New Kramer book tells tales of civil rights

My friend and colleague, and scholar extraordinaire, Professor Zachary Kramer has just published a new book on civil rights, Outsiders: Why Difference is the Future of Civil Rights.  Knowing Professor Kramer's ability to relate a compelling narrative, I expect this book is a great read, and I can't wait to get my hot little hands on it.  Here is the description from Oxford University Press.

Contemporary discrimination has changed in important ways from the forms it took in the 1960s, the era in which our civil rights law system originated. Previously, the primary targets of discrimination were groups: African Americans, women, and Latinos, among others. The goal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to integrate marginalized groups into civic life, shatter ceilings, and break down barriers. The law sought to make us better people and America a more equal nation.

And it has. Discrimination against groups still occurs, but affected groups can marshal the rights regime to target and eliminate discriminatory policies. The challenge today, however, is to protect the individual, and our civil rights laws struggle with this. The people most likely to face discrimination today are those who do not or cannot conform to the whims of society. They are the freaks, geeks, weirdos, and oddballs among us. They do and wear strange things, have strange opinions, and need strange accommodations.

Outsiders is filled with stories that demand attention, stories of people whose search for identity has cast them to the margins. Their stories reveal that we have entered a new phase of civil rights and need to refresh our vision. Instead of dealing in protected traits, civil rights law should take its cue from religious discrimination law and provide a right to personality. Outsiders seeks to change the way we think about identity, equality, and discrimination, positing that difference, not sameness, is the feature of our age and arguing for a civil rights movement for everyone.

Professor Kramer is associate dean of faculty, professor of law, and Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

CFP: UMass Law Review calls for papers, presentations in law and media

The UMass Law Review has issued the following call for papers. Download the call in PDF here, and please share it with any interested scholarly communities.

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LAW REVIEW
CALL FOR SYMPOSIUM PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS

November 14, 2018

We are pleased to announce the 2019 UMass Law Review Roundtable Symposium, currently titled “Law and Media.” In the age where the 24/7 news cycle and social media have impacted current politics and where data protection, personal branding, and technology have affected entertainment and media as well as the rule of law, an investigation of the relationship between law and the media of our current times is timely and warranted. Accordingly, the UMass Law Review seeks thoughtful, insightful, and original presentations relating to the impact of the law on media as well as the impact of media on the law.

Interested participants should submit a 500-word abstract to cshannon@umassd.edu, with “Attn: Conference Editor – Symposium Submission” in the subject line by December 31st, 2018 for consideration. Selected participants will be notified by the end of January and invited to present their work at the 2019 UMass Law Review Symposium taking place in late March of 2019. Selected participants may also submit a scholarly work for potential publication in the 2019-2020 UMass Law Review Journal. If you have questions about submissions or the Symposium, please contact our Business/Conference Editor, Casey Shannon or Editor-In-Chief, Kayla Venckauskas (kvenckauskas@umassd.edu). We thank you in advance for your submission.

Sincerely,

Kayla Venckauskas
Editor-in-Chief

Casey Shannon
Business/Conference Editor

New scholarly treatise examines global water deficit

My colleague and friend Dr. Piotr Szwedo, Jagiellonian University, has published the new treatise, Cross-Border Water Trade: Legal and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2018), appearing as volume 32 of Brill-Nijhoff's Queen Mary Studies in International Law series.  With water law being a key emerging issue around the globe in our contemporary times, this volume marks an important contribution to the literature.  Congratulations, Piotr!  Download the PDF flyer for your library.  Here is the publisher's description:

Cross-border Water Trade: Legal and Interdisciplinary Perspectives is a critical assessment of one of the growing problems faced by the international community — the global water deficit. Cross-border water trade is a solution that generates ethical and economic but also legal challenges. Economic, humanitarian and environmental approaches each highlight different and sometimes conflicting aspects of the international commercialization of water. Finding an equilibrium for all the dimensions required an interdisciplinary path incorporating certain perspectives of natural law. The significance of such theoretical underpinnings is not merely academic but also quite practical, with concrete consequences for the legal status of water and its fitness for international trade. 

Piotr Szwedo, Ph.D. habil. (b. 1979) is a lecturer in international law and Head of OKSPO Centre for Foreign Law Schools at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He published monographs and articles on international economic law and global governance. 

Table of Contents

Preliminary Questions
    Pages: 1–38
 

In Search of a Regulatory Model
    Pages: 39–89
    

Water as an Article of Trade in WTO Law
    Pages: 90–130
 

Water Trade in the International Practice of States
    Pages: 131–207
 

Principles and Institutions of International Law as Conditions of and Restrictions on Water Trade
    Pages: 208–315

Ending Notes