Book Description
Broad coverage, flexible organization, and an introductory level structure make Introduction to Law suitable for a variety of departments and. The text provides students with an overview of the U.S. legal system using real cases to illustrate the substance of the law, as well as major functions and procedures, promoting development of critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
- New! Updated cases in almost every chapter keep students informed of the most current issues.
- New! An Internet Tip feature refers students to additional case material on the companion web site.
- New! The companion web site includes chapter outlines, useful links, and additional cases to help reinforce and illustrate concepts addressed in the text.
Customer Reviews:
Introduction to Law & the Legal System.......2007-08-13
I have used several editions of this work over the years and found it very useful but the publisher lets students access ready-made case briefs from the text on their own webpage thus undercutting one of the most important pedagogical reasons to have an Intro to Law work. I contacted the publishers and they insist that this serves some other purpose -- I thought the purpose of an academic text was to serve the needs of pedagogy. It serves the purpose of making me, a long-time user of this text, to turn away from it until the publishers get some sense of the needs of professors everywhere who do not wish to dumb-down expectations of their students.
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The Legislative Labyrinth: A Map for Not-for-Profits (AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series) (The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series)
Manufacturer: Wiley
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ASIN: 0471400696 |
Book Description
A simple, practical guide to help not-for-profit organizations lobby local, state, and federal legislative bodies
Only a fraction of not-for-profit organizations take advantage of the legislative process in representing their members and their organization's goals. Yet lobbying is an important way to gain visibility, attract members, and find new sources of funding. This book is designed to help the modern not-for-profit develop and implement an effective lobbying program without jeopardizing its tax-exempt status. Dr. Pidgeon and the contributers he has assembled provide in-depth analysis of all the major issues of the lobbying process, including:
- The basics of lobbying
- The structure of local, state, and federal government
- Using the mass media to spread the message
- Political action committees (PACs)
- Marketing and communication strategies
- Strategic partnerships
- The legal aspects of government affairs and lobbying
- When and how to use outside consultants
- A strategic, step-by-step plan for success
A CD-ROM with a wide-ranging array of tables, forms, and checklists as well as a complete model strategic plan is included. When used in conjunction with the CD-ROM, The Legislative Labyrinth is a comprehensive guide that explains and simplifies the process of developing and maintaining an effective, efficient government affairs program. This wealth of wise and insightful advice will help executive directors, board members, consultants, and lobbyists find creative, effective ways to earn the attention their organizations deserve.
Book Description
This volume will be of interest and value to students of logic, ethics, and political philosophy, as well as to members of the legal profession and to everyone concerned with problems of government and jurisprudence. By citing a large number of cases, the author makes his presentation of the processes of judicial interpretation particularly lucid.
Customer Reviews:
Not Quite an Introduction.......2007-06-16
While Levi clarifies much that's uncertain about legal interpretation, I don't recommend this book for those with no previous studies in law. If you must read it -- and there ARE rewards from doing so -- be sure to have a law dictionary at hand.
Besides using legal terms that aren't explained, Levi's prose is so dense as to be almost unreadable, but worse, it lacks anything resembling clarity. He often barges straight in to lengthy analyses of concepts without explaining the basic terms he uses or even why they're relevant; these must be induced from the text while reading. Since Levi is usually demonstrating through examples how concepts change over time, however, it's difficult to pin down what the concept means at any one point, before Levi has already jumped ahead to the next point without explaining either.
It's also highly recommended that you look up the cases Levi cites, since his quotations from judges rarely contain enough critical information to piece together the actual concept involved. Finding the original and just reading the parts that he replaced with ellipses add an infinite degree of clarity.
Helpful.......2006-06-20
I found this book to be helpful but somewhat basic. I is outlined nicely and is easy to follow. Good future reference. Recommend to students.
A Great Read.......2006-01-07
I appreciate Edward Levi's attention to detail. This book definitely goes beyond the standard textbook in terms of putting together a guide that is both interesting to read and informative. I'd recommend it to anybody in my situation, planning to attend law school, or even to practicing attorneys in need of a handy, compact reference guide to the basics.
Law of the land.......2005-04-01
The power to determine the law of the land resides within every citizen of the country by means of electing the officials they choose and the judicial system only upholds the law. The citizens of a country elect their leaders and once elected they are enshrined with the right to uphold the economic and political stability but any improper actions of a government should be corrected by means of the judicial process rather than by any political process. All differing opinions should be allowed to coexist with checks and balances as determined by the judicial system.
ambiguity made clear.......2002-08-17
Legal reasoning is famously ambiguous: there's no objective way to determine the outcome of a given case as there is with a physics problem. If you know the weight of an item and the height from which it drops, you are able to determine fairly objectively (i) the rate at which it will fall to the earth and (ii) the time it will take to fall to the earth from the point at which it is dropped. Law, unfortunately, is not so straight-forward. Understanding its assumptions is absolutely critical to developing any sort of sophisticated understanding about the ways in which law affects civilization. This book provides a broad outline of those assumptions. I suggest having at least a rudimentary background in intellectual history and political philosophy to get the most out of this book.
Book Description
The Spirit of the Laws is without question one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete scholarly English language edition since 1750. This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was such an influence on those who framed the American Constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses on Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than on those opening passages toward which critical energies have traditionally been devoted.
Customer Reviews:
Iran.......2006-03-28
This is a good book which gives you first hand impression about how laws are design by authority.
Excellent review for our present members of congress and anyone with the interest to put in the time........2005-09-08
This is very interesting about Montesquieu. Every member of congress should read it and take it to heart. It appears that the majority of our founding fathers did read it and take it very seriously. It is something that all Americans who are interested in our government should consider reading. It is amazingly quite easy to read though, I would suggest having a good dictionary handy while reading it. Some of our members of congress I just do not believe would understand, even if someone was reading the dictionary for them. That is a sad commentary about the facts we all must face, however.
Not the great book people seem to think it is........2004-12-20
This is a book that could (should?) have faded into history without being a great loss to the world. Yes, there are a few interesting bits of political philosophy, but they're far and few between, and mainly either just thrown out as Montesquieu's personal opinions with little to no evidence or examination, or flimsily based on historical examples. As a reader, I didn't find most of his arguments (where he didn't seem to be contradicting himself, which happens frequently) very convincing. This was obviously written with the 18th century French salon crowd in mind, and reads as such. I'm sure it provided a lot of aristocrats with conversation fodder to make them appear intelligent and educated at the time, but these days it just seems like an antiquated bit of history.
He claims the book has to be read as a whole to see the structure and his overall goal; well, I did read the whole book and at the end couldn't see an overarching structure at all. The work just seemed like a long, rambling, unorganized mess. The only people I might really recommend this to are people interested in Greek, Roman, and French history (especially legal history), but not to people interested in political science or philosophy.
Bump this one to the bottom of your list of classics on historical thought, there are much more interesting reads out there.
Important book in the history of ideas.......2002-08-28
There are mainly two reasons why Montequieu's book is important. One is for his ideas, which still have relevance for current political issues, such as separation of church and state. The second is that it represents an important historical milestone in political thought. The real bonus is that, in the translation, his work reads in a way that is both intellectually engaging, by which I mean he gets you thinking about the issues, and also engaging (if entertaining is not quite the right word) as a series of philosophical perspectives delivered in a direct way generally free of jargon.
The most interesting part of his book for me was at the outset, in his comparison of despotism, republics and democracy.
The really important aspect of his book is that so many of the threshold policitical issues that he discusses are still live issues. How much should the state intervene? What constitutes good laws? What parts of life in a political society are the business of the state?
Good book, but not really a philosophical treatise..........2002-08-09
Montesquieu doesn't really put forward a unified philosophically based political system here, so don't read it expecting something like The Republic, Leviathan or the Two Treatises. Stylistically this is very like Machiavelli; that is, no (overt) overiding system, rather just a long series of pithy pieces of advice for people actually in (or intending to make their own) government. If you've read Machiavelli's Discourses, you'll know what to expect.
I recommend you read at least Locke's Two Treatises and Machiavelli's Discourses before this, and then you'll get the theorectical background behind many of Montesquieu's points. Like Locke he thinks of liberty and republics being fine things, but like Machiavelli he cautions that circumstances should always be taken into consideration, and there is no one form of government that is always the right one for every people at all times, even republics. Because of this most of the book is spend enumerating various circumstances that might come up and appropriate reactions. For example, an early section is spend discussing the effect of climate on the people of that area, and given this, what form of government suits them best.
What this means is that while his work may not stand at a level with The Republic or Leviathan in terms of philosophical merit, if you are looking for knowledge that will be useful in the real world, this book is probably superior to those.
I definitely recommend you check this book out. It's imposing length is split into much easier to digest mini-chapters, so it doesn't seem as long as it is, and the use of examples makes it more interesting than many of the other drier works of political philosophy you might come across.
Average customer rating:
- An excellent overview
- Pragmatism that's reasonable.
- The polymath, Richard Posner, strikes again!
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The Problems of Jurisprudence
Richard A. Posner
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory
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Frontiers of Legal Theory
ASIN: 0674708768 |
Book Description
In this book, one of our country's most distinguished scholar-judges shares with us his vision of the law. For the past two thousand years, the philosophy of law has been dominated by two rival doctrines. One contends that law is more than politics and yields, in the hands of skillful judges, correct answers to even the most difficult legal questions; the other contends that law is politics through and through and that judges wield essentially arbitrary powers. Rejecting these doctrines as too metaphysical in the first instance and too nihilistic in the second, Richard Posner argues for a pragmatic jurisprudence, one that eschews formalism in favor of the factual and the empirical. Laws, he argues, are not abstract, sacred entities, but socially determined goads for shaping behavior to conform with society's values.
Examining how judges go about making difficult decisions, Posner argues that they cannot rely on either logic or science, but must fall back on a grab bag of informal methods of reasoning that owe less than one might think to legal training and experience. Indeed, he reminds us, the greatest figures in American law have transcended the traditional conceptions of the lawyer's craft. Robert Jackson did not attend law school and Benjamin Cardozo left before getting a degree. Holmes was neither the most successful of lawyers nor the most lawyerly of judges. Citing these examples, Posner makes a plea for a law that frees itself from excessive insularity and takes all knowledge, practical and theoretical, as grist for its mill.
The pragmatism that Posner espouses implies looking at problems concretely, experimentally, without illusions, with an emphasis on keeping diverse paths of inquiry open, and, above all, with the insistence that social thought and action be evaluated as instruments to desired human goals rather than as ends in themselves. In making his arguments, he discusses notable figures in jurisprudence from Antigonc to Ronald Dworkin as well as recent movements ranging from law and economics to civic republicanism, and feminism to libertarianism. All are subjected to Posner's stringent analysis in a fresh and candid examination of some of the deepest problems presented by the enterprise of law.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent overview.......2005-09-06
For newcomers to the philosophy of law and for anyone interested in legal reasoning and the difficult problems of jurisprudence, this book gives an excellent overview. The author discusses the history of the subject as well as giving a thorough discussion of modern developments. In addition, many references are given for readers who want to investigate the subject in more detail. The philosophy of law has become even more important in recent years due to the social tensions surrounding the Supreme Court of the United States as well as the difficult legal issues involved in nation building.
The following questions, among many others, arose for this reviewer when reading the book, with some of them being answered in the book and some not:
1. What is the difference, if any, between standards and rules?
2. What is the difference, if any, between substantive justice and formal justice?
3. Does the granting of broad discretionary powers to legal officials encourage abuse?
4. When a legal rule ages, does it become less or more applicable to the activities it is supposed to refer to, i.e. will judges become more tempted to declare exceptions and extensions to it?
5. How important is the use of formal logic in legal deliberations?
6. Can most, or even all, legal argumentation/deliberation be given an algorithmic or formulaic definition?
7. Can statutes or constitutions, being forms of communication, be verified in the same way as scientific hypotheses can?
8. Does good legal judgment consist of caution, detachment, imagination, and common sense or must these be supplemented by other activities or modes of cognition?
9. Is law an autonomous discipline, with the designation "autonomous" given its usual intuitive meaning?
10. Can the complexity of legal deliberations/reasoning of a judge be modeled successfully using a language or framework that is clearly not being used by that judge?
11. Is the "test of time" a legitimate criterion for accepting certain legal practices?
12. What is the role of metaphors in legal reasoning?
13. What is the role of defeasible reasoning in legal deliberation/argumentation?
14. Are legal deliberations always inconclusive?
15. Is there any need, from the standpoint of rational legal deliberations, for the "trappings of the judicial process," i.e. the elaborate courtrooms with elevated benches and compelled etiquette on the part of the observers and litigants?
16. Is criminal law dependent on the notion of free will?
17. Assuming that certainty is unattainable in most legal deliberations, what is the role of probability theory in these deliberations?
18. Is the interpretation of legal texts deductive, and if not, what does it mean to interpret a legal text?
19. What is the difference between common law and statutory law?
20. Does agreement on the meaning of legal texts depend ultimately on the use of force?
21. How does one characterize an activist judge from a non-activist one?
22. When a legal text or document is examined, is it always important to acknowledged the intent of the individual(s) who wrote it?
23. Can interpretations of legal documents ever be politically neutral?
24. Can a legal system be constructed that would be free of errors?
25. How influential has feminist thought been in the philosophy of law in the last few decades?
26. What is the nature of "prudentialism" that is advocated by the author of the book?
Pragmatism that's reasonable........2002-06-20
What is law? How exactly do judges reason out it's kinks? Does it operate on presumtions of behaviourism or free-will? Why aren't lawyers or judges puzzled by these quandries? Posner seeks answers and ends up in a not-so-comforting place.
This book starts small and ends big. From epistemology (how we gain legal knowledge) through ontology up through his concluding 'Pragmatist Manifesto' the book is quite philosophical and this may be offputting to some in the legal profession. As usual though, Posner tackles his subjects in a clear, fast-paced and exciting way. The task that Posner sets for himself is to forge a place in legal theory (or lack of?) between two radical extremes: On one hand, there is the view that law is a completely isolated profession and legal reasoning is completely internal to it. The other sees law as a clever guise for politics- it's 'methods' being a subterfuge for the judge to justify her political views.
Through pragmatism, Posner sees both theories as gross exageration- the first, falsley denying law's susceptibility to outside non-legal techniques and the second's refusal to acknowledge the judiciary's independence from the legislature.
As Posner acknowledges in the intro, Posner's view here is middle of the road and to many, it will be boring. He doesn't take sides, rather he creates a side: that of legal pragmatism. No matter what your persuasion philosophtical, political or jurisprudential persuasion, there's nothing like a little Posner to get you thinking!!
The polymath, Richard Posner, strikes again!.......1998-01-31
This book's analysis of the problems that confront judges when they decide cases is cogent, persuasive, and (without a dictionary) difficult to understand. However, if you can master the blended vocabulary of psychology, epistimology, and hermeneutics it is a brilliant tour de force that raises troubling questions about how to read foundational legal documents. A must read for legal scholars.-Kelly Whiting
Average customer rating:
- The best book on justice in 25 years
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The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory
Milton Fisk
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521389666 |
Book Description
Offering a new political theory combining elements from the Marxist and liberal traditions, this book presents a disturbing view of the contemporary state at war with itself. This internal conflict stems from the state's having the double task of spurring on the economy and protecting the welfare and rights of all its citizens. Such conflict does not end at national boundaries but extends through the system of any imperial state. This perspective illuminates the fractures and instability within the imperial system.
Customer Reviews:
The best book on justice in 25 years.......2007-05-06
The best book on justice in 25 years, May 6, 2007
Milton Fisk, emeritus prof of philosophy at the Univ. of Indiana, had written a genuinely profound and imaginative rethinking of the political theory of justice, perhaps the single most original and important contribution to the subject since Rawls and Nozick. This is not an exaggeration. Unlike much political philosophy since Rawls, Fisk is not content to either rehash or fine-tune Rawls; he is -- to my mind correctly -- dismissive of Rawls as offering an unrealizable "ideal justice" that fails to make contact with social and political reality. Writing from the left, he has as little tolerance for Nozick with his "fall from the sky" natural rights that offer defenses of the indefenisble. Instead, Fisk develops a socially grounded account of justice as a compromise between what the ruling groups can impose and what the ruled will put up with. Since this is variable there is no one correct theory of justice. Moreover Fisk envisages a radical justice, the compromise that would be imposed if the ruled were the ruling groups, and discusses how the impulse towards justice can help bring such a state of affairs about. Unlike a lot of academic philosophers, Fisk writes clear, unpretentious, accessible prose with lively examples. This book is in my mind abolsutely crucial for anyone seriously interested in justice as a topic. -- Andie Nachgeborenen, law professor in Chicago; Ph.D. (philosophy) Michigan.
Average customer rating:
- Unsatisfying and theoretically immature
- This book changed my life
- Understanding Law as Politics
- Complicated yet lucid...highly recommended for students
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The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique
Manufacturer: Basic Books
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ASIN: 0465059597 |
Book Description
"I truly enjoyed The Politics of Law. It's a well-guided tour through contemporary legal academic thought, in general and critical legal studies, in particular. For lawyers--or laypersons--interested in alternative perspectives on the law and legal institutions, this book is an invaluable aid."
--Scott Turow, author of Burden of Proof and Presumed Innocent
The Politics of Law is the leading and most widely read progressive critique of the nature and role of the law in America society. This revised--and over a third entirely new--edition continues the book's concrete focus on the major subjects and fields of law. New essays on emerging fields and the latest trends and cases have been added to update versions of the now classic essays from earlier editions.
A unique assortment of leading scholars and practitioners in law and related disciplines--political science, economics, sociology, criminology, history, and literature--raise basic questions about law, challenging long-held ideas like the separation of law form politics, economics, religion, and culture. The address such issues contextually and with a keen historical perspective as they explain and critique the law in a broad range of areas.
This third edition contains essays on all of the subjects covered in the first year of law school while continuing the book's tradition of accessibility to non-law-trained readers. Insightful and powerful, The Politics of Law makes sense of the debates about judicial restraint and range of legal controversies so central to American public life and culture.
Customer Reviews:
Unsatisfying and theoretically immature.......2006-08-03
"The Politics of Law" is a collection of essays by legal scholars from a progressive point of view, or rather a range of progressive points of view. Every major topic of law has one or two essays criticizing the current legislation and jurisprudence from a leftist perspective. Attention is paid not just to traditional injustices such as racism and access difficulties, but also more modern subjects like gay rights, feminism and the environment. So far, so good.
The essays themselves, however, are by and large very disappointing. About half of them are so general and so vaguely outline areas that may or may not be a problem that may or may not be worth addressing either inside or outside the legal scholarship, and so on, that they are largely useless to any reader but the most uninitiated. The other half tend to be thorough in their critiques, but make far too many assumptions about the nature progressive criticism should take, and often merely assert their critiques with no evidence at all. For example, whether affirmative action is to be considered good or bad from a radical progressive perspective is quite a debatable topic, but in this book it is basically assumed that the reader is an avid proponent. Same thing with constitutional jurisprudence such as Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade; one can very well make a leftist argument against such creations as a "right to privacy" by emphasizing its antidemocratic constructs, but no attention is paid to this at all.
That seems to be the main problem with almost all essays in the main part of the book (Kairys' own article on free speech is a notable exception): there is a very strong presumption in favor of legal and especially judicial resolution of social problems, as opposed to for example a call for a more thorough democratization. It's probably because of the background of the contributors as law professors and radical lawyers that this top-down legal tendency is incorporated in all the criticisms, but it is not at all uncontested in radical progressive circles.
Finally, there are quite some silly mistakes and poor reasonings. Consistently misspelling Lochner as "Lockner" and implying that the 'imminent lawless action' test and the 'clear and present danger' test are the same are errors that should not be in any professional legal work. Rhonda Copelon's article explaining why the US is evil for not immediately implementing the various UN declarations' assertions such as "the right to the continuous improvement of living conditions" consists of nothing but angry assertions and makes a very amateuristic impression. The constant invocation of "the conservative Rehnquist court" as some sort of conspiracy to take away all civil rights, without any backup or argumentation whatever, is shrill and stupid.
The main virtues of this collection are the broad reach of its criticism and the last couple of essays, gathered under the header "progressive approaches to the law". These articles are more theoretical in nature and discuss the relation between progressive political views, especially radical ones, and legal systems. Particularly worthwhile is Cornel West's discussion of the role of law vis-à-vis radical leftist movements in the United States. The reader would do best to borrow this from the library to read that essay, and not to bother with the rest.
This book changed my life.......2004-03-01
As a non-traditional student returning to college to complete my undergraduate degree at the age of 47, I had accumulated hundreds of questions in my mind about the confusing state of American legal and political thought. Everywhere I turned, I ran into brick walls impermeable to logic. For example, if I helped to save the whales, how would that activity do anything about racism? And how would women who stayed at home with their children be empowered by entering a working environment rife with sexual harassment and discrimination? Why was it ok for so-called "captains of industry" to engage in selfish and rapacious behavior while being honored as "astute businessmen"? Why did some people's work receive more respect than others?
This book provided the foundation from which I have been able to distill answers to my questions. The Politics of Law challenges the mythology we are spoonfed throughout our lives. I always get a big kick out the the Right Wing's claims that indoctrination is the special purview of progressive political thought. When our education system is reinforced by our illiberal media and the overwhelming presence of corporate advertising and influence, it's shocking that anyone can think their way out of this maze of programming. Start with The Politics of Law.
Understanding Law as Politics.......2001-12-09
This book makes sense of the limits of "the rule of law," without giving up on The Law's importance. Cutting through the dream that "we have a government of laws, not of men," Kairys and his contributors demonstrate that The Law is not necessarily on the side of justice, fairness, or democracy. Today, perhaps more than at any time in the last 50 years, the supposedly neutrality of the system of laws has been compromised. In so many crucial areas -- such as the criminal "justice" system, the welfare state, civil rights and civil liberties, labor, women's rights, health, environment law, poverty, and many more -- this book helps us see how The Law is there to serve the powerholders, the "haves" of society, rather than the "have-nots." There is a lot here too about legal processes: about access to the system (and restrictions in people's access), about the legal rights of racial minorities, immigrants, workers, women, low-income people, and gays, and about the politics of policing.
Although highly critical of the present state of The Law, the writers here do not abandon the The Law as a zone where the struggle for justice, equality, and democracy goes on. Indeed they have written this book, in a sense, to redeem The Law as a tool for a true justice. Kairys and his collaborators want The Law truly to serve that cause, not merely to claim that it seeks justice when it so often does the reverse.
The book will be crucial for law students, critical thinkers, and real believers in democracy everywhere. It helps us think about what freedom really means.
Complicated yet lucid...highly recommended for students.......2000-09-02
I use this book in my Sociology of Law course. The essays in this book are wonderful for instructional purposes because they are simultaneously clear enough that people not firmly entrenched in the legal field can read them, yet rich in their content, exposing the complexities of law and society.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in law and society, and especially to instructors.
Book Description
Although it is currently the most important political ideal, there is much confusion about what the 'rule of law' means and how it works. Brian Tamanaha outlines the concerns of Western conservatives about the decline of the rule of law and suggests reasons why the radical Left have promoted this decline. Two basic theoretical streams of the rule of law are then presented, with an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each. The book's examination of the rule of law on a global level concludes by deciding whether the rule of law is a universal human good.
Customer Reviews:
Very Informative.......2007-08-05
I found this book very informative. Tamanaha goes clearly though the different definitions for 'rule-of-law' and how they differ. The parts that I knew a little bit about seemed quite accurate. The book is short but strikingly comprehensive.
Brief, clear, and erudite.......2005-05-28
We're hearing quite a bit these days about 'judicial activism', so it would be nice if we could be clear just what we mean by the 'rule of law'.
Unfortunately, when we get down to specifics, the term means different things to different people. Probably no one anywhere seriously contends as a matter of principle that e.g. judges should render strictly subjective opinions. But in practice, one person's law is another person's bias. (And contrary to the rhetoric of the loudest voices in such debates, it's usually because there are two competing principles genuinely at issue, not because one side doesn't care about principles at all.)
So it's a good idea to take a step back and ask, a bit more abstractly, exactly what we mean by the 'rule of law'. And that's where this slim but information-dense volume comes in.
Brian Tamanaha takes just about the only course it's possible to take in defining such a nebulous concept: the historical approach. By way of putting salt on the tail of the ideal of the rule of law, he traces the development of the concept from ancient Greece to the present day.
If you think that sounds like a big job for just 141 pages of text (plus notes and bibliography), you're right. In fact, one of the most impressive things about this deceptively small book is the amount of erudition Tamanaha manages to pack economically into its pages. There's quite a lot buried between the lines here, and sweating this baby down to such a manageable length (while keeping it readable) must have taken some real editing.
For it _is_ eminently readable, and it does provide a thorough, if brief, tour of the development of the rule-of-law ideal in Western civilization.
The tour begins, naturally enough, in ancient Greece and Rome, since the ideal at least has its roots in, most notably, the writings of Plato and Aristotle. However, as Tamanaha points out, these writings didn't directly embody the ideal and in any event were largely lost to the West until medieval times; their importance for the rule of law was largely in their influence on later thinkers.
It's in the Middle Ages that things really get rolling, what with all the power struggles between the papacy and the various thrones, the development of German customary law, and the Magna Carta. Even here, as Tamanaha shows, the ideal hasn't come to full fruition; what happens at this stage is that we're bequeathed a difficult question about how the government -- the state, the monarch, the legislature, the sovereign -- can be bound by the law when it is itself apparently the source of that law.
Tamanaha traces the ramifications of this question, and its developing answers, through the rise of the middle class, the Enlightenment, the growth of capitalism, and the modern era -- significantly and properly locating the rule-of-law ideal in the rise of political liberalism (in its broadest sense). Along the way we get short and incisive summaries of e.g. the works of Locke, Montesquieu, and Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, and a fine (and scrupulously fair) overview of the recent history and current state of the debate.
In the end we wind up with a broad tripartite account of the meaning of the rule of law. The three essential themes, Tamanaha contends, are the limitation of government itself by law, the 'formal' requirement that law be both impersonal and predictable, and the contrast between the 'rule of law' and the 'rule of man'. Having distinguished these themes, Tamanaha spends a chapter considering their application to international law, and then closes with a short rumination on whether the rule of law is really a 'universal human good'.
Ultimately Tamanaha finds grounds for optimism in the fact that pretty much everyone, no matter what their other disagreements, gives at least lip service to the rule-of-law ideal. This fact, though disconcertingly negative as to the prospects for agreement about precisely what the rule of law means in detail, is also evidence that societal attitudes broadly favoring the rule of law are deeply embedded and not likely to be dislodged by those narrower disputes.
It would be hard to find a more timely subject than Tamanaha's, and it would be hard to find a fairer or more readable discussion than his. If you're interested in current debates about the independence of the judiciary and the role of judges, don't miss this opportunity to stand back from those debates and look at the big picture. Public discourse is better served by a little history than by a lot of rhetoric.
Book Description
Distressing, disturbing, devastatingly detailed--this stunning examination of how modern laws are diminishing America exposes the drawbacks of rule-bound government, tells why nothing gets done, reveals the phony pretensions of law, and shows why well-intentioned laws have actually devalued rights. In short, The Death of Common Sense demonstrates how the buck never stops and how ell-meaning laws are creating a nation of enemies. (Poltics/Current Events)
Customer Reviews:
Deflecting responsibility from his own profession.......2007-07-07
The anecdotes are indeed maddening; of course the law and bureaucratic process can be described as "inefficient". However, over and again, Howard says, "Anyone can accuse anyone of anything," which is true, but he acts like the ability to accuse someone is the same as rendering judgment, and therefore our right to call someone to task in a court of law should be abridged. He neglects the fact that, once in the court of law, it is up to the lawyers and judges, and juries when appropriate, to dismiss cases that have no merit. If that is not being done, it is not the problem of us American citizens "having too many rights" but that his slimy profession is without any moral compass. And his book, while thought-provoking and entertaining, is at heart a call for less oversight of those in power, because those without power are slowing them down. I expect he's very happy with Bush and Cheney and their dismantling of so many of our inconvenient "rights". Read it, but with a pile of salt.
Death of Common Sense.......2007-01-14
Well-written and well-researched book that presents the frightening picture of the beast that law in America has become. The author provides good historical background for the reader to appreciate the insidious development of what has become our current laws, how these laws have actually become impediments for progress and justice, and good discussions regarding the challenges facing any rational correction of this quagmire.
Very worthwhile and insightful reading.
It's okay.......2006-03-17
Not bad, but just too obvious. I suppose as an introduction to someone recovering from a desire for Government regulation it mayh be helpful.
An Abdication of Responsibility.......2005-09-21
Rarely do books become more important years after they have been published.
That is the fate of Philip K. Howard's "The Death of Common Sense".
This short book details how America has deviated from being a bastion of freedom to being a nation subjugated by laws.
Mr. Howard presents a wonderful case against government-induced regulation---laws so far removed from reality, so unworkable in practice and so disastrous for productivity.
It would not be difficult countering some of his arguments, however I would deem it unlikely to rebut his central thesis which is that until Americans retain responsibility for their decisions instead of looking to arcane rulebooks, we should not expect the buck to stop anywhere.
Hence the reason this book is more important now. As we look at the Sarbanes-Oakley act, a reaction to the Enron scandal, and the McCain-Feingold bill for campaign finance reform, we have to ask ourselves if the pill is not worse than the pain. Inherent in finely written law is the ability to subvert them, as was seen during the 2004 elections. Why should we citizens take the risk?
The chapter "A Nation of Enemies" was illuminating. Quoting Isaiah Berlin, "Liberty for the wolves is death for the lambs," he advances the claim, which some deem legimitate, that enumerated rights can be antithetical to each other. Others definitely would argue to the contrary.
Therein lies its beauty: the ability to teach without hectoring, to dispute without hurling invectives.
Read this highly educative book and discover why "Relying on ourselves is...commonsense."
Yawn, blink, and raise your hand. I don't get it! .......2005-06-21
Justice William Brennan, "Government acts like some extra terrestrial power, not an institution that exists to serve. Government can't do anything except as the law allows."
Kenneth Davis, "administrative rule-making is one of the greatest inventions of modern government."
Herbert Kaufman, "Legal rules should be self-executing with the aim toward solutions that can be carried into effect without discretionary administration"
"In the decades since World War II, we have constructed a system of regulatory law that basically outlaws common sense." The EPA has 10,000 pages of regulation. Federal statutes and formal rules now total 100 million words.
The author errors in the following statement, "The constitution is the model of flexible law that can evolve with changing times and unforeseen circumstances." Red flags immediately. The constitution is the supreme law of the land. Alternation of the constitution will only delude its incredible power to preserve liberty. How can one improve on the fundamental rights enumerated in the constitution? Any change to the constitution will result in a pandemic flood of regulation and a reduction in the fundamental rights protected by the constitution.
Historically, common law was governed by circumstance. An important test emerging from common law was the "reasonable person" test. Justice Benjamin Cardozo said, "common law is at bottom the philosophy of pragmatism. Its truth is relative, not absolute".
The rise of objective utilitarism has morally bankrupted the law. Cardozo is saying, law should be model to best serve the uniform group. I happen to disagree with him. The uncertainty within the context of the law caused a panic to codify law into statutes. The law was to handle all possible events and in its terms provide absolute certainty. So rather than general propositions, statute law provided absolute guidance for concrete cases. Institutional legal certainty had become the institutions prize achievement.
Government in both cases "blinded by its own predetermined rules, entranced by the rationals and promise that all can be set out before we get there." The lawyers focus on the legal language as if it were the oracle, and refuse to act without its clear permission.
Statutory law causes a financial burden similar to a tax. Central planning builds infrastructure to achieve an economic objective. Several billions of dollars are spent by industry to comply with regulations. Human error are the cause of most accidents. After spending a trillion dollars in the last 20 years there has bound to be some things cleaned up.
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The Judicial Application of Human Rights Law: National, Regional and International Jurisprudence
Nihal Jayawickrama
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Book Description
The original human rights concepts articulated in the 1948 Universal Declaration have evolved considerably. Nihal Jayawickrama encapsulates the judicial interpretation of human rights law from all available sources in one comprehensive volume, covering superior court case law of over fifty-five countries, the jurisprudence of the U.N. Human Rights monitoring bodies, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American system. This definitive compendium will be essential for legal practitioners, government and non-governmental officials, and academics and students of constitutional law and the international law of human rights.
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- Investigating Computer-Related Crime
- Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Practice, and Law (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac®)
- Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Practice, and Law (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac®)
- Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Practice, and Law (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac®)
- Keeping Faith: A Novel (P.S.)
- Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law
- Land Development Handbook (Handbook)
- Learning Autodesk Maya 8|Foundation +DVD
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