In our check and balances system of government, the three branches -- Presidency, Legislative, and Judicial -- are equal in might and stature. To many this may not appear to be the case. Part of this is due to the intense media attention the Presidency and Congress enjoy. Part of this is also due to misconceptions within the public about the role of the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court specifically.

In the outstanding A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court, editor Rodney Smolla -- a professor of law at William and Mary College -- has put together a work that should go a long way towards educating the public. This collection of essays by experienced Supreme Court observers concentrates on the 1992-1993 term of the Court. While other terms may have had bigger cases that the public would recognize, several fundamental issues were addressed by the Court. For example, how does one balance the issue of free speech and access to protected services in the case of abortion? How much discretion does law enforcement have in searching an individual without probable cause? Does Title IX allow an individual to sue for monetary damages? Does Brown vs. the Board of Education require Mississippi to equalize its state-run university system? Can hateful speech lead to additional punishments when done in concert with another crime?

In each of the cases chosen for review, the method by which the case reached the Supreme Court is detailed giving the case the human component that each has initially (and is sometimes eventually lost). In addition, a justice who was pivotal in the resulting decision is highlighted along with a good explanation of the constitutional issues.

For a reader interested in understanding the Supreme Court1s function in our society, A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court is not only a good introduction, it is a definitive profile of the Court from the perspective of a trained observer and should not be missed.

The implications for altruistic social control are staggering. Once identitarian criminal databases (blood, fiber, DNA, fingerprint, somatotype, facial and retinal recognition, credit records, the resurrection of deleted email off the original magnetic tapes(!), et al.) are centralized and updated, it would seem that a citizen wouldn't be able to stick his gum on a public wall without the whole juggernaut of networked forensic technologies converging on the site, a public littering ticket arriving in one's mailbox that very afternoon. One could envision a subculture of decadent anti-criminologists, using Saferstein's text as a blueprint for new Underworld patents on gloves, bodywear, chemical reagents, and a whole bookshelf of counter-procedural "operations manuals" which serve to elude and obfuscate the forensic apparatus. In the teeth of such ambitious criminality, I suppose the only hope forensic science has of becoming the legalistic Archangel of altruistic Orwellianism it wants to be is if the criminal element remains, on the whole, as stupid as ever. As for the *true* decadents, the white-collar devils of capitalist exploitation, we can only shudder at the destruction their money can wreak. In the future of crime, those who have the most brilliant scientists and engineers on their payroll will be the ones who can stay strategically ahead of the system. Why, one can almost imagine organized crime syndicates recruiting disgruntled grad students right out of MIT!

But going back to the text itself, there are some annoying glitches the potential buyer should be aware of.... My criminalistics professor at Rutgers, a friend and colleague of the author, pointed out to me that Saferstein retired from the forensics field in 1991, going on to freelance his expertise to any privatized legal cabal willing to stamp a check. As a result (isolated from the laboratory as he is), some of the instrumental minutiae which characterize a cutting-edge forensics lab are absent from or misrepresented in the text. Furthermore, on the flip side, certain defunct procedures and instruments are presented as if they were still cutting-edge! Much of the photography and graphic presentations in the book also seem a tad antiquated, carry-overs from previous editions, apparently. (My own father, a specialist in immunoassay engineering, upon perusing the book's graphics estimated its copyright at late '80s, early '90s!) But these are minor trifles in an outstanding introductory text. The best thing about this book is that the price has dropped about twenty dollars since the previous edition. Wonderful news for penny-stricken undergraduates like ourselves!

As a former student of Michael Fischl, I am not surprised that his eloquence and charisma extend to his written words as well as his lectures.

--written by someone who has been there, done that, and has even read all the available law school test taking guides

The title of the book is a play on the title of a classic book about the art of negotiation, called _Getting to Yes_. Implicit in _Getting to Maybe_ is that, unlike a negotiation, performance on law school exams does not require an exact answer or resolution.

The method by which these law professors explain this concept is especially interesting. In connection with their academic research, they propose to break down law school exams into small components, and thoroughly analyze those components. The result is a very substantial and comprehensive analysis of the structure of law school exams and the skills required to do well on these exams.

You may be asking how the professors purport to explain _all_ law school exams, for surely there are professors for whose exams these methods will not work. These professors make the interesting point that in the United States, law education is fairly uniform, and, therefore, the skills required to perform well on law school exams are fairly uniform, as well.

I read this book prior to starting law school. I found it useful primarily because I have read a number of other books about legal reasoning and the study of law and the law school experience that are more basic than the material in this book. If this is your first book regarding the study of law or peformance in law school, I would advise putting it aside in favor of a book offering a broader overview of law, its study, and law school.

I highly recommend this read (listen).

Anyway, this book is great, and you should get it for your smart kid who is interested in science. You should also demand that they put the lectures on DVD, because watching Feynman talk is even better than reading the books. He was a god in the classroom, and it's easy when you see the lectures to understand why he was worshipped by a generation of CalTech undergraduates.

Athens and Rhodes had reason to be concerned about violence, for they come from abused backgrounds themselves. By listening to acutal violent people with some respect (instead of the psychiatric nonsense of deciding that anyone unlike a psychiatrist is automatically insane), Athens came to a simple conclusion: violent people are violent because violence works for them. It gets them what they want out of life. And the violent reach that conclusion by learning from the people around them.

So far, so good. I come from a poverty-stricken, violent background myself, and what Athens found rings true. But there's more to it.

It's no wonder that many psyciatrists view violence as insanity, for many violent people take huge risks for trivial gains -- or at least, that is how most people would view it. One has to wonder how these people view life. Athens never asks the kind of person who choses to deal with a rude party guest via aggravated assualt "Don't you think that was sort of dumb?"

Athens is apparently looking for a theory of all violence, but his answer overlooks the question of how violence ever got started in the world. If violent individuals are coached into violence by other violent individuals, who taught the First Violent Person how to behave?

Rhodes also biases things when he test Athens's theory against some famous murder cases. Rhodes examines the Clutter murders recounted in Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD, and tells us how Perry Smith, who killed the Clutters, fits Athens's theory. He leaves out the fact that Dick Hickock, the other criminal, planned the crime, and included murdering all witnesses from the begining, or that Smith went along with the idea of robbery but didn't want to kill the Clutters. Smith's decision to kill seems to have had a large impulsive component, exactly what Athens's theory wants to totally exclude.

Of course, Athens isn't the only person to interview murderers. The FBI Behavioral Science Unit does it all the time. But because what the FBI has discovered doesn't fit Athens's theories too well in some cases, Rhodes trashes them, and quite unfairly.

And despite Rhodes's denial, there is evidence pointing to genetic links to violent behavior.

In sum, you can learn a lot from this book, but it's the latest contribution to the ongoing study of violent crime, not the final answer.

On other hand, one reviewer calls the book a biased and simplistic book. He is partially right, but we should be so lucky to get such a biased and simple view. Rhodes and Athens are biased, but their view is clear and logically correct. And to call Athen's explanation of the human psyche as simplistic, is not fair. It sounds simple because it makes sense. Any explanation of the human psyche is going to be too simplistic. On the other hand, that reviewer has a point in that Athens doesn't explain all, and Athens and Rhodes, through no fault of their own, have not explained that human "temperament" (inherent personality preferences) has a role in influencing the actions and reactions of all concerned. Obviously, looking at other books: in particular Please Understand Me II and the Nuture Assumption should give readers a clearer view of Lonnie Athen's grandfather, father, mother, brother, and most importantly Lonnie, himself, in terms of their differing temperaments. It does make a difference. Looking at Lonnie Athens and his brother's reactions to their violent father is interesting comparison in two differing temperaments in similar circumstances.

Clearly there needs to be more work done on the role of socialization, where Athen's violentization is only one kind of socialization. Athen's Self as a Soliloquy could serve as a landmark for other's in following the complex interactions between the individual and his environment. Adding the notions of temperament and more complex notions of the peer group interaction will be the next possible step.

Trollope creates fantastic characters from the saintly/virginal society girl who pines for a lover, to a dastardly gentleman who squanders his families small fortune on rather unsavoury habits such as gambling and less than scrupulous women.

Most of this is told through the perspective of the matriarch of one family (Lady Carbury) who's only wish is that her son (a scoundrel at best) marry well and with any luck above his station (which he tries to sabotage at every turn) and for her daughter to marry into wealth at any cost whatsoever. That with the general gossip and the "Newcomer's from Paris" (The Family Melmotte) who left Paris hurriedly it seems under a rather dark cloud of suspicion will keep you glued to this book throughout. It is a very lengthy novel (481 pages) but you will be desperately turning the pages in the Appendix hoping for just a bit more!

Like all of Trollope's books, this one is as well crafted as any by Eliot or Thackeray; yet the theme and handling are strikingly modern. I came to this book by way of the Barsetshire novels with their depiction of rural clergy. I should have read THE WAY WE LIVE NOW first.

Especially worth noting are the surprisingly full characterizations of Marie Melmotte, daughter of the financier, who is courted by her emotional inferiors, and Roger Carbury, a rural landowner who holds aloof from the fray and helps several of the others pick up the pieces from their lives.

The only negative is the book's anti-semitism, though it makes several attempts to lift itself from this charge.