Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 28
English0674659988
20.0
In Stock
Overview
When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to “corrupt” Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruptionrooted in ideals of civic virtuewas a driving force at the Constitutional Convention.
For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.
In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.
Listen to a short interview with Jon LatimerHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & CraneIn
the first complete history of the War of 1812 written from a British perspective, Jon Latimer offers an authoritative and compelling account that places the ...
The question of how Islam arrived in India remains markedly contentious in South Asian politics.
Standard accounts center on the Umayyad Caliphate's incursions into Sind and littoral western India in the eighth century CE. In this telling, Muslims were a ...
John Hirsch chronicles the research, scientists, and ephemera of the Harvard Foresta 3,750-acre research forest
in Petersham, Massachusetts. Essays by David Foster, Clarisse Hart, and Margot Anne Kelley expand the scope of this photographic exploration at the nexus of science ...
America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a
revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native ...
As part of its 375th celebrations, the University has created a new photo book, Explore
Harvard: The Yard and Beyond. This collection of photographs brings to life the myriad intellectual exchanges that make Harvard one of the world’s leading institutions ...
With some 280,000 objects, the Harvard Art Museum is the largest university art museum in
the United States. Its Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler museums feature world-renowned collections of archaic Chinese jades and bronzes, Italian Renaissance paintings, and nineteenth-century ...
Once upon a time, there lived in France a humble juggler, Barnaby by name, who
was skillful but suffered every winter from poverty. A devotee of the Virgin, he had few failings apart from enjoying drink a little too much. ...
Listen to a short interview with Giles SladeHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & CraneIf
you've replaced a computer latelyor a cell phone, a camera, a televisionchances are, the old one still worked. And chances are even greater that the ...