“This easy-to-follow guide is useful both as a general course of instruction and as a targeted aid in solving particular legal writing problems.” —Harvard Law Review Clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. For more than twenty years, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section. In this new edition, Garner preserves the successful structure of the original while adjusting the content to make it even more classroom-friendly. He includes case examples from the past decade and addresses the widespread use of legal documents in electronic formats. His book remains the standard guide for producing the jargon-free language that clients demand and courts reward. “Those who are willing to approach the book systematically and to complete the exercises will see dramatic improvements in their writing.” —Law Library Journal

The third edition of The Synaptic Organization of the Brain continues the tradition of earlier editions in focusing on the principles underlying the organization of neurons and synapses into functional circuits within the best-studied regions of the brain: autonomic ganglia, spinal cord, olfactory bulb, retina, cerebellum, thalamus, basal ganglia, olfactory cortex, hippocampus, and neocortex. To ensure authoritative coverage of each area, the chapters have been revised by leading researchers. Nevertheless, as in past editions, each chapter follows the same format: neural elements, synaptic connections, basic circuits, physiological properties, neurotransmitters, and dendritic properties. In addition, each chapter now has a concluding section which discusses functional implications. This organization gives a logical structure to the description of each region, and greatly facilitates comparisons between regions and identification of common principles. Highlights include the first comprehensive attempt to incorporate intrinsic excitable membrane properties into neural circuits throughout the brain, the latest experimental results from patch recordings, brain slices, intracellular labelling, and 3-D reconstructions of neurons and connections. The book also provides summaries of neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, second-messengers and ligand-and voltage-gated membrane channels for each brain region. Up-to-date information on mechanisms underlying development and plasticity in brain circuits is also included as are computer methods for modeling neurons and circuits as a first step toward a "biophysics of neural computation."

First published in 1980, Natural Law and Natural Rights is widely heralded as a seminal contribution to the philosophy of law, and an authoritative restatement of natural law doctrine. It has offered generations of students and other readers a thorough grounding in the central issues of legal, moral, and political philosophy from Finnis's distinctive perspective. This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author, in which he responds to thirty years ofdiscussion, criticism and further work in the field to develop and refine the original theory.The book closely integrates the philosophy of law with ethics, social theory and political philosophy. The author develops a sustained and substantive argument; it is not a review of other people's arguments but makes frequent illustrative and critical reference to classical, modern, and contemporary writers in ethics, social and political theory, and jurisprudence.The preliminary First Part reviews a century of analytical jurisprudence to illustrate the dependence of every descriptive social science upon evaluations by the theorist. A fully critical basis for such evaluations is a theory of natural law. Standard contemporary objections to natural law theory are reviewed and shown to rest on serious misunderstandings.The Second Part develops in ten carefully structured chapters an account of: basic human goods and basic requirements of practical reasonableness, community and 'the common good'; justice; the logical structure of rights-talk; the bases of human rights, their specification and their limits; authority, and the formation of authoritative rules by non-authoritative persons and procedures; law, the Rule of Law, and the derivation of laws from the principles of practical reasonableness; the complexrelation between legal and moral obligation; and the practical and theoretical problems created by unjust laws.A final Part develops a vigorous argument about the relation between 'natural law', 'natural theology' and 'revelation' - between moral concern and other ultimate questions.

This book is part of the ABA Classics Series. These authoritative, affordable, and beautifully designed editions of the world's greatest law books are perfect for any law office or as a gift for anyone involved or interested in the law. This volume of the ABA Classics Series is written by founding fathers' James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay with the goal of persuading New Yorkers to accept the newly drafted United States Constitution.

Contains a bibliographical survey of the chronological and systematic canonical collections in the Latin West from the beginnings of Christianity to Gratian's Decretum (ca. 1140). Dr. Kéry not only has compiled a catalogue of early medieval canonistic manuscripts, but has included valuable information about them. For each collection she has described its type and contents, the time and place of compilation, and, when, possible, its author. Full bibliographies have been provided for each collection, arranged in chronological order. Scholars will find her work particularly useful since she has also noted where scholars have differed and where their opinions may be found. Special attention has been paid to the numerous recensions of the collections. She has given a separate entry for important recensions and has lists of fragments and abbreviated forms of the collections.

This fully updated fifth edition of Law 101 accounts for all these developments and more, as Feinman once again provides a clear introduction to American law. The book covers all the main subjects taught in the first year of law school, and discusses every facet of the American legal tradition, including constitutional law, the litigation process, and criminal, property, and contracts law.

Reprint of the second edition of the first American law dictionary. In this edition Bouvier revised about half of his entries and added a thousand new ones. He also incorporated numerous local references, which were compiled through an extensive correspondence with members of all but one of the state bars. The second volume concludes with two appendices. The first is a list of English Chancery, Common Law and Ecclesiastical Reports and a list of the titles published by The Law Library (First, Second and Third Series). The second is a reprint of Robert Kelham's A Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language. 2 volumes. viii, [13]-740; 772 pp.

In authoritarian states, the discourse on freedom of speech, conducted by those opposed to non-democratic governments, focuses on the core aspects of this freedom: on a right to criticize the government, a right to advocate theories arid ideologies contrary to government-imposed orthodoxy, a right to demand institutional reforms, changes in politics, resignation of the incompetent and the corrupt from positions of authority. The claims for freedom of speech focus on those exercises of freedom that are most fundamental and most beneficial to citizens - and which are denied to them by the government. But in a by-and large democratic polity, where these fundamental benefits of freedom of speech are generally enjoyed by the citizens, the public and scholarly discourse on freedom of speech hovers about the peripheries of that freedom; the focus is on its outer boundaries rather than at the central territory of freedom of speech. Those borderline cases, in which people who are otherwise genuinely committed to the core aspects of freedom of speech may sincerely disagree, include pornography, racist hate speech and religious bigoted expressions, defamation of politicians and of private persons, contempt of court, incitement to violence, disclosure of military or commercial secrets, advertising of merchandise such as alcohol or cigarettes or of services and entertainment such as gambling and prostitution.

"The first edition of Law 101 provided readers with a portrait of our nation's legal system. Now, in this revised edition, Jay M. Feinman offers an updated survey of American law, including new anecdotes and cases (including Supreme Court cases through July 2005), and incorporating fresh material on topics ranging from the President's war powers to intellectual property, standard form contracts, and eminent domain."--BOOK JACKET.

The best-selling first edition of Law 101 provided readers with a vividly written and indispensable portrait of our nation's legal system. Now, in this revised edition, Jay M. Feinman offers an updated survey of American law, spiced with new anecdotes and cases, and incorporating fresh material on topics ranging from the President's war powers, to intellectual property, standard form contracts, and eminent domain. Here is an exceptionally clear introduction to law, covering the main subjects found in the first year of law school, giving us a basic understanding of how it all works. Readers are introduced to every aspect of the legal system, from constitutional law and the litigation process to tort law, contract law, property law, and criminal law. Feinman illuminates each discussion with many intriguing, outrageous, and infamous cases, from the scalding coffee case that cost McDonald's half a million dollars, to the sensational murder trial in Victorian London that led to the legal definition of insanity, to the epochal decision in Marbury v. Madison that gave the Supreme Court the power to declare state and federal laws unconstitutional. He broadens the reader's legal vocabulary, clarifying the meaning of everything from "due process" and "equal protection" in constitutional law, to the distinction between "murder" and "manslaughter" in criminal law. Perhaps most important, we learn that though the law is voluminous and complex, it is accessible to all. Everyone who wants a better grasp of current legal issues--from students contemplating law school, to journalists covering the legislature or the courts, to fans of Court TV--will find here a wonderful source of information: a complete, clear, and colorful map of the American legal system. "An entertaining and informative introduction to the law.... For journalists, those interested in the law, and fans of television law dramas, this book should be required reading."--Library Journal