Books about Discretion from Amazon.com

No woman sets out to tear down her home. But it happens in many subtle ways - with our attitudes, our words, and our actions Walk verse-by-verse through Proverbs 7 to discover specific characteristics of the foolish woman. A series of penetrating questions is included, to help identify ways that we as women may unknowingly be "tearing down" the lives of those around us..
Price: $3.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Judgement Calls tackles one of the most important and controversial legal questions in contemporary America: How should judges interpret the Constitution? Our Constitution contains a great deal of language that is vague, broad, or ambiguous, making its meaning uncertain. Many people believe this uncertainty allows judges too much discretion. They suggest that constitutional adjudication is just politics in disguise, and that judges are legislators in robes who read the Constitution in accordance with their own political views. Some think that political decision making by judges is inevitable, and others think it can be restrained by "strict constructionist" theories like textualism or originalism. But at bottom, both sorts of thinkers believe that judging has to be either tightly constrained and inflexible or purely political and unfettered: There is, they argue, no middle ground.
Farber and Sherry disagree, and in this book they describe and defend that middle ground. They show how judging can be--and often is--both principled and flexible. In other words, they attempt to reconcile the democratic rule of law with the recognition that judges have discretion. They explain how judicial discretion can be exercised responsibly, describe the existing constraints that guide and cabin such discretion, and suggest improvements.
In exploring how constitutional adjudication works in practice (and how it can be made better), Farber and Sherry cover a wide range of topics that are relevant to their thesis and also independently important, including judicial opinion-writing, the use of precedent, the judicial selection process, the structure of the American judiciary, and the nature of legal education. They conclude with a careful look at how the Supreme Court has treated three of the most significant and sensitive constitutional issues: terrorism, abortion, and affirmative action. Timely, trenchant, and carefully argued, Judgment Calls is a welcome addition to the literature on the intersection of constitutional interpretation and American politics..
Price: $21.43 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Focusing primarily on the exclusion of the Chinese, Lucy Salyer analyzes the popular and legal debates surrounding immigration law and its enforcement during the height of nativist sentiment in the early twentieth century. She argues that the struggles between Chinese immigrants, U.S. government officials, and the lower federal courts that took place around the turn of the century established fundamental principles that continue to dominate immigration law today and make it unique among branches of American law. By establishing the centrality of the Chinese to immigration policy, Salyer also integrates the history of Asian immigrants on the West Coast with that of European immigrants in the East.

Salyer demonstrates that Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans mounted sophisticated and often-successful legal challenges to the enforcement of exclusionary immigration policies. Ironically, their persistent litigation contributed to the development of legal doctrines that gave the Bureau of Immigration increasing power to counteract resistance. Indeed, by 1924, immigration law had begun to diverge from constitutional norms, and the Bureau of Immigration had emerged as an exceptionally powerful organization, free from many of the constraints imposed upon other government agencies..
Price: $19.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Viewer Discretion Advised shows where our media has gone wrong and what we can do about it. Established media critic Jeffrey McCall illustrates the problems with much of contemporary media content, why it is this way, how to better manage children's media use, how to become more critical audience members, and more. It also includes a helpful chapter on how readers can actively challenge media companies. Stop complaining about media content change it!.
Price: $8.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this moving and insightful memoir, set against a backdrop of Fascist Italy and the Tyrolean Alps, Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz reveals a side of the poet which is seldom touched upon, that of the devoted father. A scholar and poet in her own right, who has translated Pound's Cantos into Italian, de Rachewiltz offers a window not only into Pound's life, but also through his biography into his works..
Price: $10.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The last survey of the rent-seeking literature took place more than a decade ago. Since that time a great deal of new research has been published in a wide variety of journals, covering a wide variety of topics. The breadth of that research is such that very few researchers will be familiar with more than a small part of contemporary research, and very few libraries will be able to provide access to the full breadth of that research. This two-volume collection provides an extensive overview of 40 years of rent-seeking research.

The volumes include the foundational papers, many of which have not been in print for two decades. They include recent game-theoretic analyses of rent-seeking contests and also applications of the rent-seeking concepts and methodology to economic regulation, international trade policy, economic history, political competition, and other social phenomena. The new collection is more than twice as large as any previous collection and both updates and extends the earlier surveys. Volume I contains previously published research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously published research that uses the theory of rent-seeking to analyze a broad range of public policy and social science topics.

The editors spent more than a year assembling possible papers and, although the selections fill two large volumes, many more papers could have been included. Our aim has been to include the most important contributions in the literature and give a broad overview of secondary contributions. The end result is a fine collection that shows the flexibility and power of the rent-seeking methodology, and the light shed on a broad range of political, social, and institutional research issues. Each volume begins with an extensive survey of the literature written by the editors and an overview of the contributions included in the two volumes.

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Price: $183.76 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The last survey of the rent-seeking literature took place more than a decade ago. Since that time a great deal of new research has been published in a wide variety of journals, covering a wide variety of topics. The breadth of that research is such that very few researchers will be familiar with more than a small part of contemporary research, and very few libraries will be able to provide access to the full breadth of that research. This two-volume collection provides an extensive overview of 40 years of rent-seeking research.

The volumes include the foundational papers, many of which have not been in print for two decades. They include recent game-theoretic analyses of rent-seeking contests and also applications of the rent-seeking concepts and methodology to economic regulation, international trade policy, economic history, political competition, and other social phenomena. The new collection is more than twice as large as any previous collection and both updates and extends the earlier surveys. Volume I contains previously published research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously published research that uses the theory of rent-seeking to analyze a broad range of public policy and social science topics.

The editors spent more than a year assembling possible papers and, although the selections fill two large volumes, many more papers could have been included. Our aim has been to include the most important contributions in the literature and give a broad overview of secondary contributions. The end result is a fine collection that shows the flexibility and power of the rent-seeking methodology, and the light shed on a broad range of political, social, and institutional research issues. Each volume begins with an extensive survey of the literature written by the editors and an overview of the contributions included in the two volumes.

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Price: $75.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the 1980s and '90s many countries turned to the private sector to provide infrastructure and utilities, such as gas, telephones, and highways--with the idea that market-based incentives would control costs and improve the quality of essential services. But subsequent debacles including the collapse of California's wholesale electricity market and the bankruptcy of Britain's largest railroad company have raised troubling questions about privatization. This book addresses one of the most vexing of these: how can government fairly and effectively regulate "natural monopolies"--those infrastructure and utility services whose technologies make competition impractical?

Rather than sticking to economics, José Gómez-Ibáñez draws on history, politics, and a wealth of examples to provide a road map for various approaches to regulation. He makes a strong case for favoring market-oriented and contractual approaches--including private contracts between infrastructure providers and customers as well as concession contracts with the government acting as an intermediary--over those that grant government regulators substantial discretion. Contracts can provide stronger protection for infrastructure customers and suppliers--and greater opportunities to tailor services to their mutual advantage. In some cases, however, the requirements of the firms and their customers are too unpredictable for contracts to work, and alternative schemes may be needed.

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Price: $25.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]