BiblioVault

Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries

Government Litigation as Public Health Prescription

Donald G. Gifford

University of Michigan Press, 2010

"The topic, how tort law evolved over time into a system that allowed, for a moment at least, a parens patriae form of massive litigation against corporations, is exceedingly interesting and important. Gifford's treatment of this topic is highly informative, engaging, insightful, very current, and wise."
---David Owen, Carolina Distinguished Professor of Law, and Director of Tort Law Studies, University of South Carolina

In Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries, legal scholar Donald G. Gifford recounts the transformation of tort litigation in response to the challenge posed by victims of 21st-century public health crises who seek compensation from the product manufacturers. Class action litigation promised a strategy for documenting collective harm, but an increasingly conservative judicial and political climate limited this strategy. Then, in 1995, Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore initiated a parens patriae action on behalf of the state against cigarette manufacturers. Forty-five other states soon filed public product liability actions, seeking both compensation for the funds spent on public health crises and the regulation of harmful products.

Gifford finds that courts, through their refusal to expand traditional tort claims, have resisted litigation as a solution to product-caused public health problems. Even if the government were to prevail, the remedy in such litigation is unlikely to be effective. Gifford warns, furthermore, that by shifting the powers to regulate products and to remediate public health problems from the legislature to the state attorney general, parens patriae litigation raises concerns about the appropriate allocation of powers among the branches of government.

Donald G. Gifford is the Edward M. Robertson Research Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law.

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Sukeroku’s Double Identity

The Dramatic Structure of Edo Kabuki

Barbara E. Thornbury

University of Michigan Press, 1982

The aim of this book is to show that seemingly illogical double identity of the townsman, Sukeroku, and the samurai, Soga Goro, in the play Sukeroku is a surviving element of what was once a complex and coherent structure based on a traditional performance calendar.

To show how the calendar function and what Sukeroku's double identity signifies, the book is divided into two parts. Part One studies the structure of Edo kabuki. The first chapter, which outlines that structure, is based for the most part on writings of the Tokugawa period. The second chapter then looks at the concepts of sekai, "tradition," and shuko, "innovation." Kabuki was the product of material that had become a familiar part of Japanese culture by repeated use and dramatization over long periods of time, starting before kabuki began, and material that was relatively new and was used to transform the older, set material. The double identity in Sukeroku came about as a result of this interplay between what was received by way of traditional and what was added by way of innovation.

Part Two considers the significance of the double identity. The author concludes that Sukeroku's double identity gave Edo audiences a hero who was an idealization of the contemporary Tokugawa townsman and at the same time a transformation of a samurai god-hero of the past. The first chapter of Part Two traces the development of Sukeroku's Soga Goro/samurai identity, from its origins in the early dramatic forms of no, kowaka, and ko-joruri, to the representation of Soga Goro in kabuki by Ichikawa Danjuro I. The seconds then looks at the transformation of Soga Gorointo Sukeroku by discussing the origins of Sukeroku and its introductions to Edo kabuki by Ichikawa Danjuro I and his son, Danjuro II, since their work was the basis of all later developments.

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Supporting the Journey of English Learners after Trauma

Judith B. O'Loughlin and Brenda K. Custodio

University of Michigan Press, 2021

One of the hottest topics in education today is trauma-informed pedagogy. Much of what has been written in this area comes from counselors, therapists, and other experts in this field, but there is very little written specifically about the effects of trauma on English learners. This book has been written to address this need. The authors have sifted through the literature on trauma and social-emotional learning (SEL) to provide the material that applies directly to English learners. This book was written mainly for teachers of students with immigrant backgrounds and for the building administrators who support them, including counselors, paraprofessionals, and social workers.

This book is designed to provide a practical resource to help educators better understand the possible traumatic backgrounds of their students and how that could be affecting their academic, social, and emotional lives. It also focuses on how school personnel can create a safe environment in schools and classrooms to help students recognize, nurture, and expand the internal resilience that has enabled them to weather past situations and that will allow them to continue the healing process.

One chapter is devoted to the topic of self-care for educators who are working so hard to help students be resilient. An appendix features a list of recommended books on the topics of personal migration and resilience.

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The Supreme Court and Judicial Choice

The Role of Provisional Review in a Democracy

Paul R. Dimond

University of Michigan Press, 1989

The conventional wisdom holds that the Supreme Court provides the final word—as the Court tells the people what the Constitution commands. In interpreting uncertain constitutional text, however, the Court is not provided with a single answer but must, itself, make hard choices. Such choices by an unelected Court appear to conflict with the basic principle of majority rule by the people through their elected representatives in our democracy. Over time, however, through public debate, new arguments before the Court, legislation, new appointments to the Court, and constitutional amendments, the Court's prior judgments evolve, are distinguished or modified, and are even directly overturned. Viewed from this longer term perspective, the Court's supposedly final rulings can therefore be seen as an integral part of an ongoing national dialogue over the meaning of the Constitution. This understanding makes judicial review more consistent with our tradition of government by the people rather than by the Court. To explore this understanding, The Supreme Court and Judicial Choice develops a provisional approach to judicial review under which a surprisingly large number of judicial rulings would be subject to modification by ordinary legislation enacted by Congress. Far from rendering the Court a powerless subject of Congress, this proposal would enhance the vital role of the Court in stimulating and shaping the ongoing dialogue with the people over the meaning of the Constitution.

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The Supreme Court and the NCAA

The Case for Less Commercialism and More Due Process in College Sports

Brian L. Porto

University of Michigan Press, 2013

Two Supreme Court decisions, NCAA v. Board of Regents (1984) and NCAA v. Tarkanian (1988), shaped college sports by permitting the emergence of a commercial enterprise with high financial stakes, while failing to guarantee adequate procedural protections for persons charged with wrongdoing within that enterprise. Brian L. Porto examines the conditions that led to the cases, the reasoning behind the rulings, and the consequences of those rulings. He proposes a federal statute that would grant the NCAA a limited "educational exemption" from antitrust laws, enabling it to enhance academic opportunities for athletes and affording greater procedural protections to accused parties in NCAA disciplinary proceedings.

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Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings in the U.S. Senate

Reconsidering the Charade

Dion Farganis and Justin Wedeking

University of Michigan Press, 2014

Critics claim that Supreme Court nominees have become more evasive in recent decades and that Senate confirmation hearings lack real substance. Conducting a line-by-line analysis of the confirmation hearing of every nominee since 1955—an original dataset of nearly 11,000 questions and answers from testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—Dion Farganis and Justin Wedeking discover that nominees are far more forthcoming than generally assumed. Applying an original scoring system to assess each nominee’s testimony based on the same criteria, they show that some of the earliest nominees were actually less willing to answer questions than their contemporary counterparts. Factors such as changes in the political culture of Congress and the 1981 introduction of televised coverage of the hearings have created the impression that nominee candor is in decline. Further, senators’ votes are driven more by party and ideology than by a nominee’s responsiveness to their questions. Moreover, changes in the confirmation process intersect with increasing levels of party polarization as well as constituents’ more informed awareness and opinions of recent Supreme Court nominees.

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The Supreme Court on Trial

How the American Justice System Sacrifices Innocent Defendants

George C. Thomas III

University of Michigan Press, 2011

The chief mandate of the criminal justice system is not to prosecute the guilty but to safeguard the innocent from wrongful convictions; with this startling assertion, legal scholar George Thomas launches his critique of the U.S. system and its emphasis on procedure at the expense of true justice.

Thomas traces the history of jury trials, an important component of the U.S. justice system, since the American Founding. In the mid-twentieth century, when it became evident that racism and other forms of discrimination were corrupting the system, the Warren Court established procedure as the most important element of criminal justice. As a result, police, prosecutors, and judges have become more concerned about following rules than about ensuring that the defendant is indeed guilty as charged. Recent cases of prisoners convicted of crimes they didn't commit demonstrate that such procedural justice cannot substitute for substantive justice.

American justices, Thomas concludes, should take a lesson from the French, who have instituted, among other measures, the creation of an independent court to review claims of innocence based on new evidence. Similar reforms in the United States would better enable the criminal justice system to fulfill its moral and legal obligation to prevent wrongful convictions.

"Thomas draws on his extensive knowledge of the field to elaborate his elegant and important thesis---that the American system of justice has lost sight of what ought to be its central purpose---protection of the innocent."
—Susan Bandes, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law

"Thomas explores how America's adversary system evolved into one obsessed with procedure for its own sake or in the cause of restraining government power, giving short shrift to getting only the right guy. His stunning, thought-provoking, and unexpected recommendations should be of interest to every citizen who cares about justice."
—Andrew E. Taslitz, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law

"An unflinching, insightful, and powerful critique of American criminal justice---and its deficiencies. George Thomas demonstrates once again why he is one of the nation's leading criminal procedure scholars. His knowledge of criminal law history and comparative criminal law is most impressive."
—Yale Kamisar, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego and Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Michigan

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The Surface Waters of Michigan

Hydrology and Qualitative Characteristics and Purification for Public Use

Robert L. McNamee

University of Michigan Press, 1930

There are 34 primary river systems in Michigan that have watersheds of 250 square miles or more, and 9 secondary river systems that have watersheds of 500 square miles or more. The mean annual discharge rates of the trunk rivers of these systems range from a minimum of about 0.60 to a maximum of about 1.35 cubic feet per second per square mile of watershed. The regimen of Michigan streams is remarkably uniform in comparison with that of streams in many other parts of the country. This characteristic is favorable to the utilization of stream flow for practically all purposes. The qualities of the waters of the Great Lakes are better than those of the average of the inland river systems of the State. Michigan is justly classed as a hardwater state even in consideration of its surface waters alone, for few streams have waters as soft as the average for the United States as a whole. The purification of Michigan surface waters involves functions and processes for the removal of bacteria, clarification, softening, the removal of iron and manganese, the destruction of algae, and the removal of disagreeable tastes and odors. The physical structures and equipment to accomplish these purposes include screening devices, aerators, chemical treatment devices, sedimentation equipment, filters, and sterilization equipment. A tabulation of descriptive data and functional characteristics of 27 gravity rapid-sand filtration plants in Michigan discloses a variety of designs, old and modern, for treatment ranging from simple bacterial removal for invariably clear lake waters to complicated softening for highly variable, turbid, mineralized, and waste-polluted river waters.

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Surrender

How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution

Michael Meeropol

University of Michigan Press, 2000

Michael Meeropol argues that the ballooning of the federal budget deficit was not a serious problem in the 1980s, nor were the successful recent efforts to get it under control the basis for the prosperous economy of the mid-1990s. In this controversial book, the author provides a close look at what actually happened to the American economy during the years of the "Reagan Revolution" and reveals that the huge deficits had no negative effect on the economy. It was the other policies of the Reagan years--high interest rates to fight inflation, supply-side tax cuts, reductions in regulation, increased advantages for investors and the wealthy, the unraveling of the safety net for the poor--that were unsuccessful in generating more rapid growth and other economic improvements.
Meeropol provides compelling evidence of the failure of the U.S. economy between 1990 and 1994 to generate rising incomes for most of the population or improvements in productivity. This caused, first, the electoral repudiation of President Bush in 1992, followed by a repudiation of President Clinton in the 1994 Congressional elections. The Clinton administration made a half-hearted attempt to reverse the Reagan Revolution in economic policy, but ultimately surrendered to the Republican Congressional majority in 1996 when Clinton promised to balance the budget by 2000 and signed the welfare reform bill. The rapid growth of the economy in 1997 caused surprisingly high government revenues, a dramatic fall in the federal budget deficit, and a brief euphoria evident in an almost uncontrollable stock market boom. Finally, Meeropol argues powerfully that the next recession, certain to come before the end of 1999, will turn the predicted path to budget balance and millennial prosperity into a painful joke on the hubris of public policymakers.
Accessibly written as a work of recent history and public policy as much as economics, this book is intended for all Americans interested in issues of economic policy, especially the budget deficit and the Clinton versus Congress debates. No specialized training in economics is needed.
"A wonderfully accessible discussion of contemporary American economic policy. Meeropol demonstrates that the Reagan-era policies of tax cuts and shredded safety nets, coupled with strident talk of balanced budgets, have been continued and even brought to fruition by the neo-liberal Clinton regime." --Frances Fox Piven, Graduate School, City University of New York
Michael Meeropol is Chair and Professor of Economics, Western New England College.

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Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law

Employee Drug Testing and the Politics of Social Control

John Gilliom

University of Michigan Press, 1996

Employee drug testing is an invasive and controversial new social control policy that burst into the American work place during the war on drugs of the 1980s. Workers, judges, and politicians divided over whether it was an unnecessary and unconstitutional program of surveillance or an effective and appropriate new weapon in the anti-drug arsenal. When the dust had settled, the new technique was widely used and had been strongly approved by the United States Supreme Court. This raises the fundamental question: Why was the momentum behind testing so strong and the opposition to testing so ineffective?
Drawing on theories of ideological hegemony and legal mobilization, John Gilliom begins the search for answers with an examination of how the imagery of a national drug crisis served as the legitimating context for the introduction of testing. Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law then moves beyond the specific history of testing and frames the new policy within a broader transformation of social control policy seen by students of political economy, society, and culture. The book cites survey research among skilled workers and analyzes court opinions to highlight the sharply polarized opinions in the workplaces and courthouses of America. Although federal court decisions show massive and impassioned disagreement among judges, the new conservative Supreme Court comes down squarely behind testing. Its ruling embraces surveillance technology, rejects arguments against testing, and undermines future opposition to policies of general surveillance.
Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law portrays the apparent triumph of testing policies as a victory for the conservative law-and-order movement and a stark loss for the values of privacy and autonomy. As one episode in a broader move toward a surveillance society, the battle over employee drug testing raises disturbing questions about future struggles over revolutionary new means of surveillance and control.
John Gilliom is Professor of Political Science, Ohio University.

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Survey of Metropolitan Courts Final Report

Maxine Boord Virtue

University of Michigan Press, 1962

Survey of Metropolitan Courts: Final Report is the culmination of a twelve-year study on the function of the metropolitan trial court as a facility of the metropolitan community. It was started in 1947 when the Section of Judicial Administration of the American Bar Association initiated a research project into the special problems of metropolitan courts. The book represents a major step toward identifying, characterizing, and classifying the special problems of metropolitan courts and analyzing the effectiveness of methods brought to bear on those problems. It contains a wealth of useful material on personnel, caseload in various courts, and relationships between courts and other law-enforcement and community welfare agencies. Its survey of past studies on the problems of metropolitan courts, tables, and appendices make it an important reference source book. Survey of Metropolitan Courts: Final Report makes use of material from an earlier study published in 1950, also by Maxine Boord Virtue, under the auspices of the University of Michigan Law School as part of an American Bar Association project. In addition, it draws on Virtue's recent investigations of courts in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and London, as well as James C. Holbrook's study of Los Angeles courts published in 1957, and other recent research around the country. Survey of Metropolitan Courts: Final Report is a scholarly work that is vitally concerned with the practical possibilities of improved law administration. It shows what can be done by competent leadership and cooperation in this complex field of court organization.

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A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States

E. Bagby Atwood

University of Michigan Press, 1953

A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States, like the recent Word Geography of the Eastern United States by Hans Kurath, is an outgrowth of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada—an undertaking that can truly be called the first large-scale attempt to determine the facts of American linguistic usage by means of direct investigation. Atlas field records covering the entire Eastern United States and representing persons of varying degrees of sophistication have been made available to the writer, and have enabled him to trace not only the geographical spread but also the social distribution of the linguistic features that are treated. This study, which confines itself to verb inflection, does more than differentiate "standard" from "vulgar" usages. It also demonstrates how the early culture centers and the principal migration areas are reflected in the dissemination of grammatical forms. Thus it makes clear that our "Vulgate" grammar, often thought to be uniform throughout the country, is in reality highly varied and regional in its character.

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Susan Glaspell in Context

American Theater, Culture, and Politics, 1915-48

J. Ellen Gainor

University of Michigan Press, 2003

Susan Glaspell in Context not only discusses the dramatic work of this key American author -- perhaps best known for her short story "A Jury of Her Peers" and its dramatic counterpart, Trifles -- but also places it within the theatrical, cultural, political, social, historical, and biographical climates in which Glaspell's dramas were created: the worlds of Greenwich Village and Provincetown bohemia, of the American frontier, and of American modernism.

J. Ellen Gainor is Professor of Theatre, Women's Studies, and American Studies, Cornell University. Her other books include Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater (co-edited with Jeffrey D. Mason) from the University of Michigan Press.

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Swallows and Settlers

The Great Migration from North China to Manchuria

Thomas R. Gottschang and Diana Lary

University of Michigan Press, 2000

Between the 1890s and the Second World War, twenty-five million people traveled from the densely populated North China provinces of Shandong and Hebei to seek employment in the growing economy of China's three northeastern provinces, the area known as Manchuria. This was the greatest population movement in modern Chinese history and ranks among the largest migrations in the world.

Swallows and Settlers is the first comprehensive study of that migration. Drawing methods from their respective fields of economics and history, the coauthors focus on both the broad quantitative outlines of the movement and on the decisions and experiences of individual migrants and their families. In readable narrative prose, the book lays out the historical relationship between North China and the Northeast (Manchuria) and concludes with an examination of ongoing population movement between these regions since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.

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Sweetwater, Storms, and Spirits

Stories of the Great Lakes

Selected and Edited by Victoria Brehm

University of Michigan Press, 1991

Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics

Benjamin Abrams and Peter Gardner, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2023

When we observe protest marches, striking workers on picket lines, and insurgent movements in the world today, a litany of objects routinely fill our field of vision. Some such objects are ubiquitous the world over, like flags, banners, and placards. Others are situationally unique: Who could have anticipated the historical importance of a flower placed in the barrel of a gun, a flaming torch, a sea of umbrellas, a motorist’s yellow vest, a feather headdress, an AK-47, or a knitted pink hat? This book explores the “stuff” at the heart of protests, revolutions, civil wars, and other contentious political events, with particular focus on those objects that have or acquire symbolic importance. In the context of “contentious politics” (disruptive political episodes where people try to change societies without going through institutions), certain objects can divide and unite social groups, tell stories, make declarations, spark controversy, and even trigger violent upheavals.

This book draws together scholars from a variety of fields to discuss symbolic objects in contentious politics: their meanings, uses, functions, and social responses. In bringing these phenomena together, this book offers a serious, distinctive, and cohesive theoretical contribution that draws upon diverse scholarly work in order to form the building blocks for future inquiry in the field. The aim is not merely to “close the gap” in the literature, but to create space in the field for further and more fruitful inquiry.

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Symbols of Wealth and Power

Architectural Terracotta Decoration in Etruria and Central Italy, 640-510 B.C.

Nancy A. Winter

University of Michigan Press, 2009

Although initially intended for the innovative, if prosaic, purpose of providing waterproof and fireproof cover for earlier thatch-roofed homes, fired clay tiles, in seventh- and sixth-century Etruria and Central Italy, combined with Etruscan love of adornment to create exceptional domestic and religious building decoration. Featuring statues and figured friezes of humans, animals, and mythological figures intended to convey the status of the owner or dedicator, the surviving terracotta roofs provide important insights into the architectural history of Etruria. With Symbols of Wealth and Power, Nancy A. Winter has provided a definitive overview of the evidence for these roofing elements that will enhance our knowledge of Etruscan---and more broadly, ancient---architecture.

Nancy A. Winter is an archaeologist and former librarian of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens. She is the author of Greek Architectural Terracottas: From the Prehistoric to the End of the Archaic Period (1993).

Also of Interest
Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation, edited by Sinclair Bell and Inge Lyse Hansen
The Maritime World of Ancient Rome, edited by Robert L. Hohlfelder
Cosa: The Black-Glaze Pottery 2, by Ann Reynolds Scott

Jacket illustration: Tuscania, Ara del Tufo, 560–550 B.C.

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A Systematic Study of The Lizards of The Deppei Group (Genus Cnemidophorus) in Mexico and Guatemala

By William E. Duellman and John Wellman

University of Michigan Press, 1960

Lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus long have been a thorn in the sides of herpetologists. Commonly known as whiptail lizards or racerunners, species in this genus occur in North, Central, and South America. Probably the most confusing thing about these lizards is the ontogenetic change in color pattern, which through its variety of manifestations runs the gamut in convergence and parallelism. The purpose of this study is to review the species of the deppei group of Cnemidophorus and to present a classification of them, using some taxonomic characters that previously have not been applied. During the course of this study, 2,302 specimens were examined, revealing the presence of three species and ten races. The species differ from one another in the relative size of the dorsal granules, the size of the body, color pattern, and ontogenetic change in color pattern. The ranges of the species appear to be discontinuous. The present distributions probably are the result of climatic shifts during the Pleistocene.

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Systemic Choices

Nonlinear Dynamics and Practical Management

Gregory A. Daneke

University of Michigan Press, 1999

The revolution in social scientific theory and practice known as nonlinear dynamics, chaos, or complexity, derived from recent advances in the physical, biological, and cognitive sciences, is now culminating with the widespread use of tools and concepts such as praxis, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence, and parallel processing. By tracing a number of conceptual threads from mathematics, economics, cybernetics, and various other applied systems theoretics, this book offers a historical framework for how these ideas are transforming the social sciences. Daneke goes on to address a variety of persistent philosophical issues surrounding this paradigm shift, ranging from the nature of human rationality to free will. Finally, he describes this shift as a path for revitalizing the social sciences just when they will be most needed to address the human condition in the new millennium.
Systemic Choices describes how praxis and other complex systems tools can be applied to a number of pressing policy and management problems. For example, simulations can be used to grow a number of robust hybrid industrial and/or technological strategies between cooperation and competition. Likewise, elements of international agreements could be tested for sustainability under adaptively evolving institutional designs. Other concrete applications include strategic management, total quality management, and operational analyses.
This exploration of a wide range of technical tools and concepts will interest economists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and those in the management disciplines such as strategy, organizational behavior, finance, and operations.
Gregory A. Daneke is Professor of Technology Management, Arizona State University, and of Human and Organization Development, The Fielding Institute.

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