Credentials:
“Imperfect Union is a timely, important, necessary book that should be read by anyone concerned about the present state of American politics. Written in clear and lucid prose, it deserves the attention of, and discussion by, the widest possible audience.”
- Sanford V. Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr.
Centennial Chair and Professor of Government, University of Texas, Austin
School of Law
“A superb job. Powerfully written and totally accessible, Imperfect Union gives unique insight into how today’s Constitutional crisis stems from the Framers’ unwillingness to confront issues that they knew to be threats to democratic ideals.”
- Judith Miller, Journalist, Adjunct Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, Contributing Editor, City Journal
Lawrence Goldstone is the author or co-author of two dozen books of both fiction and non-fiction, six with his wife Nancy. He has written extensively on Constitutional law and equal rights. His On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravishing of African American Voting Rights won the highly prestigious Lillian Smith Book Award. Other books include Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903; Dark Bargain: Slavery Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution; and The Activist: John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, and the Myth of Judicial Review. He currently writes a weekly opinion column for The Fulcrum. Goldstone’s fiction has also been highly praised. His first novel, Rights, won a New American Writing Award, and his third, Anatomy of Deception, was a New York Times notable mystery. Goldstone has been widely interviewed on both radio and television, with appearances on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, To the Best of Our Knowledge, and The Faith Middleton Show; The Takeaway (PRI); Make It Plain with Mark Thompson (SiriusXM); Tavis Smiley (PBS); and CSPAN’s BookTV. Goldstone’s work has been profiled in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, Salon, Slate, and numerous regional newspapers. His articles, reviews, and opinion pieces have appeared in, among other periodicals, The Atlantic, New Republic, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Hartford Courant, and Berkshire Eagle. Goldstone holds a Ph.D. in constitutional history from the New School.
The Law of Interrogations and Confessions traces the evolution of the primary approaches that U.S. courts have taken to regulating the interrogation of suspects by law enforcement officers. It examines the due process approach to the voluntariness of statements; the short-lived “focus of the investigation” test of Escobedo v. Illinois; the landmark Fifth Amendment approach announced in Miranda v. Arizona; and the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel approach to regulating the “deliberate elicitation” of incriminating statements.
Sir James Bacon’s Recollections paint a portrait of many of the leading characters of the time, cases he judged, and historic events as they took place. Written with warmth and humour, and carefully preserved by his descendants, they throw an intimate, revealing light on the period in which he lived. They have the immediacy of true experience.
In this new and original study of the origins of the United States Constitution, award winning scholar Lawrence Goldstone demonstrates that what was left out of the document by the Framers is of equal importance to what was included.
Sex and Privacy in American Law presents empirical analyses of civil and criminal state court decisions applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas. After tracing key historical and legal developments leading up to the Lawrence decision’s decriminalization of sodomy on substantive due process grounds in 2003, the study employs both quantitative and qualitative content analyses of 307 cases citing Lawrence over the two decades since it was decided.