The Laws is Plato's last, longest, and perhaps, most famous work. It presents a conversation on political philosophy between three elderly men: an unnamed Athenian, a Spartan named Megillus, and a Cretan named Clinias. They worked to create a constitution for Magnesia, a new Cretan colony that would make all of its citizens happy and virtuous. In this work, Plato combines political philosophy with applied legislation, going into great detail concerning what laws and procedures should be in the state. For example, they consider whether drunkenness should be allowed in the city, how citizens should hunt, and how to punish suicide. The principles of this book have entered the legislation of many modern countries and provoke a great interest of philosophers even in the 21st century.

Countless books detail the development of Roman law and explain the laws of the ancient Romans. Similarly, many scholars have traced the law of ancient Athens. Written for both students and educated lay readers, the chapters dealing with ancient Greece focus primarily on the law of ancient Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E. But material relating to other Greek colonies and city states also plays a significant role in the development of ancient Greek law. The Roman law chapters explore both law and legal institutions and emphasize the growth and expansion of legal principles. Roman law still serves as the foundation for the civil laws of many nations today. And given the importance of globalization, Roman law is likely to continue to influence the modern word for the foreseeable future. Each unit begins with a "Background & Beginnings" chapter that establishes the historical context in which law developed and introduces relevant principles of jurisprudence (i.e., legal philosophy). The second chapter in each unit covers procedural aspects of the law, such as court structure, judges, trial procedure, evidence, and legislation. The remaining chapters examine substantive legal topics such as property, contracts, family law, criminal law, and the like.The text also maintains a focus on the connections and influences of social, cultural, economic, philosophical, and political forces as they have affected law and its development. In addition, several sections of the book add another dimension. These sections, entitled "Law in Literature," use works of ancient literature to explore aspects of law as seen through the eyes of poets, dramatists, orators, and historians. In theory, modern readers can learn a great deal about law through literature because literature often lacks the "official filter" of many traditional legal sources.Of course each individual author brings his own biases about law and the legal system to his writing. But as long as we acknowledge the potential for such bias, these sections have the potential to offer completely different perspectives and insights.

Covering criminal justice history on a cross-national basis, this book surveys criminal justice in Western civilization and American life chronologically from ancient times to the present. It is an introduction to the historical problems of crime, law enforcement and penology, set against the background of major historical events and movements. Integrating criminal justice history into the scope of European, British, French and American history, this text provides the opportunity for comparisons of crime and punishment over boundaries of national histories. The text now concludes with a chapter that addresses terrorism and homeland security. Each chapter enhanced with supplemental boxes: "timeline," "time capsule," and "featured outlaw." Chapters also contain discussion questions, notes and problems.

Anger was the engine of justice in the ancient Greek world. It drove quests for vengeance which resulted in a variety of consequences, often harmful not only for the relevant actors but also for the wider communities in which they lived. From as early as the seventh century BCE, Greek communities had developed more or less formal means of imposing restrictions on this behaviour in the form of courts. However, this did not necessarily mean a less angry or vengeful society so much as one where anger and revenge were subject to public sanction and sometimes put to public use. By the fifth and fourth centuries, the Athenian polis had developed a considerably more sophisticated system for the administration of justice, encompassing a variety of laws, courts, and procedures. In essence, the justice it meted out was built on the same emotional foundations as that seen in Homer. Jurors gave licence to or restrained the anger of plaintiffs in private cases, and they punished according to the anger they themselves felt in public ones. The growing state in ancient Greek poleis did not bring about a transition away from angry private revenge to emotionless public punishment. Rather, anger came increasingly to move into the public sphere, the emotional driver of an early state that defended its community, and even itself, through its vengeful acts of punishment.

Sir Thomas Fairfax, not Oliver Cromwell, was creator and commander of Parliament's New Model Army from 1645 to1650. Although Fairfax emerged as England's most successful commander of the 1640s, this book challenges the orthodoxy that he was purely a military figure, showing how he was not apolitical or disinterested in politics. The book combines narrative and thematic approaches to explore the wider issues of popular allegiance, puritan religion, concepts of honour, image, reputation, memory, gender, literature, and Fairfax's relationship with Cromwell. 'Black Tom' delivers a groundbreaking examination of the transformative experience of the English revolution from the viewpoint of one of its leading, yet most neglected, participants. It is the first modern academic study of Fairfax, making it essential reading for university students as well as historians of the seventeenth century. Its accessible style will appeal to a wider audience of those interested in the civil wars and interregnum more generally.

Richard Quinney's The Social Reality of Crime remains an eloquent and important statement on crime, law, and justice. At the time of its appearance in 1970, Quinney's theory not only liberated the field from a recitation of the practices of the police, courts, and corrections, it also represented a marked departure from traditional analysis which viewed criminal behavior as pathological. Quinney not only advanced criminological thought, he inspired scores of students of crime and criminal justice to reorient their perceptions of the justice system.The Social Reality of Crime swept the criminological community and motivated an entire generation of researchers to question definitions of crime and labels of criminality. The book's popularity quickly turned Quinney into a criminologist with an international reputation. Excerpts from the book's first chapter, which is devoted to the theory of the social reality of crime, are now routinely reprinted in anthologies on criminology and deviant behavior. The theory itself is discussed in most criminology textbooks.This new edition of The Social Reality of Crime will renew inspiration for Quinney's unique critical-social constructionist perspective that has been so significant to the development of theoretical work in the fields of criminology, social problems, and the sociology of law.