New ebooks purchased in February 2022

A selection of law ebook titles was purchased in February, in association with the ebooks@cambridge team. These are all available through iDiscover, and include:

"Beyond the Law": The Politics of Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain, by Charles Upchurch (Temple University Press, 2021)

 In nineteenth-century England, sodomy was punishable by death; even an accusation could damage a man’s reputation for life. The last executions for this private, consensual act were in 1835, but the effort to change the law that allowed for those executions was intense and precarious, and not successful until 1861. In this groundbreaking book, “Beyond the Law,” noted historian Charles Upchurch pieces together fragments from history and uses a queer history methodology to recount the untold story of the political process through which the law allowing for the death penalty for sodomy was almost ended in 1841.

Children: Rights and Childhood (3rd edition), by David Archard (Routledge, 2015)

Children: Rights and Childhood is widely regarded as the first book to offer a detailed philosophical examination of children’s rights. David Archard provides a clear and accessible introduction to a topic that has assumed increasing relevance since the book’s first publication. The third edition has been fully revised and updated throughout with a new chapter providing an in-depth analysis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and Part 2 has been restructured to move the reader from general theoretical considerations of children’s rights through to practical issues. 

EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: a Commentary (2nd edition), edited by Steve Peers, Tamara Hervey, Jeff Kenner and Angela Ward (Hart Publishing, 2021) 

This second edition of the first commentary of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in English, written by experts from several EU Member States, provides an authoritative but succinct statement of how the Charter impacts upon EU, domestic and international law. Following the conventional article-by-article approach, each commentator offers an expert view of how each article is either already being interpreted in the courts, or is likely to be interpreted. Each commentary is referenced to the case law and is augmented with extensive references to further reading. 

International Human Rights of Children, edited by Ursula Kilkelly and Ton Liefaard (Springer, 2019)

This book explores the meaning and implementation of international children's rights law, as laid down in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and related international and regional human rights instruments. It considers the application of international children's rights at the national level and addresses key procedural and institutional matters concerning children's rights implementation, including monitoring, complaints mechanisms, effective remedies, advocacy and international agenda-setting. The book breaks new ground by analysing a wide range of international children's rights issues from a legal perspective. It incorporates a comparative perspective on children's rights law at the international, regional and domestic level and contains information on evidence-based strategies towards the implementation and enforcement of international children's rights law.

Neurodisability and the Criminal Justice System: Comparative and Therapeutic Responses, edited by Gaye T. Lansdell, Bernadette J. Saunders and Anna Eriksson (Edward Elgar, 2021) 

This thought-provoking book highlights the increasing recognition of the prevalence of neurodisability within criminal justice systems, discussing conditions including intellectual, cognitive and behavioural impairments, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and traumatic and acquired brain injury. International scholars and practitioners demonstrate the extent and complexity of the neurodisability experience and present practical solutions for criminal justice reform.

The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime, by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore (Stanford University Press, 2019)

The Arc of Protection adopts a revisionist and critical perspective that examines the original premises of the international refugee regime. Aleinikoff and Zamore identify compromises at the founding of the system that attempted to balance humanitarian ideals and sovereign control of their borders by states. This book offers a way out of the current international morass through refocusing on responsibility-sharing, seeing the humanitarian-development divide in a new light, and putting refugee rights front and center.

The Insanity Defense: a Philosophical Analysis, by Wojciech Zaluski (Edward Elgar, 2021) 

This unique book provides a versatile exploration of the philosophical foundations of the insanity defense. It examines the connections between numerous philosophical–anthropological views and analyses different methods for regulating the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill. Placing its philosophical analysis firmly in the context of science, it draws on the fields of cognitive psychology, evolutionary theory and criminology. In this thought-provoking book, Wojciech Załuski argues that the way in which we resolve the problem of the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill depends on two factors: the assumed conception of responsibility and the account of mental illness.

Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency and Justice, by Izabela Steflja and Jessica Trisko Darden (Stanford University Press, 2020) 

Women as War Criminals argues that women are just as capable as men of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. In addition to unsettling assumptions about women as agents of peace and reconciliation, the book highlights the gendered dynamics of law, and demonstrates that women are adept at using gender instrumentally to fight for better conditions and reduced sentences when war ends. The book presents the legal cases of four women: the President (Biljana Plavšić), the Minister (Pauline Nyiramasuhuko), the Soldier (Lynndie England), and the Student (Hoda Muthana). Each woman's complex identity influenced her treatment by legal systems and her ability to mount a gendered defense before the court. Justice, as Steflja and Trisko Darden show, is not blind to gender.

All of these ebooks are available to current University of Cambridge staff and students with a Raven password. A full list of ebook platforms can be viewed via the ebooks@cambridge LibGuide.