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Vanderbilt Law Review

Article Title

Recent Publications

First Page

537

Abstract

Beating a Rap? Defendants Found Incompetent to Stand Trial

In this book, Henry Steadman, Director of the Special Projects Research Unit of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, addresses the common suspicion that defense attorneys enable their clients to escape criminal charges by having the clients declared incompetent to stand trial. Such suspicion, he argues, results both from public confusion over the legal and psychiatric issues in a competency hearing and from a lack of understanding (even among experts) about the practical results that flow from a determination of incompetency.

Law and Order in American History Edited by Joseph M. Hawes

This work is premised on the belief that an understanding of history is necessary to comprehend the complexities of America's modern criminal justice system. To illustrate the interaction between the criminal justice system and society, the editor has com-piled a series of readings which examine the components of the criminal justice system both historically and analytically. Joseph Hawes, an Associate Professor of History at Kansas State University, includes works by a sociologist, a criminologist, a political scientist and several historians in this anthology, in order to provide varied approaches.

Law and the Arts--Art and the Law. Edited by Tem Horwitz

This anthology is a comprehensive handbook and source book for literary, performing, and visual artists, craftspeople, arts attorneys, and arts administrators. Its nine essays reflect the nature and variety of legal problems that have surfaced during the past decade,which has witnessed a burgeoning interest in the arts and in arts organizations. The book is partially financed by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Chicago Council on Fine Arts and purports to be a distillation of the experiences of the attorneys and staff of Lawyers for the Creative Arts.

Letters of Louis D. Brandeis. VOLUME V: 1921-1941. Edited by Melvin I. Urofsky and David W. Levy.

This is the fifth and final volume of the letters of Louis Brandeis, which the State University of New York Press has compiled and published since 1971. The letters, written by Brandeis in a memorandum style complete with numbered paragraphs, read like the battle orders of a field general--enumerating jobs to be done, people to be contacted, facts to be checked-and testify to a life of action informed by a reformist sensibility and faith in the persuasive power of facts.

One Man, One Voice. By Charles Morgan, Jr.

Charles Morgan, Jr., one of the handful of white Southerners who actively supported the civil rights movement of the 1960s, recounts in One Man, One Voice the dramatic moments of a turbulent time in American history. Morgan first gained national prominence when he was forced to leave his native Birmingham, Alabama, in September 1963 after a speech before that city's Young Men's Business Club in which he blamed Birmingham's white middle class forgiving tacit sanction to a church bombing that had, the day before,taken the lives of four black children. This book describes how "Chuck" Morgan, at the age of 33, left the Birmingham he described as a "dead city" to work for the American Civil Liberties Union, first in Atlanta and then as director of its Washington office until 1976, when his affection for then President-elect Jimmy Carter set him at odds with ACLU leaders. The book's title plays on the one man, one vote rationale with which the Supreme Court decided the reapportionment cases of the early 1960s, and Morgan emphasizes the strategies used, both in and out of the courthouse, in seeking and achieving a particular doctrinal result in the Court.

The Reform of FBI Intelligence Operations. By John T. Elliff

Domestic violence and foreign espionage may constitute a serious threat to the security of the United States. Recent events and disclosures, however, point out the great risk in giving an agency such as the FBI near-limitless authority for gathering intelligence about terrorists and spies. Noting the findings and recommendations of post-Watergate inquiries into FBI operations and FBI and Justice Department responses to the pressures for reform, John Elliff analyzes the legal and social questions posed by the existence of a "security police" in a nation committed to constitutional government and the rule of law.

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