Nathan Nobis - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This book provides an overview of the current debates about the nature and extent of our moral obligations to animals. Which, if any, uses of animals are morally wrong, which are morally permissible (i.e., not wrong) and why? What, if any, moral obligations do we, individually and as a society (and a global community), have towards animals and why? How should animals be treated? Why? We will explore the most influential and most developed answers to these questions – given by philosophers, scientists, and animal advocates and their critics – to try to determine which positions are supported by the best moral reasons.
Brendan Shea - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
Welcome to “A Little More Logical”, an open educational resource designed to make the study of logic engaging, accessible, and relevant for students and teachers alike. In today’s world, where information is abundant but not always reliable, the ability to think critically, construct sound arguments, and evaluate the reasoning of others has never been more important. This book aims to equip you with these essential skills by exploring the fascinating world of logic.
Josh Franco - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
Polimetrics: A Stata Companion, authored by Dr. Josh Franco, is an Open Education Resource workbook licensed CC BY-NC and designed as a Stata companion to Introduction to Political Science Research Methods. This workbook provides a tour of the Stata software, an introduction to cross-sectional, time series, and panel data, and an introduction to a variety of models. I review models where the outcome is linear, binary, ordinal, categorical, and count. Additionally, I have an interpretation chapter on survival models. Each “Models” chapter has a similar organizational structure: about, estimated time, what is the model, how are models run in Stata, how do we interpret the model results, and a real-world example of model results in a Creative Commons licensed, peer-reviewed journal article. Additionally, mini-assignment instructions and a rubric are included so students can practice their interpretation skills.
John R. Baxter - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This is an introduction to probability theory, designed for self-study. It covers the same topics as the one-semester introductory courses which I taught at the University of Minnesota, with some extra discussion for reading on your own. The reasons which underlie the rules of probability are emphasized. Probability theory is certainly useful. But how does it feel to study it? Well, like other areas of mathematics, probability theory contains elegant concepts, and it gives you a chance to exercise your ingenuity, which is often fun. But in addition, randomness and probability are part of our experience in the real world, present everywhere and yet still somewhat mysterious. This gives the subject of probability a special interest.
Monica Affleck - Editor
2026 · Book · Open Access
Are you interested in the topic of people learning and development or are tasked to implement learning and training opportunities in your workplace? We invite you to use this resource full of information and tools to help support people and organizations in their learning journey. Learning happens everywhere, and you will explore the different modes of learning on and off the job. But is a training program actually the right solution to address a performance issue in your organization? Learn how to conduct a needs analysis to help you decide what is in the best interest of the organization and people. Training and learning opportunities have to be properly designed to be effective and deliver the results you expect. Find out how adults learn and what motivates them to develop their skills. Discover how learning supports the performance management process and how to ensure that learning gets transferred into the workplace. The ultimate goal of training and development is to increase productivity, employee engagement, and to make a positive impact on the organization’s bottom line. So, evaluating training and development programs is critical to determine the company’s return on investment (ROI). You will find all of this and more in this resource to help you invest in and reap the benefits of talent development in your company. Remember, this is an interactive resource. We invite you to answer the questions at the end of each chapter to test your knowledge.
Simon Wimmer - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
forall x: Dortmund is an adaptation and German translation of forall x: Calgary. As such, it is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity, the syntax of truth-functional (propositional) logic and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic with identity and first-order interpretations, formalizing German in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as the syntax and (Kripke-)semantics of modal logic. The book is provided in PDF and in LaTeX source code. A booklet with solutions for all exercises in the book is available.
John Fabian Witt - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This is the Fifth Edition of Torts: Cases, Principles, and Institutions, a casebook for a one-semester torts course that carves out a distinctive niche in the field by focusing on the institutions and sociology of American tort law. The book retains many of the familiar features of the traditional casebook, including many of the classic cases. Like the best casebooks, it seeks to survey the theoretical principles underlying those cases. But it aims to supplement the cases and principles with editorial notes that focus students’ attention on the institutional features of our tort system, including features such as the pervasiveness of settlements, the significance of the market, the role of the plaintiff's bar, the importance of private insurance, the contingency fee, and the jury. These institutional arrangements are what make American tort law distinctive. They are how the substantive doctrines of tort law are translated into the practice of torts lawyers. And they are sociologically fascinating in their own right. TCPI integrates the institutional materials into the cases and notes rather than segregate them into separate sections of their own. It does so because its aim is not to teach the details of any one institution, such as the mechanics of the law of subrogation or workers’ compensation. Few one-semester torts classes can take up so much material. Instead, the book integrates the institutional material into the main text to draw general lessons about the massive, sprawling systems of private administration that American law has created under the umbrella of our torts system.
Jakob Miller - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
Popular imagination gives the President of the United States vast, sweeping power. The Constitution tells a different story. This book is about the gap between the two. The Office of the Presidency: Powers and Responsibilities is a free, introductory political science textbook for undergraduate students. It examines the American presidency through the lens of the leadership dilemma — the persistent gap between what the public expects presidents to accomplish and what the office actually empowers them to do. Each chapter explores a key dimension of presidential power: the constitutional origins of the office, nominations and campaigns, the tools and limits of executive authority, the relationship with Congress and the courts, war and foreign policy, and the presidency's management of public opinion and the media. Throughout, the focus is not on the presidents who have held the office, but on the office itself — its surprising constraints, its creative expansions, and the enduring tension between expectation and reality that has shaped every presidency from Washington to the present.
Matthew William Green - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This Chapter will address the current protections that are available to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (“LGBT”) individuals who allege they have been victims of employment discrimination. The Chapter's primary focus will be on federal statutory law, particularly Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although the focus here is on federal law, Appendix I to this Chapter lists the states that protect individuals from public and/or private discrimination under state laws. This topic is explored in four parts: (1) a brief overview of congressional efforts to enact a statute to protect individuals from employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity; (2) discusses Title VII and sexual orientation; (3) discusses ways in which recent courts have handled sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII; and (4) similarly examines early judicial treatment of claims brought by individuals alleging discrimination on the basis of their gender identity and/or expression and explores how the law has developed in this area as well.
Brian L. Frye - Author / Elizabeth Schiller - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
We wanted this casebook to be as easy to use and understand as possible. Accordingly, we included not only cases, but also the text of the rules and restatements, as well as concise explanations of the relevant law. Each chapter of the book addresses a different issue, in the following format. First, it clearly and concisely explains the relevant law governing that issue. Then provides the relevant text of any statutes, Model Rules, sections of the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, or other sources, with a link to an open-source versions of the full text, when available. It provides one or more heavily edited cases intended to illustrate the application of the law at issue, with a link to an open-source version of the full text of the case. Each case is preceded by a brief summary of its facts, reasoning, and holding, and followed by questions intended to indicate subjects for further investigation or discussion. And finally, it includes citations to law review articles and other materials relevant to the law at issue, with links to open-source versions of those materials, when available. This casebook covers a wide range of different subjects related to the professional responsibility of attorneys. While it is possible to cover all of this material in a three credit-hour course, you may wish to omit some subjects. You may also wish to supplement the materials in this casebook with additional materials. We encourage you to use this casebook in any way that you like.
Anne Nichol - Author / Kendra Harding - Author / Monica J. McKirdy - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This is an introductory textbook exploring the management and treatment of people with mental disorders throughout the criminal justice system.
Ben Fernandez - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
Legal Writing I & II; Legal Research and Writing & Introduction to Litigation Practice contains a brief discussion of all of the topics covered in a law school courses on legal writing, including a typical first semester course on legal research, analysis and writing an objective memorandum, as well as a second semester course on persuasion and writing an appellate brief, motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment. The discussion focuses on the basics of analogical reasoning and persuasion and leaves out the minutiae. Each topic is taken one step at a time, with each step building on the step before it. The sources of law are presented first, then legal research, and reading and analyzing cases and statutes. The book covers analogizing a case to a fact pattern and marshaling the relevant facts to the elements of a statutory rule next. And then first section of the book concludes with legal citation, CRAC and CREAC, and writing a legal research memorandum. The text also includes a lot of samples and examples of how the author would write a case brief, a legal memoranda and an appellate brief, as well as an appendix with charts, outlines and exercises students can use to practice these skills. Legal Writing I & II; Legal Research and Writing & Introduction to Litigation Practice covers all the skills students need to know to work at a law firm, and everything students have to learn to begin practicing in litigation department of a firm.
Christian Turner - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This text explores the laws governing the use of land. Sometimes narrowly focused, often intensely local, land use regulation may give the impression of a highly specialized field with small stakes. The text is divided into three parts: First, we will survey the ordinary, local administrative scheme of land use regulation. The cases in this section are intended to establish what that system is and what it's standards are. In the second part of the course, we will turn our attention to cases illustrating litigation attacks on the ordinary administrative scheme. The purpose here is not, as it was in the first part, to understand better the standards the administrators should apply, but to understand the constraints imposed on the contents of local laws, the procedures of enactment and permitting, and the composition of local lawmaking bodies. In the third part, we focus on the distributive concerns raised by land use regulation. The regulatory takings doctrine has gone from, literally, nothing, to wrestling to disentangle distributive concerns from substantive ones, to trying to craft either rules or standards to identify regulations that go “too far” and should be considered “takings” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. We will consider what the doctrine's purposes are, how it should be governed, and how it should be invoked as a procedural matter.
Shereen Hassan - Editor / Dan Lett - Editor / Leah Ballantyne - Editor
2026 · Book · Open Access
Although this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all, criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding to broken rules and of mending relationships. Special thanks to Leah Ballantyne, LLB LLM, a Cree lawyer from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, who provided expert Indigenous consultation/editing for this textbook.
Theresa Buller - Author / Catherine Doughty - Author / Melanie Lovich - Author / Tracey Thomas - Author / Kate Thompson - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This guide to legal research and citation of New Zealand law provides direction to students undertaking legal research. It may also be useful for members of the public and self-represented litigants. It covers the core skills and knowledge for effective legal research, such as creating a search strategy, identifying where to locate legal information and legal citation using the New Zealand Law Style Guide. This text explores searching for sources of legal information including case law, legislation and commentary and explains the different approaches required to locate and cite these sources of law.
J.H. Verkerke - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This is Volume 3 in a three volume series written for Contracts Law. Its former title is "Collaborative Teaching Materials for Contracts." The first semester of law school is mostly about learning to speak a new legal language (but emphatically not “legalese”), to formulate and evaluate legal arguments, to become comfortable with the distinctive style of legal analysis. We could teach these skills using almost any legal topic. But we begin the first-year curriculum with subjects that pervade the entire field of law. Contract principles have a long history and they form a significant part of the way that lawyers think about many legal problems. As you will discover when you study insurance law, employment law, family law, and dozens of other practice areas, your knowledge of contract doctrine and theory will be invaluable.
Roger C. Park - Author / Douglas D. McFarland - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
The sixth edition, first published as an ebook, and this seventh edition carry forward the philosophy and structure of the earlier editions. This book is not a comprehensive treatise on the subject of civil procedure, yet it provides a mixture of expository text, cases, and self-testing questions in nearly all of the major areas of the subject. In order to maximize accessibility, flexibility, and compatibility of the book, the authors have chosen CALI's eLangdell Press to publish and distribute the sixth edition (as chapters) and this revised seventh (as a complete book) electronically with a Creative Commons license. Publishing a law textbook electronically with far fewer restrictions than most commercial books and using a somewhat new, boutique outfit such as eLangdell Press is an unconventional choice, to say the least. But the authors share the eLangdell vision of more flexible teaching materials for professors and more cost-effective books for students. Professors may now edit and remix this work to match their teaching without worry of copyright infringement. Students may now adopt this book, read it using any number of software or devices, and even print it - all for free. The book's authors, like its publishers, believe that this new book model represents an important and long overdue step forward in the way law school books are published. All the exercises have been substantially revised for this edition. The individual exercises also are reorganized and expanded so that they follow a more standardized pattern: expository text on the topic area, work-book questions, and introduction to the related online CALI lessons. This book, and the accompanying interactive exercises known as CALI Lessons available online through the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) at www.cali.org, are intended to provide a challenging educational experience. For each exercise, students should read the text in this book and answer the questions before accessing the rest of the exercise online. Professors choosing to assign only some of the exercises - or students looking for additional work only in certain areas of the subject - may especially want to consider these exercises and lessons: Exercise Two: Jurisdiction (Jurisdiction & Venue and Jurisdiction Over the Person); Exercise Three: Pleading a Complaint; Exercise Five: Motions to Dismiss and Waiver under Federal Rule 12; Exercise Six: Joinder and Supplemental Jurisdiction (An Exercise in Civil Procedure, Review of Joinder Concepts, Joinder of Claims and Parties, and An Interpleader Primer); Exercise Eight: Summary Judgment; and Exercise Eleven: Preclusion. Additionally, Exercise One: Holding and Dicta in the Context of a Diversity Case is an excellent introduction to legal method. The first two editions of this book, by Roger Park, included Exercise One: Holding and Dicta in the Context of a Diversity Case, Exercise Two: Jurisdiction, Exercise Three: Pleading a Complaint, Exercise Four: Demurrers and Judgments on the Pleadings, Exercise Five: Motions to Dismiss and Waiver Under Rule 12, Exercise Nine: Judgment as a Matter of Law, and Exercise Ten: Evidence for Civil Procedure Students. For the last five editions of this book, Douglas McFarland has edited the above exercises and added Exercise Six: Joinder and Supplemental Jurisdiction, Exercise Seven: Discovery, Exercise Eight: Summary Judgment, and Exercise Eleven: Preclusion. Accordingly, the book has become more comprehensive, expanding from seven to eleven exercises. Of course, each new edition incorporates changes and updates in procedural law. All of the information necessary to prepare for an interactive exercise is contained in this book. Reference to additional materials may be useful, but is not necessary. Each exercise can be assigned separately. No exercise is a prerequisite for another. In fact, students will find the expository material and work-book questions in each exercise independently valuable even without completing the CALI lesson for that chapter. The CALI lessons are valuable either to provide additional understanding and self-testing of subjects discussed in class or as primary substitutes for areas not covered in depth in class. In general, the interactive, online exercises follow a non-linear branching format. They seek to present challenges and questions instead of rote learning or leading students through an error-free educational experience. Although the exercises eventually evaluate student answers, they sometimes eschew immediate feedback in favor of the development of a line of questions. The ideal is the creation of a classroom-like Socratic dialogue. For a description of general goals and educational theory of the exercises, see Roger C. Park & Russell Burris, Computer-Aided Legal Instruction in Law: Theories, Techniques, and Trepidations, 1978 Am. B. Found. Res. J. 1. This book and accompanying exercises cannot reproduce the spontaneity and flexibility of the live classroom, but they can be a useful supplement. They require an active learning process in which students respond to questions dozens of times during each hour of instruction, and receive prompt evaluation of their answers. Another benefit of computer-aided instruction—and the phrase “computer-aided” is used loosely here and in the title of this book; the exercises are compatible with many non-computer devices such as tablets and smartphones—is its “individualized” nature. Law professors and students should not take this literally, however. Surveys administered at several law schools indicate that an overwhelming majority of students believe that the exercises are more valuable when done in pairs or threes instead of alone. Students who do the exercises with a partner are more likely to consider their responses carefully and to enjoy the experience. They also have lively discussions about what their response should be and why the computer responded as it did. As with previous editions, we continue to welcome and solicit comments from professors and students about the book and the accompanying exercises.
Christopher Lant - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This text has evolved from 20 semesters teaching the undergraduate courses Geography, People, and the Environment and Environment and Society. It is designed for freshmen through junior-level courses at community, junior and four-year colleges and universities in the United States. Focused upon the dilemma of environmental sustainability, geography and the emergent field of ecological economics are emphasized in a trans-disciplinary framework. It provides—in a one semester or one quarter undergraduate course that requires no prerequisites—a fundamental background in the essentials students need to deal with natural resource and environmental issues as an informed citizen while building a foundation for further study.
Carmichael Peters - Author / Louis L. Knowles - Author / Rodè F. Cramer - Author / Glennan Keldin - Author / Hayley Nelson - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This book aims to examine the current state of systemic racism in the United States as compared to baseline data collected in 1969. Using recent findings in the fields of history, economics, education, political science and public health, the work reveals the ways in which systemic racism in the US has and has not been addressed in the past five decades.
Joost Groot Kormelink - Author
2026 · Book · Open Access
This textbook is based on the MOOC Responsible Innovation offered by the TU Delft. It provides a framework to reflect on the ethics and risks of new technologies. How can we make sure that innovations do justice to social and ethical values? How can we minimize (unknown)risks?The book explains: The concept and importance of responsible innovation for society Key ethical concepts and considerations to analyse the risks of new technologies Different types of innovation (e.g. radical, niche, incremental, frugal) Roadmap for Responsible Innovation by Industry The concept of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) It includes a link to all the web lectures as well as case studies ranging from care robots and nuclear energy to Artificial Intelligence and self-driving vehicles.
