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Principles of Constitutional Structure
Dan T. Coenen and Michael Coenen
This book offers an overview of federalism, the separation of powers, and related matters of constitutional structure. It covers such topics as: the lawmaking powers of the national government (including those powers conferred by the Commerce Clause, the Taxing and Spending Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Enforcement Clauses of the Reconstruction Amendments, and other sources of federal legislative authority); federalism-based "external" constraints on congressional power (including those provided by the anti-commandeering principle, the "equal sovereignty" principle, and principles of state-sovereign immunity); federalism-based limits on state authority (including those imposed by the dormant Commerce Clause, the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause, and statutory preemption doctrine); structural constitutional principles concerning governmental entities other than the states (including Native nations, overseas territories, and the District of Columbia); and the horizontal allocation of power across the three branches of the federal government (including with respect to foreign and military affairs, the federal administrative state, the appointment and removal of executive-branch officials, impeachment, presidential and legislative immunities from judicial process, and the powers of the federal courts).
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The Corporation as Technology: Re-Calibrating Corporate Governance for a Sustainable Future
Christopher Bruner
Recent decades have witnessed environmental, social, and economic upheaval, with major corporations contributing to a host of interconnected crises. The Corporation as Technology examines the dynamics of the corporate form and corporate law that incentivize harmful excesses and presents an alternative vision to render corporate activities more sustainable.
The corporate form is commonly described as a set of fixed characteristics that strongly prioritize shareholders' interests. This book subverts this widely held belief, suggesting that such rigid depictions reinforce harmful corporate pathologies, including excessive risk-taking and lack of regard for environmental and social impacts. Instead, corporations are presented as a dynamic legal technology that policymakers can re-calibrate over time in response to changing landscapes.
This book explores the theoretical and practical ramifications of this alternative vision, focusing on how the corporate form can help secure an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable future. -
Property: Cases and Materials (Fifth Edition)
James Smith, Edward J. Larsen, and Alejandro Camacho
The fifth edition of Property: Cases and Materials by Jim Smith, Ed Larson, and new author Alejandro Camacho brings current topics and recent cases including the Public Trust Doctrine and Race and the Law to the basic property course without sacrificing coverage of established material.
Property: Cases and Materials features sweeping coverage in a single volume, from “old property,” including the basics of estates in land and servitudes to “new property,” including intellectual property, cultural property, and property in living things. The text provokes debate on fundamental questions such as the creation of property, information as property, collective v. individual rights, and property as related to other bodies of law. Its coverage of intellectual property shows how the law grows and responds to social and technological change
Principal cases include Marshall v. ESPN Inc. (student athletes’ publicity rights), Bonnichsen v. United States (Native American human remains), Glass v. Goeckel (public trust doctrine), Friends of Danny DeVito v. Wolf (COVID-19 takings dispute), and Dred Scott v. Sandford.
New to the Fifth Edition:
- A new chapter, “Race and Exclusion in the Property System,” explores how status and power have fundamentally shaped rights in property rights in the United States.
- Enhanced coverage of public trust doctrine, which has emerged as a critical tool for environmental protection in many states.
- More cases from the twenty-first century than any other major property casebook.
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Tort Law: Cases & Critique
Thomas E. Kadri
My goal in creating this casebook is to do my part to make legal education more affordable, accessible, and adaptable. That’s why I’m making the book available to all for free. By using a CC BY-NC license, I’m also inviting others to adapt these materials for their own use, so long as they adhere to the non-commerciality and attribution terms. (Anyone interested in “remixing” this book for their own purposes should feel free to contact me, including if you’d like a more adaptable non-PDF version.)
You’re welcome to print any part of this casebook if you want a hard copy to accompany the digital version. If you do print it, I ask that you please be environmentally conscious by using double-sided pages. Because the digital version can be easily searched, it contains no index or other finding aids that are conventional for printed books. You should also be able to enhance your experience with the digital version by highlighting text, adding comments, and annotating it in other ways you find helpful.
To see the syllabus accompanying this casebook, please visit www.thomaskadri.com/torts.
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Legal Writing Manual (2nd Edition)
Jean Mangan, Brittany Blanchard, Gabrielle Gravel, Chase Lyndale, and Connely Doizé
This manual provides you with an overview of first-year legal writing topics and provides checkpoints during your writing process. On the other hand, this manual does not answer every question you have ever had on any legal writing concept and it is certainly not a spellbook that will make you instantly awesome at legal writing. Writing as a skill is a lifelong development process. Everyone can be an effective legal writer. Put in the time to study the concepts and then to practice using those concepts in your writing. Seek feedback on your writing and implement the feedback you receive. Writing takes practice, and this manual can help guide you through.
The first edition of the Legal Writing Manual was made possible with funding from the University of Georgia’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost’s Affordable Materials Course Grant. The second edition of this manual was made possible with funding from an Affordable Learning Georgia Round 18 Continuous Improvement Grant.
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Georgia Legal Research
Amy Taylor
This open source textbook authored by Amy Taylor was designed to provide University of Georgia School of Law students with a comprehensive guide to Georgia legal research. Using this text in combination with appropriate assignments, student objectives include the ability to select, evaluate, and use appropriate legal research tools with an emphasis on cost-effective research and proficiency in the following topics:
- Developing an efficient and cost effective research strategy
- Advanced searching skills in legal research databases
- Case law, including docket research, court rules, and verdicts & settlements
- Statutory law, including legislative materials and legislative history
- Administrative regulations, rules, and related materials
- Practice materials, including litigation and transactional tools
- Competitive Intelligence & business information
- Local & municipal law
- Legal ethics
- Free and low cost internet legal resources
Attorneys use primary and secondary sources to research the law as it applies to a client’s legal situation in order to give accurate legal advice. A careful legal researcher asks critical questions of these sources and acknowledges the potential strengths and weaknesses of a client’s legal situation before giving legal advice.
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Criminal Law Drafting Manual
Jean Mangan
This textbook was created under a Round 19 Mini-Grant. It is hosted on the Open ALG (Affordable Learning Georgia) Projects platform.
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Legal Writing Manual
Jean Mangan, Chase Lyndale, and Gabrielle Gravel
This manual provides you with an overview of first-year legal writing topics and provides checkpoints during your writing process. On the other hand, this manual does not answer every question you have ever had on any legal writing concept and it is certainly not a spellbook that will make you instantly awesome at legal writing. Writing as a skill is a lifelong development process. Everyone can be an effective legal writer. Put in the time to study the concepts and then to practice using those concepts in your writing. Seek feedback on your writing and implement the feedback you receive. Writing takes practice, and this manual can help guide you through.
This manual was produced with funding from University of Georgia’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost’s Affordable Materials Course Grant. This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
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Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America
Andrea L. Dennis and Erik Nielson
Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many nationwide.
Over the last three decades, as rap became increasingly popular, prosecutors saw an opportunity: they could present the sometimes violent, crime-laden lyrics of amateur rappers as confessions to crimes, threats of violence, or revelations of criminal motive—and judges and juries would go along with it. They’ve reopened cold cases, alleged gang affiliation, and secured convictions by presenting the lyrics and videos of rappers as autobiography. Now, an alarming number of aspiring rappers are imprisoned. No other form of creative expression is treated this way in the courts.
Rap on Trial places this disturbing prosecutorial practice in the context of hip-hop history and exposes what’s at stake. It’s a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip-hop and mass incarceration.
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Defending the Public's Enemy: The Life and Legacy of Ramsey Clark
Lonnie T. Brown
What led a former United States Attorney General to become one of the world's most notorious defenders of the despised? Defending the Public's Enemy examines Clark's enigmatic life and career in a quest to answer this perplexing question.
The culmination of ten years of research and interviews, Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. explores how Clark evolved from our government's chief lawyer to a strident advocate for some of America's most vilified enemies. Clark's early career was enmeshed with seminally important people and events of the 1960s: Martin Luther King, Jr., Watts Riots, Selma-to-Montgomery March, Black Panthers, Vietnam. As a government insider, he worked to secure the civil rights of black Americans, resisting persistent, racist calls for more law and order. However, upon entering the private sector, Clark seemingly changed, morphing into the government's adversary by aligning with a mystifying array of demonized clients—among them, alleged terrorists, reputed Nazi war criminals, and brutal dictators, including Saddam Hussein.
Is Clark a man of character and integrity, committed to ensuring his government's adherence to the ideals of justice and fairness, or is he a professional antagonist, anti-American and reflexively contrarian to the core? The provocative life chronicled in Defending the Public's Enemy is emblematic of the contradictions at the heart of American political history, and society's ambivalent relationship with dissenters and outliers, as well as those who defend them.
School of Law faculty at the University of Georgia author some of our country's leading legal scholarship. The following is a collection of books published by our past and current faculty members. Several faculty members have also created open educational resources made available through open textbook platforms. View a list of our faculty's open educational resource materials.
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