New Books in Law

Between 1933 and 1935, a trial was held in Bern against members of the Swiss extreme right-wing National Front who had distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a widely disseminated antisemitic publication that spread lies about Jews. The real target of the Jewish organizations that initiated the trial, however, was the pamphlet itself, its origin, its dissemination, and its use in Europe's fascist movements.

During the course of the trial, both sides received ample support in the form of material assistance and propaganda. The defendants and their supporters in Nazi Germany were able to rely on an extensive network that had been established in the early 1920s to combat “Judaeo-Bolshevism.” This conspiratorial “Antisemitic International” united German völkisch circles, Italian fascists, Russian monarchists, and French conspiracy theorists. On the other side, the plaintiffs actively sought to expose the “Protocols” as a forgery in the hope that this would counteract their impact.

In this lecture, Michael Hagemeister will use the Bern trial as a case study of Jewish legal self-defense in order to shed light on both the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the concerted efforts against the “Antisemitic International” in the 1930s, which have received little attention from historians.

Read more about Michael Hagemeister's research on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This lecture originally took place on April 10, 2024.
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The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and tensions. Law has cultivated both the planet’s biggest environmental threats and its most creative innovations for protecting human and ecological health. U.S. laws have driven both exploitation and temperance; destruction and restoration; and resistance and adaptation.

Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law (NYU Press, 2026) showcases the fundamental role the law has served in reckoning with environmental harm in the United States. Authors Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels explore the full arc of U.S. environmental legal history across five major periods in the United States, reaching as far back as North America’s colonization and ending with the present. Through this rich history, the book considers the ways leadership, social movements, political coalitions, information, and technologies have both been catalyzed by the law and have advanced environmental change.Camacho and Daniels provide a fascinating and insightful history of environmental law. They ask readers to consider: What lessons can we draw from environmental legal history for contemporary challenges like climate change, AI, and emerging biotechnologies? In looking to the past, Lessons for a Warming Planet illustrates how prior generations each used legal imagination to navigate seemingly insurmountable environmental threats.
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After
Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected in 1945, Canada was shocked
by the revelation that its own citizens were engaged in espionage for
the Soviet Union. "P.S. Burn after Reading": The Kellock-Taschereau Commission and Soviet Espionage in Canada
(University of Toronto Press, 2026) explores how the Canadian
government used the controversial Kellock-Taschereau
Commission—sometimes judiciously, sometimes not—to uncover and thwart
domestic
spies during the early days of the Cold War.

Drawing
on a wealth of sources, including the Commission’s extensive records,
GRU documents turned over by Gouzenko, American Venona decrypts, Soviet
KGB archives, and newly released British MI5 and MI6 files, authors Dr.
Reinhold Kramer and Dr. Tom Mitchell provide a comprehensive account of
the crisis. They reveal that, despite some civil liberties missteps, the
government’s suspicions were largely justified.

The
book weaves together the evidence against the spies, the tradecraft of
Soviet espionage, complex legal challenges faced by the state, and the
political fallout. With access to hundreds of newly released British
intelligence files, P.S. Burn After Reading
offers both specialists and general readers fresh insights into the
espionage crisis of 1945–46 and the pivotal role it played in exposing
Canada’s postwar security and intelligence vulnerabilities.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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One in five children will be sexually abused before their
eighteenth birthday. This isn't a problem confined to a single country,
city, or neighborhood. It's something that happens everywhere, and what
it costs can be enormous: depression, PTSD, and elevated long-term risk
for physical illness, including heart disease and cancer.

In One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis—And What We Can Do to Stop It (Basic
Books, 2026), Elizabeth Letourneau and Luke Malone make the case that
child sexual abuse is not inevitable. It is preventable, and at this
moment in time, we have the tools to stop it before it begins.

Letourneau
and Malone don't stop at describing the problem. The book creates a
clear picture of how much of the harm is caused by other children. They
lay out a road map, built on years of research and real compassion, for
keeping kids safe and reaching young people at risk of causing harm
before anyone gets hurt.

In this episode of the New
Books Network, we follow that road map and ask what changes when
prevention rather than punishment becomes the organizing idea behind
child safety. The conversation is energized and respectful of survivors
and their families, and it projects an urgency that does not lose hope.

I
hope you find it worth your time. I think you will, if you are
interested in what child sexual abuse prevention can look like in 2026.

- Aniss Benelmouffok
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For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on
heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually
changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key
players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) examines these political and social changes,
evaluates how actors have successfully integrated LGBTQ+ needs into the
mainstream policy agenda, and provides a comprehensive guide to
understanding the policymaking processes from an LGBTQ+ perspective.
Drawing on data from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA, it
presents a systematic framework for understanding "queering public
policy" as a policy process. The final chapter offers a roadmap for
scholars interested in exploring this evolving field further. This book
will appeal to anyone interested in public policy, public
administration, and queer studies.
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