Books

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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Levin's Statutory Interpretation: A Practical Lawyering Course (Third Edition)

Hillel Y. Levin

This book is for instructors of Statutory Interpretation and related courses who want to introduce practical lawyering skills into the doctrinal curriculum. It is also comparatively inexpensive for students. Much like any law school case book, Statutory Interpretation: A Practical Lawyering Coursecovers the leading cases; but it also offers much more. For example, it includes:
- interpretive exercises to concretize lessons and to help students to self-assess their learning;
- legislative negotiation and drafting exercises to give students practical experience and a deeper understanding of the complexities of the legislative process;
- lawyers' briefs and case documents to help students understand how cases and arguments are put together;
- case files and brief-writing exercises to teach students to craft arguments based on their doctrinal studies;
- exercises that require students to problem-solve, prompting them to think strategically;
- a mix of heavily-edited, lightly-edited, and unedited cases to help students prepare to work in the real world;
- issues and questions for students to focus on as they read cases and other materials.
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.
Taxing Global Digital Commerce (Second Edition)

Walter Hellerstein

Taxing Global Digital Commerce studies the tax challenges presented by cross-border digital commerce and reports on the rapidly changing environment surrounding the challenges. Digital commerce – the use of computer networks to facilitate transactions involving the production, distribution, sale, and delivery of goods and services – has grown from merely streamlining relations between consumer and business to a much more robust phenomenon embracing efficient business processes within a firm and between firms. Inevitably, the related taxation issues have grown as well. This latest edition of the preeminent text on the taxation of digital transactions revises, updates and expands the book’s coverage that reflects the significant changes that had been made to the content of the earlier volumes. It includes a detailed and up-to-date analysis of income tax and VAT developments regarding digital commerce under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) reforms. It then explores the new EU VAT rules for both tangible and intangible Internet supplies and the implications of digital commerce for US state retail sales and use tax regimes, taking account of the significant developments resulting from the 2018 US Supreme Court decision in Wayfair.

What’s in this book:
Analysing the practical tax consequences of digital commerce from a multijurisdictional perspective and using examples to illustrate the application of different taxes to digital commerce transactions, the book offers in-depth treatment of such topics as the following:
- how tax rules governing cross-border digital commerce are increasingly applied to all cross-border activities;
- how tax rules and institutional processes have evolved to confront challenges posed by digital commerce;
- how an emerging ‘tax war’ is developing whereby different countries are unilaterally imposing new direct tax rules on cross-border digital commerce;
- how digital commerce increases the complexity of implementing and enforcing the collection of VAT/GST in cross-border situations;
- how technology enhances cross-border tax information exchanges; and
- how technology reduces both compliance and enforcement costs.
The authors offer insightful views on the likely development of new approaches to taxing cross-border digital commerce and expand their focus beyond ‘law’ to undertake a more systematic study of tax law and technology change in the digital age, and they seek to to identify general policy lessons from their study of global and United States subnational rules.

How this will help you:
This edition, while building on the analysis of the relationship between traditional tax laws and the Internet in the previous editions, contains a more explicit and systematic consideration of digital commerce issues and the ongoing policy responses to them. As the world’s premier book on the topic of tax and digital commerce, this book will be welcomed by tax professionals and academics everywhere for the important contribution it makes towards the design of cross-border tax rules that are both conceptually sound and practical in application.
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.
The Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability

Beate Sjåfjell and Christopher Bruner

The emerging field of corporate law, corporate governance and sustainability is one of the most dynamic and significant areas of law and policy in light of the convergence of environmental, social and economic crises that we face as a global society. Understanding the impact of the corporation on society and realizing its potential for contributing to sustainability is vital for the future of humanity. This Handbook comprehensively assesses the state-of-the-art in this field through in-depth discussion of sustainability-related problems, numerous case studies on regulatory responses implemented by jurisdictions around the world, and analyses of predominant strategies and potential drivers of change. This Handbook will be an essential reference for scholars, students, practitioners, policymakers, and general readers interested in how corporate law and governance have exacerbated global society's most pressing challenges, and how reforms to these fields can help us resolve those challenges and achieve sustainability.
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.
Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation

Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Mass-tort lawsuits over products like pelvic and hernia mesh, Roundup, opioids, talcum powder, and hip implants consume a substantial part of the federal civil caseload. But multidistrict litigation, which federal courts use to package these individual tort suits into one proceeding, has not been extensively analyzed. In Mass Tort Deals, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch marshals a wide array of empirical data to suggest that a systematic lack of checks and balances in our courts may benefit everyone but the plaintiffs - the very people who are often unable to stand up for themselves. Rather than faithfully representing them, plaintiffs' lawyers may sell them out in backroom settlements that compensate lawyers handsomely, pay plaintiffs little, and deny them the justice they seek. From diagnosis to reforms, Burch's goal isn't to eliminate these suits; it's to save them. This book is a must read for concerned citizens, policymakers, lawyers, and judges alike.
Execution by Family: A Theory of Honor Violence

Mark Cooney

Across many parts of the world, violence inflicted in the name of family honor is attracting an increasing amount of attention. Family honor violence, otherwise known as honor-based violence, is physical force inflicted primarily on women for conduct defined as dishonorable. This book explores these conflicts of honor, how they are triggered, how they are handled, and why some lead to death.

Drawing on a range of case studies and employing Donald Black’s concept of social geometry, Execution by Family incorporates and goes beyond patriarchy, culture, and kinship to develop a unified theory of family honor violence. It discusses the "honor belt," a series of countries stretching from north Africa to southeast Asia, in which similar forms of inequality, patriarchy, group authority, and gerontocracy are prevalent and how, within the confines of this inequality, honor violence flourishes. Reviewing survey data and pointing to a multi-pronged, cross-national social movement, the book also discusses the future of honor-based violence.

Given the growing awareness of family honor violence, Execution by Family will be of interest to anybody concerned with family conflict, violence, crime, and popular morality. It will be invaluable reading for academics and students in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social psychology, and anthropology.
State and Local Taxation, Cases and Materials (Eleventh Edition)

Walter Hellerstein, Kirk J. Stark, John A. Swain, and Joan M. Youngman

The Hellerstein casebook, now authored by four leading experts in the field, provides a comprehensive overview of the field of state and local taxation (SALT), reflecting the most recent developments in this rapidly changing field. The book weaves together two structural approaches to SALT — i.e., by constitutional doctrine (e.g., due process, interstate commerce, equal protection) and by type of tax (individual income, corporate income, sales/use, property). This analytical structure is designed to give students an in-depth understanding of both the fiscal architecture of SALT and the major constitutional limits on subnational taxing power.
Healthism: Health-status Discrimination and the Law

Elizabeth Weeks and Jessica L. Roberts

Can an employer refuse to hire someone who tests positive for nicotine or alcohol? Can an airline or movie theatre require overweight customers to purchase two seats? Can a health insurance company refuse to sell policies to those most in need of medical care? Can the government condition public assistance on wellness program participation or work activity? In this illuminating book, Jessica L. Roberts and Elizabeth Weeks consider these and similar questions, offering readers a nuanced analysis of when and why discrimination based on health status - or 'healthism' - should be allowed, and when it should not. They provide a methodology to distinguish desirable health-based classifications from the undesirable, and propose law and policy solutions to encourage the former and limit the latter. This work should be read by anyone concerned with how government does - and does not - regulate based on health.