -- and they reconstructed its civic membership, norms, and fundamental commitments. This richly documented study offers a keener understanding of the Constitution and its development, and a more profound perception of civic identity and democracy itself. 

Dan Wirls, The Federalist Papers and Institutional Power In American Political Development (2015)

This book reconnects The Federalist Papers to the study of American politics and political development, arguing that the papers contain previously unrecognized theory of institutional power, a theory that enlarges and refines the contribution of the papers to political theory, but also reconnects the papers to the study of American politics. Read more.

Eva Bertram, The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats (2015)

In the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the United States suffered the most sustained and extensive wave of job destruction since the Great Depression. When families in need sought help from the safety net, however, they found themselves trapped in a system that increasingly tied public assistance to private employment. In The Workfare State, Eva Bertram recounts the compelling history of the evolving social contract from the New Deal to the present to show how a need-based entitlement was replaced with a work-conditioned safety net, heightening the economic vulnerability of many poor families. The Workfare State challenges the conventional understanding of the development of modern public assistance policy. Read more.

Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids: The Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib (2015)

Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids: The Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib investigates the development of legal institutions in the Far Maghrib during its unification with al-Andalus under the Almoravids (434-530/1042-1147).

It posits that political unification occurred alongside urban transformation and argues that legal institutions developed in response the social needs of the growing urban spaces as well as to the administrative needs of the state. Read more. 

2014

Mark Massoud, Law’s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan (2014)

** Winner of the 2014 Herbert Jacob Book Award, Law and Society Association

Using his field research in Sudan, the author uncovers how colonial administrators, postcolonial governments and international aid agencies have used legal tools and resources to promote stability and their own visions of the rule of law amid political violence and war in Sudan. 

Refuting the conventional wisdom of a legal vacuum in failed states, this book reveals how law matters deeply even in the most extreme cases of states still fighting for political stability. Read more. 

 Barbara Rogoff, Developing Destinies: A Mayan Midwife and Town (2014)

** Winner of the 2014 Eleanor E. Maccoby Book Award

In Developing Destinies, Barbara Rogoff illuminates how individuals worldwide build on cultural heritage from prior generations and at the same time create new ways of living. 

Developing Destinies is an engaging narrative of one remarkable person's life and the life of her community that blends psychology, anthropology, and history to reveal the integral role that culture plays in human development. Read more. 

Gregory E. O'Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 (2014)

Exploring the importance of such trafficking from both captives’ and traders’ perspectives, Final Passages shows that intercolonial movements added grave dangers for captives and shaped their transfers of African cultures to the Americas. Read more. 

Melanie Jean Springer, How the States Shaped the Nation: American Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout, 1920-2000 (2014)

Advancing a general theory of participation, this work aims to link research on voting behavior and political institutions. 

It explores the underpinnings and consequences of electoral federalism over time, highlighting the numerous state electoral institutions, both restrictive and expansive, that have been instrumental in shaping American elections and voting behavior throughout the twentieth century. Read more. 

2013

Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner, The Rise of the Naked Economy:  How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace (2013)

The Rise of the Naked Economy shows readers how to achieve both personal and professional success in an economy that does not guarantee lifetime employment. Pioneers Coonerty and Neuner report from the front lines on the future of work.

From the recently graduated to the recently laid off, this book covers how the rise in non-traditional employment calls for a new infrastructure, strategy, and attitude for workers, companies, and communities alike. Read more.
 

Neda Atanasoski, Humanitarian Violence: The U.S. Deployment of Diversity (2013)

Humanitarian Violence considers U.S. militarism-humanitarian militarism-during the Vietnam War, the Soviet-Afghan War, and the 1990s wars of secession in the former Yugoslavia.

Neda Atanasoski reveals a system of postsocialist imperialism based on humanitarian ethics, identifying a discourse of race that focuses on ideological and cultural differences and makes postsocialist and Islamic nations the targets of U.S. disciplining violence. Read more.

Matthew Sparke, Introducing Globalization: Ties, Tensions, and Uneven Integration (2013)

Introducing Globalization examines a broad sweep of topics, from the rise of transnational corporations and global commodity chains, to global health challenges and policies, to issues of worker solidarity and global labor markets, through to emerging forms of global mobility by both business elites and their critics. Read more. 

2009

Jerome Neu, Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults (2009)

To find guidance on how to live in the world with the many others who impinge on our boundaries, to think about how much we should put up with those who would put us down, it is necessary to explores the nature and place of insult in our lives.

In Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults, Jerome Neu utilizes the resources of philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and law to answer the questions. Read more.