New Books in Law

Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law (Brill, 2026) provides the details of Japanese climate litigation, positioning them both within the global trends of climate litigation and on the trajectory of Japanese past pollution lawsuits. It identifies the barriers that hinders the number of climate cases in Japan, a country known with a significant low litigation use. It then discusses the future prospects for climate change litigation in Japan by comparing with tobacco litigation in the United States. This original work makes a significant contribution to the international academic community, by describing Japan's climate cases, previously little known internationally.

Masako Ichihara, Ph.D. (2021), Kyoto Univeristy, is Program-specific Assistant Professor at the Unit of the Environment and Law, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law and Policy, Kyoto University.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance in the form of maritime raiding. From the Atlantic basin to the western Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, and Southeast Asia and China, imperial powers claimed that progress was being held back by the barbarity and greed of pirates, who repeatedly attacked imperial vessels. The suppression of piracy, justified under the banner of spreading civilization and free trade and abolishing slavery and the slave trade, provided both western and non-western powers with a back door for territorial expansion and the enforcement of imperialist agendas.

In Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding, 1825–1870 (Yale UP, 2026), Professor Manuel Barcia tells the story of these conflicts, showing how imperialist powers frequently used anti–maritime raiding efforts as excuses to cement western supremacy in various parts of the world, while simultaneously resorting to violent means that were indistinguishable from the methods of those they accused of being pirates.

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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Supreme Pressure: The Rejection of John J. Parker and the Birth of the Modern Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) examines the 1930 Supreme Court nomination of John J. Parker, a turning point in American judicial politics. Alarmed by some of his past statements and opinions, labor and civil rights groups mounted a fierce campaign to block his confirmation. Not only was control of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, but Parker's nomination symbolized a profound clash of ideologies, political agendas, economic doctrines, and interpretations of the Constitution. Their efforts sparked a dramatic Senate revolt, marking the first successful grassroots campaign to block a Supreme Court nominee.

By exploring the circumstances of Parker's rejection, this book traces how that battle laid the foundation for today's highly partisan and contentious confirmation process. The book also reintroduces Parker as a consequential but largely forgotten figure in American jurisprudence--one whose rulings helped shape the South's legal response to Brown v. Board of Education. Beyond the nomination fight, it delves into Parker's political campaigns, judicial opinions, and relationships with key public figures, charting his dramatic rise, humiliating defeat, and enduring influence.

Packed with intrigue, strategy, and the clash of competing ideologies, this is the story of how one nomination forever changed the rules of the game.
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Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants. The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman.Lisa Siraganian’s The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots (Verso, 2026) reveals the unsettling consequences of granting rights to imagined persons, such as Sophia the robot citizen or New Zealand’s Whanganui River. Synthesizing the political and phil­osophical debates on personhood and drawing on a varied cast of thinkers that includes Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Dr. Seuss, Siraganian un­covers the disturbing impact of this contemporary development. Awarding rights to robots and rivers all too easily becomes a legal tool to turn people into capital. When robot Sophia is made a citizen, “she” is transformed into a subject in the law without the corre­sponding legal duties that protect us from her.At the root of this trend is the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that grants First Amendment rights to corporations as if they were individuals. The result has not been the transformation of things into humans so much as humans into things, when animals and the environment would be better protected with reference to our humanity rather than to theirs.

Lisa Siraganian is the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and Professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland, USA). Her work has won multiple awards and has been supported by fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Siraganian has written award-winning scholarly monographs that bridge literary criticism, art criticism, and legal and philosophical scholarship. More recently, she was the Editor of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th edition, Volume D (1914-1945) (2022).

Tim Wyman-McCarthy is a Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He can be reached at [email protected].
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In the quest for human rights justice for communities and workers whose rights are breached by transnational businesses, non-judicial mechanisms (NJMs) are often deployed, but how effective are they? Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2025) creates a blueprint for reforming transnational human rights NJMs and for helping communities and workers to use them. Through 587 interviews with 1100 individuals over five years of research in Indonesia and India, the authors delve into the practical workings of NJMs in diverse industries and contexts. The findings reveal that while NJMs are limited in providing standalone remedies, they can play a valuable role within a broader regulatory ecosystem. Combining rich empirical data, multi-method analyses and a new theoretical framework, the authors argue for a multi-pronged approach to human rights redress. Their findings will advance both academic and policy debates about the merits and shortcomings of NJMs.

Interview with Tim Connor and Fiona Haines.

Interview by Caitlin Murphy, Lecturer, RMIT University and Fellow, Laureate Program on Global Corporations and International Law.
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