Philosophy Books

An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Phoenix Books)

Edward H. Levi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

ambiguity made clear 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 28 people found this review helpful.

Legal reasoning is famously ambiguous: there's no objective way to determine the outcome of a given case as there is with a physics problem. If you know the weight of an item and the height from which it drops, you are able to determine fairly objectively (i) the rate at which it will fall to the earth and (ii) the time it will take to fall to the earth from the point at which it is dropped. Law, unfortunately, is not so straight-forward. Understanding its assumptions is absolutely critical to developing any sort of sophisticated understanding about the ways in which law affects civilization. This book provides a broad outline of those assumptions. I suggest having at least a rudimentary background in intellectual history and political philosophy to get the most out of this book.

Editorial Review:

This volume will be of interest and value to students of logic, ethics, and political philosophy, as well as to members of the legal profession and to everyone concerned with problems of government and jurisprudence. By citing a large number of cases, the author makes his presentation of the processes of judicial interpretation particularly lucid.

Behind Bars: Surviving Prison

Jeffrey Ian Ross, Stephen C. Richards

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

This Book Tries to Do the Impossible 3 out of 5 stars.
43 of 47 people found this review helpful.

Prison is a mean ugly horrible place. The rules are all subjective until someone wants them to be otherwise. Prison is about politics not justice in America. Prison is about so much more than just what what happens in the court room.

There is NO book that can teach you to survive in prision because, life in prison is never a static picture. Prison life is just that LIFE. The minute you take an physical or intellectual snapshot of a living thing it changes in the next instant. The whole deal about surviving in prison is being able to adapt to change. Prison is an environment whose constantly changing factors are designed to keep newbie's and punks off guard. Prisons are run by the convicts with the help of the officers in ways designed to maintain many differing constantly shifting balances of power.

In prison Alliances needs passions angers and the power that goes with them are in constant play shifting ebbing and flowing to meet the needs of the moment. Survival in prison is all about making sure you know what the next game is BEFORE IT IS PLAYED by the officers or inmates. Each prison has its own heartbeat, culture and niches' that no one book could ever prepare you for. Simplistic answers to complex problems like to avoid rape fight for all you are worth in prison is stupid. Yes fighting will delay a rape but fighting alone is just posponing a rape in prison.

Surviving in prison is about fighting but also includes using your cunning to situate yourself in ways that give others reason not to see you hurt. Sometimes surviving prison is about being more brutal, cold hearted or creul than others. Smart people with skills can sometimes survive because, if you can write great legal breifs or have other other legal skills valued in prison you can work it to your advantage so you have protectors.

Develop non-sexual skills that help those with power in prison so they help you in return. Help strong respected inmates who have nothing but personal protection to offer you in return write, draw, learn to read or achieve some other life goal they want for themselves. I guess what I am saying is their is no one cut and dry way of surviving prison. What you must do to survive prison is learn to see opportunities that allow you to survive without being turned out before anyone else sees and takes advantage of them.

Funny as it seems there are some inmates who are tired of the stupidity of prison and they would protect from all harm someone who is teaching them. Prison is about learning how to see and exploit every opportunity to survive you can identify before it is detected by your fellow inmates or destroyed by prison staff \ administration. No book can teach you how to survive prison because surviving prison part instinct, part psychology, part bluff, part bare handed fight and part a sadistic will to do whatever it takes to survive. A book that hopes to teach you how to survive prison is obsolete the minute the words are written because, prison life changes in real time.

In prison you can get your head kicked in for just being unimaginative with your game because, if your game is lame it is considered a disrespectful insult to those you are trying to run it on and that can lead to a brutal fight. Read the book for fun and background but don't expect any book to prepare you for survival in prison because no matter how good a book is, prison life is so much more hellish and real than even the best intentioned man's words can convey.

Surviving prison has to be done in a way that conveys your own style because trying to follow a books advice on surviving prison is like thinking living in prison is a recipe you can copy. Surviving in prison is no recipe it must become part of who you are on the deepest levels of your psyche and soul because it it is not you will be beat down for being fake, not real. See if you think a book will prepare you for prison life you will be up hells creek without a paddle when that book runs out of ideas. This book will not have the right solution for every issue you will face in prison life. The book can not supply dynamic solutions and problems in prison are the most dynamic you will ever face because, change from moment to moment is how convicts and officers keep you off guard and ready to be used and exploited. Real inmates don't need no book to survive prison and that will be your down fall that will tell on you.

Use the book to get in touch with the person you are on the level of the most real and prepare that person for prison situations you see in this book. First rule of survival in prison is keep it real, if you can really fight fight, if you can really con then con, if you can exploit then do it but be true to your skills. There is no such thing as fair in prison anything that allows you to survive another minute in prison is as an intact man is always fair. Your job in prison is to survive by fighting to be and stay real without BS about your life and your dealings with others. See everything and say nothing. Never snicth and sometimes to avoid more beatings by knowing when to take a beating prison is filled with complicated decisions that no single book can ever deal with fully. Thats the problem with this book it answers questions but not in the detailed ways that take into considerations all the complexities of prison life.

You are a fool if you think prison inmates are not smart. Convicts are some of the smartest people alive they are in prison because they chose to employ their vast skills to antisocial tasks. No one single book will ever explain the complex nature of surviving prison life so read the book for insight but don't go inside thinking you KNOW prison life because this book could make you just smart enough to make dumb mistakes prison might not decide to forgive.

The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America

Philip K. Howard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Death of Common Sense 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Well-written and well-researched book that presents the frightening picture of the beast that law in America has become. The author provides good historical background for the reader to appreciate the insidious development of what has become our current laws, how these laws have actually become impediments for progress and justice, and good discussions regarding the challenges facing any rational correction of this quagmire.

Very worthwhile and insightful reading.

It's okay 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Not bad, but just too obvious. I suppose as an introduction to someone recovering from a desire for Government regulation it mayh be helpful.

Deflecting responsibility from his own profession 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The anecdotes are indeed maddening; of course the law and bureaucratic process can be described as "inefficient". However, over and again, Howard says, "Anyone can accuse anyone of anything," which is true, but he acts like the ability to accuse someone is the same as rendering judgment, and therefore our right to call someone to task in a court of law should be abridged. He neglects the fact that, once in the court of law, it is up to the lawyers and judges, and juries when appropriate, to dismiss cases that have no merit. If that is not being done, it is not the problem of us American citizens "having too many rights" but that his slimy profession is without any moral compass. And his book, while thought-provoking and entertaining, is at heart a call for less oversight of those in power, because those without power are slowing them down. I expect he's very happy with Bush and Cheney and their dismantling of so many of our inconvenient "rights". Read it, but with a pile of salt.

Editorial Review:

In a critically acclaimed, well-researched attack on legal regulations and bureaucratic red tape, a corporate lawyer shows how rules interfere with common sense and have taken away citizens' power to make decisions. Reprint. National ad/promo. NYT.

The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law Series)

H. L. A. Hart

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Concept of Law is the most important and original work of legal philosophy written this century. First published in 1961, it is considered the masterpiece of H.L.A. Hart's enormous contribution to the study of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. Its elegant language and balanced arguments have sparked wide debate and unprecedented growth in the quantity and quality of scholarship in this area--much of it devoted to attacking or defending Hart's theories. Principal among Hart's critics is renowned lawyer and political philosopher Ronald Dworkin who in the 1970s and 80s mounted a series of challenges to Hart's Concept of Law. It seemed that Hart let these challenges go unanswered until, after his death in 1992, his answer to Dworkin's criticism was discovered among his papers.

In this valuable and long-awaited new edition Hart presents an Epilogue in which he answers Dworkin and some of his other most influential critics including Fuller and Finnis. Written with the same clarity and candor for which the first edition is famous, the Epilogue offers a sharper interpretation of Hart's own views, rebuffs the arguments of critics like Dworkin, and powerfully asserts that they have based their criticisms on a faulty understanding of Hart's work. Hart demonstrates that Dworkin's views are in fact strikingly similar to his own. In a final analysis, Hart's response leaves Dworkin's criticisms considerably weakened and his positions largely in question.

Containing Hart's final and powerful response to Dworkin in addition to the revised text of the original Concept of Law, this thought-provoking and persuasively argued volume is essential reading for lawyers and philosophers throughout the world.

On Law, Morality, and Politics

Thomas Aquinas, Richard J. Regan, William P. Baumgarth

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

High quality writing on these subjects 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 29 people found this review helpful.

To my knowledge only a threesome authors-philosophers (Sartre, Nietzsche and Macchiavelli) would have been able as well to tell "useful" words on this combination of topics Aquinas chose.

The author - few are more original than Thomas - looks back on, examines some of the most basic, important questions that interest humanity (human nature and ethics, politics and law..) and explores them in the light of Christian faith, as well as ancient philosophy. Of the "ancients" he looks in particular close to Aristotle, whom's version the Bible was of till then. So one could say that he was sort of a predecessor for the great humanists...
Aquinas tries to restore the autonomy of nature and reason, in full harmony with (Christian) faith. The result of his work is genial, both what concerns the scholastic ànd "thomistic" style as well as for the special way of exploring and investigation through which he succeeds to "restore in faith".

Everyone who wants to read Aquinas should know that the author writes in a very specific, difficult way. It looks from time to time he opposes to himself, but after studying his readings one can only conclude that this is REAL top-of-the-shelf literature (for those esp. who like theology, philosophy, politics,...).

Editorial Review:

The second edition of Aquinas, On Law, Morality, and Politics retains the selection of texts presented in the first edition but offers them in new translations by Richard J. Regan—including that of his Aquinas, Treatise on Law (Hackett, 2000). A revised Introduction and glossary, an updated select bibliography, and the inclusion of summarizing headnotes for each of the units—Conscience, Law, Justice, Property, War and Killing, Obedience and Rebellion, and Practical Wisdom and Statecraft—further enhance its usefulness.

Family Violence: Legal, Medical, and Social Perspectives (5th Edition)

Harvey Wallace

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Superb!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Harvey Wallace's text book, which is being used in my Seminar:Domestic Violence Course, is a wonderful source of information about all types of domestic abuse. The extensive coverage on the many forms of child abuse is an excellent source of information for all careers, especially social workers, teachers, school psychologists, and future or current parents. I am also very glad to see that Wallace includes Elder Abuse and Gay and Lesbian Abuse in his book, types of domestic violence which often go overlooked.

Editorial Review:

This text presents a comprehensive introduction to the study of family violence and discusses current controversies in the field from three perspectives—legal, medical, and social. Includes separate chapters on specialized topics such as ritualistic abuse, gay and lesbian abuse, and victims' rights. Only text on the market to provide thorough coverage of stalking, sexual harassment, and sexual violence in the workplace. Anyone looking for a comprehensive introduction to the study of family violence.

The Philosophy of Law: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Raymond Wacks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Small in Size but Big in Scope 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

This book was my first introduction to the "Very Short Introduction" series of inexpensive paperbacks published by Oxford University Press. The nice thing is that these books measure about 7 X 4.5 inches, so they make the perfect "plane" books, but yet are produced to the strict standards of OUP. I was just amazed at how much solid analysis is contained in the 107 pages of text in this volume, not to mention the "references" section, bibliography, and complete index. The author, who is emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, has essentially boiled down his comprehensive "Understanding Jurisprudence" volume (OUP, 2005, 350 pages) into this concise survey. There are also 15 illustrations and several boxed pages where a particular point is examined in a minute analysis.

The book is divided into 6 chapters. The topics are Natural Law (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Finnis and Fuller); Legal Positivism (Hart, Bentham, Austin, Kelsen, Raz); Law as Interpretation (devoted to Dworkin); Rights and Justice (Hohfeld, Posner, Rawls); Law and Society (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Habermas, Foucault); and Critical Legal Theory (CLS, Unger, Lacan, Derrida, feminist legal theory, critical race theory). This is a lot to cover in a full-sized volume, but amazingly there is much solid analysis and discussion built into this small paperback. It is the perfect device for those wanting to refresh their familiarity with the jurisprudential field; it also serves as an effective and skillfully-written introduction for those new to the topic. There are many additional interesting titles in this Oxford series that I plan to explore--what a great idea!

Editorial Review:

This lively and accessible introduction to the social, moral, and cultural foundations of law takes a broad scope-- spanning philosophy, law, politics, and economics, and discussing a range of topics including women's rights, racism, the environment, and recent international issues such as the war in Iraq and the treatment of terror suspects. Revealing the intriguing and challenging nature of legal philosophy with clarity and enthusiasm, Raymond Wacks explores the notion of law and its role in our lives. Referring to key thinkers from the classical world to the modern, he looks at the central questions behind legal theory that have always fascinated lawyers and philosophers, as well as anyone who ever wondered about law's relation to justice, morality, and democracy.

Probation and Parole: Theory and Practice (10th Edition) (MyCrimeKit Series)

Howard Abadinsky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Interesting History 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you have ever been in law enforcement and have a curiosity of the system that you are apart of this is a good overview with interesting connections to the legal system.

Editorial Review:

Written by former community corrections professional, this book provides a state-of-the-art view of probation and parole. Offering a new two-color design, this revision contains updated material from agencies throughout the country and features 12 chapters that focus on all aspects of topic from the practitioner’s point of view. Throughout the book, controversial issues are addressed and capture the conflict between the need to maximize community safety and the need to control the cost of operating prisons. Additional attention is paid to both the juvenile and adult populations and the book considers how the probation officers work with each.

Morality in Criminal Justice: An Introduction to Ethics

Daryl Close, Nicholas Meier

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

MORALITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

THIS BOOK IS GREAT FOR LEARNING BASIC ETHICS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE.

Editorial Review:

The authors introduce the foundations of philosophical and moral thinking with cases and readings in criminal justice ethics. The text focuses on practitioner-oriented topics, corrections, juvenile justice, probation, law enforcement, etc. Essential readings define the field; they are presented along with questions designed to help students master the material. This book is an outgrowth of a unique teaching and writing effort, combining the skills and backgrounds of philosopher Daryl Close with those of Nicholas Meier, an academic expert in criminal justice and a former cop.

A Handbook of Basic Law Terms (Black's Law Dictionary Series)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

cheaper than the big book 3 out of 5 stars.
22 of 27 people found this review helpful.

This book contains most of what you need for legal terms. Besides, who really needs to have their own copy of every legal term out there? Any library or firm you will ever study or work at will have the big version. All you need is a smaller one to carry around with you. And Black's still is the best.

Black's Law Dictionary Series 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Excellent and concise. Perfect for carrying and as a companion to any law text you may be reading.

Handbook of basic law terms 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderful book. It is great to have and helpful in my criminal justice and law classes. I would recommend to a friend

too small 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Although it is cheap, there's not very much in it. I was disappointed not to find any of the terms I needed reading cases for my first week of class. Spend the money and buy the regular 8th edition.

Editorial Review:

The first title in the Black's Handbook Series, this handbook includes the most common key words and phrases with accurate and clear definitions. An essential guide to legal literacy for students, journalists, businesspeople, politicians--anyone who wants to be an informed citizen. This handbook includes accurate, brief, clear definitions to over 1,000 key legal words and phrases. Helpful extras include the full U.S. Constitution and lists of basic law books.