James Q Whitman: 4 books

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman...

Cognition Switch: An Artefact for the Transmission of New Ideas Issue #4: March 2019 Featuring Ideas by: James Q Whitman, Costica Bradatan, Angela Kennedy, Matthew Francis, David Munns, Chris Kempes, Van Savage, Neil Levy, Stefani Engelstein, Walter Vannini, Tom Winterbottom, Lori Miller Kase, Matthew Karp, Philip Goff, and Scott Aaronson

Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading--more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are,...

Slaughter in battle was once seen as a legitimate way to settle disputes. When pitched battles ceased to exist, the law of victory gave way to the rule of unbridled force. Whitman explains why ritualized violence was more effective in ending carnage, and why humanitarian laws that view war as evil have led to longer, more barbaric conflicts.