Sunday, August 30, 2015

Sunday Book Roundup

The New Rambler has a review of Natural Law in Court: A History of Legal Theory in Practice by R.H. Helmholtz (Harvard University Press).

Christine Desan's Making Money: Coin, Currency and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford University Press) is reviewed in The Financial Post (here) and in the Journal of Legal History (here). From JLH:
"Professor Christine Desan is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on the Study of Capitalism. This is a significant and innovative new development in the teaching and researching of legal, business and economic history. It marks a start of a new wave in the way that we teach and think about the history of capitalism. Here the scholars collectively advocate a move away from the more traditional issues of profitability, efficiency, strategy and effective management, and focus upon issues of power, on the
effects of ways of organizing production, distribution, buying and selling, on society, on policy, and politics. ..."
"In sum, this book is of tremendous value and a notable text in legal history and within those subjects at the peripheries surrounding it. It sets a new path in challenging our ways of studying commercial law and viewing money and currency as a purely economic tool and as a mechanism of exchange."
From H-Net is a review of the volume, Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, and Policy (Cambridge University Press) edited by Peter Bergen and Daniel Rothenberg.

Also on H-Net is a review of James D. Morrow's Order within Anarchy: The Laws of War as an International Institution (Cambridge University Press).

The Washington Post has a review by Cary Franklin of Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World by Linda Hirshman (Harper).
"With a good nose for the big legal story of the moment, Linda Hirshman — author of “Victory” (2012), a popular account of the gay rights movement — is back, this time with “Sisters in Law,” a joint biography of Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor. Ginsburg is attracting a lot of attention these days, especially from the young and hip (who have emblazoned all manner of dry goods with her likeness and blanketed D.C. with “Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth” stickers). But it’s not just the Ginsburgian subject matter that makes Hirshman’s book seem so vital. “Sisters in Law” tells the life stories of the nation’s first female justices, but it is as much about how we got to the present juncture with respect to women’s legal rights."