Mea Culpa : : Lessons on Law and Regret from U.S. History / / Steven W. Bender.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Bender, Steven W.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; 1. Regret --; 2. What Dehumanization Predicts --; 3. Aliens, Illegals, Wetbacks, and Anchor Babies --; 4. Beasts of Burden --; 5. The Wages of Poverty --; 6. Sexuality and Dehumanization --; 7. Dehumanizing Criminals --; 8. Flying While Muslim --; 9. From Slavery to the New Jim Crow of Mass Incarceration --; 10. You've Come a Long Way, Baby? --; 11. International Dehumanization --; Conclusion. --; Notes --; Index --; About the author
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781479876730; 9783110728996
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Steven W. Bender.

In Mea Culpa, Steven W. Bender examines how the United States' collective shame about its past has shaped the evolution of law and behavior. We regret slavery and segregationist Jim Crow laws. We eventually apologize, while ignoring other oppressions, and our legal response to regret often fails to be transformative for the affected groups. By examining policies and practices that have affected the lives ofgroups that have been historically marginalized and oppressed, Bender is able to draw persuasive connections between shame and its eventual legalmanifestations. Analyzing the United States' historical response to its own atrocities, Bender identifies and develops a definitive moral compass thatguides us away from the policies and practices that lead to societal regret.Mea Culpa challenges its readers. In a different era, might we have been slave owners or proprietors of a racially segregated establishment? It's easy to judge immorality in the hindsight of history, but what current practices and policies will later generations regret?More than a historical survey, this volume offers a framework for resolving some of the most contentious socialproblems of our time. Drawing on his background as a legal scholar, Bender tackles immigration, the death penalty, the war on terror, reproductive rights,welfare, wage inequity, homelessness, mass incarceration, and same-sex marriage. Ultimately, he argues, it is the dehumanization of human beings thatallows for practices to occur that will later be marked as regrettable. And all of us have a stake in standing on the side of history that resists dehumanization.