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This volume by William H.J. Hubbard presents a set of learning tools and teacher resources to make civil procedure accessible, relevant, and compelling.

This insightful Research Handbook provides a definitive overview of the New Legal Realism (NLR) movement and explores a range of contemporary issues including immigration, policing, globalization, legal education, and access to justice.

Halfway Home captures the stories of the formerly incarcerated as they navigate the laws, rules, and regulations that impose limits on their post-prison life.

Written by ABF’s Christopher Schmidt, this book explores the history of the term ‘civil rights’ in the United States, from the Civil War to today.

Shapiro explores the complex decisions faced by families and medical professionals in the ICU as they make legal decisions for those in end-of-life care, navigating the ethical and legal considerations of providing care to dying patients.

Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq explore the challenges faced by constitutional democracies and offer practical solutions for safeguarding freedom and democracy.

This book explores how race, gender, and class intersected to shape the experiences of Black children in the juvenile justice system at its origin.

The Sit-Ins tells the story of the student lunch counter protests and the national debate they sparked over the meaning of the constitutional right of all Americans to equal protection of the law. Christopher W. Schmidt describes how behind the now-iconic scenes of African American college students sitting in quiet defiance at “whites only” lunch counters lies a series of underappreciated legal dilemmas—about the meaning of the Constitution, the capacity of legal institutions to remedy different forms of injustice, and the relationship between legal reform and social change.

This edition, featuring Bob Nelson, provides valuable insights into global governance through the exploration of practices of the rule of law across nations.

Based on rich interviews with plaintiffs, attorneys, and representatives of defendants and an original national dataset on case outcomes, Rights on Trial reveals the fundamental flaws of workplace discrimination law and offers practical recommendations for how we might better respond to persistent patterns of discrimination.

  • Books

Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality

Robert L. Nelson, Ellen Berrey, Laura Beth Nielsen and Laura Beth Nielsen
Learning and Practicing Law, Protecting Rights and Accessing Justice
June 2017

From University of Chicago Press. More information can be found at rightsontrial.org.

Gerry Handley faced years of blatant race-based harassment before he filed a complaint against his employer: racist jokes, signs reading “KKK” in his work area, and even questions from coworkers as to whether he had sex with his daughter as slaves supposedly did. He had an unusually strong case, with copious documentation and coworkers’ support, and he settled for $50,000, even winning back his job. But victory came at a high cost. Legal fees cut into Mr. Handley’s winnings, and tensions surrounding the lawsuit poisoned the workplace. A year later, he lost his job due to downsizing by his company. Mr. Handley exemplifies the burden plaintiffs bear in contemporary civil rights litigation. In the decades since the civil rights movement, we’ve made progress, but not nearly as much as it might seem.

On the surface, America’s commitment to equal opportunity in the workplace has never been clearer. Virtually every company has antidiscrimination policies in place, and there are laws designed to protect these rights across a range of marginalized groups. But, as Ellen Berrey, Robert L. Nelson, and Laura Beth Nielsen compellingly show, this progressive vision of the law falls far short in practice. When aggrieved individuals turn to the law, the adversarial character of litigation imposes considerable personal and financial costs that make plaintiffs feel like they’ve lost regardless of the outcome of the case. Employer defendants also are dissatisfied with the system, often feeling “held up” by what they see as frivolous cases. And even when the case is resolved in the plaintiff’s favor, the conditions that gave rise to the lawsuit rarely change. In fact, the contemporary approach to workplace discrimination law perversely comes to reinforce the very hierarchies that antidiscrimination laws were created to redress.

Based on rich interviews with plaintiffs, attorneys, and representatives of defendants and an original national dataset on case outcomes, Rights on Trial reveals the fundamental flaws of workplace discrimination law and offers practical recommendations for how we might better respond to persistent patterns of discrimination.