Uviller explores our criminal justice system in pursuit of the answer to one question - is the playing field tilted. He analyzes the roles of all the players - prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants, judges, and juries - and compares the various advantages/disadvantages accorded them by the system. Fair does not mean equal, as Uviller explains using his own experiences as well as significant court cases. He argues convincingly that in many areas where one side seems to have an advantage, the interests of justice are served, and that "leveling the playing field" would adversly affect the process. This book is an academic one, accessible to the layman but even more useful for the law student and lawyer.

This book is a good introductory survey of trademarks, the prosecution process and legal issues. The appendices are particularly helpful as guideposts and examples. However, it works best as an introduction, not a practice guide. For example, this book will tell you what an office action is but it will not tell you much about how to draft a response. The reader will find herself flipping throughout the book to assemble the necessary information needed to do so. A great place to start but not the place to finish.

Life in the Old West was perilous and uncertain. There were fortunes to be made in the gold fields and in the enterprises that followed the gold rush. Yet law enforcement was not well-established, and stagecoach and train robbers could wipe out a fortune as quickly as it was made. The Wells, Fargo Company needed a way to protect the great sums of money its coaches were responsible for delivering. It hired James B. Hume, a California lawman, to take charge of its detective bureau in 1873.

James Hume was a different breed from the stereotypical western lawman who winked at civil rights and abused authority. He was just as concerned that an innocent man be kept out of jail as he was that he find the guilty man. And he had an impressive record of catching the guilty man, the most famous being Black Bart, the "Po8" stage coach robber.

Pioneering methods of criminal investigation which are now used widely, James Hume dug pellets out of a dead stage horse in order to do a ballistics test, and he tracked down Black Bart with the laundry mark from his handkerchief. Determined but patient, he logged an impressive number of solved cases.

This biography by Richard Dillon reads as smoothly as a novel. He used James Hume's own letters and diaries, which are in the Wells, Fargo Museum in San Francisco, for his research as very little had been written about Hume's life. He not only relates the fascinating events of Hume's public life but mines his personality as well and finds a heroic and likable figure.

In a time when we could use more heroes, I enjoyed reading about a real-life hero who contributed to the colorful past of the West and still maintained his integrity.

Once upon a time, as Richard Reeves fondly remembers, a reporter's ethical duty was to get a story, be fair and report it. The public trusted reporters, just as it trusted presidents and auto company executives and priests and all sorts of authority figures.

Doubts began to arise in the 1960's, with a variety of revelations. Hugh Hefner said "sex is fun" and people discovered he was right. Various president's ordered hundreds of thousands of Americans to risk their lives in Vietnam, but didn't offer a similar national commitment. Auto executives churned out cars that exploded in rear-end collisions, refusing to spend a couple of dollars per car to correct the problem. After a president resigned -- not before -- Barry Goldwater called him "the most dishonest man I ever met."

Reeves seems surprised that such questioning includes the news media. His book is a wonderful collection of the doubts afflicting the media, and the very valid reasons for such distrust. Any reporter with a couple of years experience can recount horror stories of unethical editors and publishers who believe and act as if they are the most powerful people in the community. Remember the old adage, "If you talk to God, you're praying; if God talks to you, you're nuts." Some editors believe, "If you endorse our editorials, you're a good citizen; if you question our wisdom, you're nuts."

Think of Reeves as the 'Martin Luther' of journalism; his book tacks his theses to the door of today's most arrogant institution. In response, the "Reformation" is here -- it's called the Internet.

Fifty years ago, in the "golden age" of journalism, some people bought a newspaper for a single reason -- for sports, stock tables, weather, comics, advice columns, crossword puzzles or other single purposes. The rest was thrown away. Now, the Internet provides such information directly and with less hassle. Newspapers will never recapture such shallow readers.

Only the media analyzes itself in full public view. The Catholic Church doesn't publicize the sexual liaisons of priests with young boys -- and, in some cases, young women. Critics of priestly failings are all noise and hate with no insight, wisdom or mercy; despite that, no priest would dare issue a book admitting, "We've got problems, and here's a solution." But, the news media is its own toughest critic -- as Reeves shows. The Janet Cooks and Duke Tullys are national embarrassments featured by the media to deter others from making similar mistakes.

Reeves criticizes the media with insight, mercy and rational analysis; he avoids egregious examples and partisan twaddle. Read the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times every day for a few weeks, and you'll understand how "truth" is so variable. Both offer vigorous, intelligent and often opposite editorial opinions by highly intelligent writers; it's what happens in a free society. Only tyrannies celebrate consensus, conformity and conservatism. The fault is not with opinions, it is with mealy-mouth publishers who think circulation depends on being so bland that the paper is "everyone's friend."

The grimmest fault of the media is the oldest story in the world, "No guts, no glory." When you have gutless publishers, reporters become equally gutless -- and the public deserts to "bold new media" such as the Internet. Sadly, Reeves failed to suggest a solution. Quite simply, take a theme from his favorite movie, The Front Page (1931 version), and get editors back to the three-martini breakfast and a gin bottle in the bottom desk drawer -- you can buy courage by the quart, if that's what it takes to give them guts.

Respect isn't earned by licking every boot in the community, it comes from a basic principle of old fashioned journalism, "Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." Sure, it takes guts. Maybe it's why Reeves, brilliant at outlining problems, fails to offer solutions. After all, someone may challenge him with a better idea. Remember, he's one of the professors who train modern journalists.

That is his only weakness. His book is a wonderful analysis of problems facing conscientious journalists, probably the best in the recent spate of criticism. First, read it; then, disagree with my analysis. See? You're already on the road to a solution.

This is the first, and to date the only, book that attempts to tell the 19th century legal history of the Mormon Church. The book is divided into three parts. The first section basically gives the legal history of the church during the life time of its founder Joseph Smith. The second section details the intensive persecution of the church by the federal government over the practice of plural marriage. The third section describes in detail the ecclesiastical court system that basically served all of the judicial needs of pioneer Mormons. This section in particular is fabulous. Firmage and Mangrum had incredible access to confidential church court records and the detail and scope of their treatment dwarfs any other work on the subject.

However the book is not without flaws. There are some gaps in the research. For example, the landmark Reynolds decision is dicussed in detail, but one gets the impression that the only documents consulted were the published legal ones (opinions and briefs). What about journals and letters by the participants? These sorts of gaps abound.

On the whole, however, this is a wonderful work. Law is one of the hitherto neglected regions of Mormon studies, and Mormon perspectives are among the hitherto neglected possibilities of legal studies. Despite a facinating legal history, Mormon historians have done compartively little on the subject. Likewise, despite Mormons at the highest levels of the legal establishment -- e.g., Rex E. Lee (Solicitor General) or Dallin H. Oaks (Dean of Chicago Law School) -- there have been compartatively few attempts at sustained and scholarly Mormon perspectives on the law. Anyone interested in providing such perspectives should read this book.

To read Running From the Law is to enter the reality of a driven woman lawyer. Although exciting, fast-paced, and fun to read--taking only a few hours--the main character, Rita Morrone, comes perilously close to caricature. The plot is one of crime and mystery, and the surprise "who done it?" is elegantly structured. There is no lawyer like Rita who would represent her lover's father, a federal judge, on a murder charge, especially after finding out how her (ex) lover figured into the plot

I thought Rita was a neat person and I really liked her"poker pals". They added a lot to the plot. I also liked the comments she made in her mind before she spoke something different. This is the first book of Lisa Scottoline's that I've read and need to fine more.

The book is totally unrealistic but it does not matter. It's a fun read that never bores. I have read one other book by Scottoline and find her to be an author that keeps the fun coming. I am not giving it a five star review because there was not enough of Rita in court, the only flaw with the book. Take it on an airplane with you and you will finish before the flight is over.

My criticism can be boiled down to a single line, this one. I read this kind of books hoping to find useful ideas for my business. Here I can't find any.

Maybe I should look for the purely intellectual interest, I don't know. My best advice is this: if you read to find recipes, read something else. Read this only out of curiosity.

And yet again, I was just curious about the US Army chapter but got little out of it - gruelling experience, after-action review, and all that - we did it in volleyball and basket training twenty years ago ... what's the big deal?

Its funny. I was reading the review following this one and the person was saying how he could NOT find anything worthwhile to apply to his business. He must not have even picked up the book!

I think there are plenty of great lessons within the book. Its not only a book about strategy, but a new framework to think in terms of. The world has changed greatly in the last 20 years and a lot of the old management frameworks have less significance. Complexity science is the new way to think and this book does a fantastic job of relating the "complex" topic to business. And the rules apply to all areas of the organization: strategy, organizational design, etc. If you want to be prepared to lead the complex globlal organizations of tomorrow, then this is a must read.

Surfing the Edge of Chaos does a marvelous job of taking many of the ideas being developed in complexity theory and applying them to the business world. In contrast say to Garrett Ralls who tried to do much the same thing, this book succeeds. I found myself continually thinking about not only the examples they provide, but also on my own work experiences and other companies that I have analyzed.

The authors do an excellent job of contrasting their approach (adaptive leadership) with more traditional reorganization (operational leadership). But refreshingly, they also acknowledge that in some cases, the more traditional approach might be more appropriate. There are many interesting concepts being developed by complexity theorists and this book manages to capture many, if not most, of them.

They show repeatedly the need to increase the stress on an organization in order to break past patterns of behavior. Their use of fitness landscapes (the idea that a successful company rests on a peak, and that in order to reach a new higher peak, often you must go down into the valley) is very powerful and at least partially explains why so many successful companies subsequently struggle, or fail, to adapt. Importantly though, the authors also spend a great deal of time talking about the unintended (or second and third order) effects of change. The point is not that you will be able to predict all of them (which is what chaos theory explicity says you cannot do), but rather that you must be flexible enough to roll with those unanticipated consequences.

Does that mean that every idea in this book is new? Of course not, but to be successful, a new theory often must combine the old with the new. And this book does a masterful of applying the ideas of Chaos/Complexity theory to business, of providing a new framework to think about both old and new problems. You may not agree with everything that appears in this book, but you will certainly come away with much food for thought.

These authors, and this book (in an earlier edition) were the first wave of today's spam onlsaught. If you need immigration information, please look elsewhere. If you -really- want this book, please buy the used copy. In the perusing of it that I've done, I found it to be not entirely uninformative, but I certainly wouldn't give it accolades, and, given it (and its authors') background, I wouldn't pay money for it if you held a gun to my head. Go ahead: type "Canter and Siebel" into Google, and see what you get.

Beware, these are the pair that invented spam. Laurence Canter lost his license to practice law after sending out the infamous green card spam on Usenet.

My husband was born in Pakistan and isn't a U.S. citizen. Due to September 11 and the unstable economy, we have decided to change his status. U.S. Immigration Made Easy has given us a lot of great pointers on the process and how to best fill out all the necessary forms and paperwork. This book has been a great find. I just bought 3 additional copies for my husband's family!

Judge Posner promises a far-reaching analysis of the impeachment and trial of President Clinton. In his introduction, he notes that the "ordeal" presented numerous axes of analysis: issues of law, issues of jurisprudence, issues of morality, theories of conflict, issues of political and cultural sociology. (p. 3)

In applying these analytical perspectives to the particular issues raised within the context of President Clinton's impeachment, I think Judge Posner does an excellent job at cutting through the political spin and identifying the essential points. He deftly exposes "it's all about sex" as the dishonest mantra that Clinton supporters, such as James Carville, used to divert the public's attention away from the basic legal issues. His discussion of the relevant legal charges--obstruction of justice and perjury--is clear and accessible. Once the political spin is redacted, the conclusion is inescapable--Clinton committed perjury and thus violated the law.

Yet Judge Posner's book is ultimately dissatisfying. His book promises more than it delivers, and what I think is a significant issue--the nature of impeachment as it has been understood and used within the American constitutional order--remains relatively untouched by Posner's book. This is frustrating.

Beyond passing references to Samuel Chase and Andrew Johnson, Judge Posner never discusses their impeachment or their resulting trials. He notes the distinction between impeachment standards for judges versus the President, but he never discusses in any detail the impeachment and conviction of any judges. (The only discussion is Judge Posner's reference to Judge Nixon's impeachment and conviction for perjury in 1989, but this is made in a single-sentence footnote on page 103.) In his discussion of censure, Judge Posner writes that "Congress has used censure sparingly" (p. 191), but beyond a couple references to President Jackson, he never discusses any of the situations in which Congress has censured a government official and what this meant for Congress in 1998/1999.

Maybe I had unrealistic expectations, but with a chapter entitled "The History, Scope and Form of Impeachment," I was really hoping for some substantial scholarship on the constitutional issue of impeachment as it has been used against many judges and two Presidents in our nation's history. Unfortunately, I was left with the sense that Judge Posner should have spent a few extra months doing additional research to produce a true scholarly exegesis, rather than join the rush to publish in the wake of the impeachment media frenzy.

I have read Professor Dworkin's review of this book in the New York Review of Books, and Dworkin, while critical of the book, hardly exposes it as a "sham" and a "joke," as one reviewer below suggested. Indeed, Dworkin suggests that the book "has many virtues," and describes it as being "clear, brisk, often amusing, and decorated with an impressive array of quotations and historical excursions, many of which are illuminating." Dworkin expresses his belief that Posner is not a "Clinton hater," and points out that Posner actually regards the Clinton presidency as a "success" in policy terms because it has helped solidify the Reagan Revolution.

Upon analysis, Dworkin's differences with Posner on the key question of the President's liability for criminal offenses are revealed to be rather narrow. Dworkin concedes that "one or more" of the accusations of perjury and obstruction of justice against Clinton may have presented jury questions, and that a jury might have concluded that Clinton was guilty of "one or more of them" beyond a reasonable doubt. As to the charge of perjury before the federal judge in the Jones case, Dworkin acknowledges Clinton's "deposition lies," and only disagrees with Posner's contention that these lies were "material" to the Jones litigation. With respect to the charges that Clinton committed perjury before the grand jury, Dworkin does not challenge Posner's view that the testimony in question was "material," and he even acknowledges that Posner "may be right" to believe that Clinton lied in his grand jury testimony. What Dworkin mainly objects to is Posner's use of the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt" to describe his degree of confidence that the President committed perjury and obstructed justice. But since Dworkin is not asserting that the President was actually innocent of these charges (as many defenders of the President have), his criticism of Posner's expression of certitude (or near certitude) regarding Clinton's guilt is not exactly earthshaking.

As for Dworkin's claim that Posner may have violated the canons of judicial ethics by writing this book, the canon in question only prohibits public commentary by a judge regarding a "pending" or "impending" case. While it is possible that the President will be prosecuted, the word "impending" normally does not denote something which is merely possible. Nevertheless, Dworkin simply asserts (without any citation to authority) that the term "impending" should be construed to cover "any possible future prosecution that has been publicly debated among politicians and officials and often mentioned in the press, particularly when the judge is prominent and his statements are likely to receive wide circulation." The rule Dworkin has devised is an interesting one, but it is not the rule set forth in the canons, and it is therefore unfair to accuse Posner of a violation of those rules.

This book is not partisan as some reviewers have claimed. Itis pragmatic.

It also seems strange to judge the book solely bythe highly debatable point of whether or not Posner violated the Canonof Judicial Ethics in writing it.

Should Clinton have been impeached, and if impeached, convicted? Richard Posner says the question is unanswerable. So why read this book?

This book shows how an outstanding mind thinks through important legal and moral issues where existing law and precedent are unclear or inconclusive. It is highly critical of almost everyone involved, including Republicans, the Supreme Court, Clinton's defenders, William Bennett, the TV pundits and 'intellectuals' who commented on the case. The four hours I spent reading this book were far more interesting, clarifying and valuable by far than the many hours I spent in front of the TV during the year or so of the crisis. Too bad this book wasn't available in the early months of the crisis. A lot of misleading and inaccurate information and thought could have been sorted through much more easily.

Here are a few of the many interesting points made by Posner, with which I agree:

1. It is on the ground of disrespect for his office and for decency in the conduct of government that the most powerful case for impeachment and conviction could have been pitched.

2. A President has a duty to avoid becoming enmeshed in a scandal that is likely to weaken his effectiveness. In running that risk, for wholly personal rewards, the Clinton exhibited a high degree of personal irresponsibility. That was a personal failing. But the avoidance of scandal is also a public duty - a precondition to the effective discharge of the President's other public duties.

3. A pragmatic decision-maker wants decisions to be based on an assessment of their probable consequences. In legal cases, and a fortiori in impeachment, which is only quasi-legal, this is a legitimate or at least common approach when the conventional materials of legal decision-making, such as precedent or a clear statutory or consittutional text, yield no direction. Since it is unknowable whether the good consequences of impeaching and removing Clinton outweigh the bad, the pragmatist would lean against impoeachment.

4. Those who claim that the failure to impeach Clinton makes what he did OK, or puts him 'above the law' are just wrong. He remains subject to the ordinary processes of the law, whether during or after his term.

5. To keep on lying after no one believes you does not mislead, but it shows contempt for truth and truthfulness.

6. Clinton made a travesty of the religious rite of atonement by asking for forgiveness and absolution without offering to incur any cost.

Attorney Casey Jordan strives to be the best, and with her looks and talent, she will achieve her goal.

When world-famous law profesor Eric Lipton is accused of murdering one of his students, he chooses a former student, Casey, to defend him. Turning down another case to represent Lipton, Casey knows the risks involved...what she doesn't know is this case could cost her her life.

Donald Sales, father of the murdered student, wants justice, and his brand of justice knows no bounds.

A shocking discovery sends Casey on a journey to catch the killer, but with several suspects, and a few more bodies, she must go outside the law to stop the madman.

"The Letter Of The Law" is a fast read, with plots twists no reader will expect.

Tim Green has written his breakout bestseller, proving he has all the story telling skill to join the ranks of John Grisham, Richard North Patterson, etc.

Nick Gonnella

Casey Jordan is the best defense lawyer in Texas and is looking to stretch that claim to best defense attorney nationwide. To that end she likes big, headline making, provocative cases, those with the biggest clients and the biggest risks. When Eric Lipton, nationally known criminal law professor, is accused of brutally murdering a former student, he hires Casey to defend him and she's thrilled. Though a tough case, Lipton was arrested leaving the country with the victim's bloody underwear in his luggage, it's just the kind of headline grabbing, career advancing trial she likes. And Casey does an admirable job, tearing apart defense witnesses and even laying suspicion on the victim's father. Just before the jury foreman reads the not guilty verdict, Lipton leans over and whispers into Casey's ear..."I really killed her". Now as other bodies begin to pile up, Casey is caught in a real bind, her duty to her client as an attorney and her need to see justice done. Tim Green has written a fast paced, page turner with well developed, interesting characters, powerful, riveting scenes and enough twists and turns to keep you off balance and guessing to the very end of the book. As a practicing attorney, his knowledge of the ins and outs of our criminal justice system, lend real credibility to the story. The Letter of the Law has it all, great characters, an action packed tight plot and a very satisfying ending with a few surprises thrown in.

Unlike his previous novels that are set in the NFL arena, Tim Green takes you into the inter workings of the legal system. This book will keep you on the edge of your seat for the entire ride.

Eric Lipton a famous law professor is accused of a bizarre murder, the evidence is stacked against him. Enter Casey Jordan, his former student whose beauty is only surpassed by her brains. Lipton picks Casey to defend him knowing that she has the ability to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the twelve jurors selected to judge him. Casey takes the case thinking is will launch her into the national spotlight and give her the recognition she desires. She gets more than she bargined for, not only is she fighting for justice, she is fighting for her life.

The roller coaster ride begins and you are left trying to figure out who the guilty and innocent are. This is an non-stop thriller that is the best work from the author to date.

Loved the book, couldn't put it down.