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Review Of Family And State: The Philosophy Of Family Law, Carl E. Schneider Sep 1989

Review Of Family And State: The Philosophy Of Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Reviews

In Family and State: The Philosophy of Family Law, Professor Houlgate sets out to "introduc[e] ... a new subject area in philosophy that [I] call 'the philosophy of family law.'" He defines that area as "the discipline that is concerned to present general normative principles or criteria and to apply these to ethical questions about laws that affect or concern the family." He directs the book to legal scholars, social philosophers, philosophers of law, legislators, laymen, and students.


What Can A Lawyer Learn From Literature?, James Boyd White Jan 1989

What Can A Lawyer Learn From Literature?, James Boyd White

Reviews

Judge Posner's recent book, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, has already attracted considerable attention and it is likely to attract even more. The author is a well-known judge, famous for his work in law and economics; in this book he takes the bold step of entering a field very different from that in which he established his reputation; and the book itself both reflects a wide range of reading and contains an enormous number of bibliographical references, all in support of its claim, made in the preface, to be the "first to attempt a general survey and evaluation …


Approaching The Constitution, Don Herzog Oct 1988

Approaching The Constitution, Don Herzog

Reviews

These are sumptuously produced, oversized volumes: one pictures them, as I suspect some shrewd accountant at the press did, decorating the shelves of lawyers' offices. Their pages are crammed full of primary texts, two columns on each page, in an alarmingly small but somehow readable typeface. Some texts are bare snippets; others wind on luxuriantly for many pages. The editors have set a cutoff point: no text from after 1835 appears. Like much else about these volumes, that decision reflects a set of theoretical commitments about the Constitution that I want to question. Not that these volumes are explicitly cast …


Law And Sex, Christina B. Whitman Jan 1988

Law And Sex, Christina B. Whitman

Reviews

In Feminism Unmodified, a collection of speeches given between 1981 and 1986, Catharine MacKinnon talks of law from the perspective of feminism. MacKinnon does not approach her topic as a lawyer with a uniquely legal perspective on feminism; she brings, instead, a distinctively feminist approach to law. Nor is the feminism from which she speaks grounded in the standard political theories: MacKinnon disclaims and attacks the Marxist approach to feminism, the socialist approach to feminism, and, most emphatically and repeatedly, the liberal approach to feminism that has been embraced by many lawyers in their effort to use law to eliminate …


Review Of Environmental Protection Policy, By E. Rehbinder And R. Stewart, James E. Krier Jan 1987

Review Of Environmental Protection Policy, By E. Rehbinder And R. Stewart, James E. Krier

Reviews

Environmental problems have been on the agenda of the federal government in the United States for roughly a century now, about half of the government's life, and a dominant concern for the last two decades. The European Economic Community ("EEC"), itself a system perhaps on its way to some brand of federalism, presents a similar but much foreshortened picture. The EEC has been concerned with the environment for about the last half of its thirty year life. Environmental Protection Policy' ("EPP") is a richly detailed study of environmental policy in these two very different systems.


Review Of Protecting American Workers: An Assessment Of Government Programs, By S. A. Levitan Et Al., Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1987

Review Of Protecting American Workers: An Assessment Of Government Programs, By S. A. Levitan Et Al., Theodore J. St. Antoine

Reviews

For almost a quarter century following the great tide of New Deal social legislation, the federal government largely refrained from further efforts at direct regulation of the workplace. But certain intractable problems, like job safety, pension fund abuses, and race and sex discrimination in employment, kindled interest in additional federal controls. The result was a second wave of federal laws governing the employer-employee relationship - Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Only the boldest scholars would attempt to …


Dworkin's Domain, Philip E. Soper Jan 1987

Dworkin's Domain, Philip E. Soper

Reviews

No one has done more in the last twenty years to revitalize debates about how judges should and do decide cases than Ronald Dworkin. At the same time, no one has been more equivocal than Dworkin in explaining how a theory of adjudication bears on the dispute within legal theory about the connection between law and morality. This fine book continues both traditions.


Review Of Culture And History In Medieval Iceland, William I. Miller Jan 1986

Review Of Culture And History In Medieval Iceland, William I. Miller

Reviews

It is a common dysfunction of scholars, particularly medieval historians, to fear grand syntheses and all-encompassing explanations. This is less frequently a disease among anthroplogists, and in fact in anthropologists of a structural bent there is no reticence whatsoever, but positive delight in the big, the general, the quasi- and the just plain theoretical. And in the best French tradition they often construct their models per ecartant les faits. Kirsten Hastrup is a structuralist more influenced by Levi-Strauss than Evans-Pritchard; she is also a trained anthropologist. This is both good and bad news. The Icelandic materials are as well suited …


Review Of Disputes And Settlements: Law And Human Relations In The West, By J. Bossy, Editor., William I. Miller Jan 1986

Review Of Disputes And Settlements: Law And Human Relations In The West, By J. Bossy, Editor., William I. Miller

Reviews

Evans-Pritchard probably knew he was exaggerating, but not being able to resist the chance to repay a gift in kind, he reversed Maitland's dictum and claimed that history must choose between being social anthropology or being nothing. If we substitute "tedious" for "nothing" we would have a truer statement. Legal history, if not quite heeding Evans-Pritchard, has in the past decade begun to learn some lessons from legal anthropology and the sociology of law. Studies of bureaucratic development, forms of action, formulae and writs, while still flourishing in the hands of several brilliant practitioners, are tending to give way slowly, …


Review Of The Justice Of The Western Consular Courts In Nineteenth Century Japan, Whitmore Gray Jan 1985

Review Of The Justice Of The Western Consular Courts In Nineteenth Century Japan, Whitmore Gray

Reviews

Richard Chang attacks the generalization accepted by many historians that the Western consular tribunals in nineteenth-century Japan were so partial- toward West- erners and against Japanese-that they seldom rendered evenhanded justice. His study required two steps. First he tried to determine how many "mixed" cases came to trial-cases in which aJapanese brought a claim against a foreign resident in a consular court or was the complaining party in criminal proceedings against a foreigner. Between 1875 and 1895 there were five such cases that were widely reported and commented on at the time, and that have often been cited as examples. …


Review Of Njáls Saga: Rechtsproblematik Im Dienste Soziokultureller Deutung, William I. Miller Jan 1985

Review Of Njáls Saga: Rechtsproblematik Im Dienste Soziokultureller Deutung, William I. Miller

Reviews

There is little recommend this book. It is ill-conceived and poorly executed. The author's thesis is that the saga-writer intentionally distorted and varied his presentation of the law of the lawbooks in order to show a society being destroyed by uncontrolled egoism, pride, and envy, a society characterized by willful arbitrariness, disorder, and disarray, with few rules to respect and little respect for the few rules that were there. The validity of the thesis is never really tested because the law which the saga-writer distorts is not even minimally established, nor for that matter is the law the saga-writer does …


Review Of Social Science In The Courtroom: Statistical Techniques And Research Methods For Winning Class-Action Suits, Richard O. Lempert Mar 1984

Review Of Social Science In The Courtroom: Statistical Techniques And Research Methods For Winning Class-Action Suits, Richard O. Lempert

Reviews

If publishers had to conform to anything like truth-in-packaging laws, the title of James Loewen' s book would be something like A Simple Introduction to Elementary Statistical Methods That Might Be of Use in Class­Action Suits for Discrimination, Homilies on the Legal System for Social Scientists, Homilies on Social Science for Lawyers, and Examples from My Own Experience. No one who is interested in the deeper intellectual issues that surround the use of social science in the courtroom, such as the debate over when courts may appropriately tum to social science for aid in resolving fundamental value questions, has reason …


The Pros And Cons Of Getting To Yes, James J. White Jan 1984

The Pros And Cons Of Getting To Yes, James J. White

Reviews

Getting to YES is a puzzling book. On the one hand it offers a forceful and persuasive criticism of much traditional negotiating behavior. It suggests a variety of negotiating techniques that are both clever and likely to facilitate effective negotiation. On the other hand, the authors seem to deny the existence of a significant part of the negotiation process, and to oversimplify or explain away many of the most troublesome problems inherent in the art and practice of negotiation. The book is frequently naive, occasionally self-righteous, but often helpful.


Miranda: The Case, The Man, And The Players, Yale Kamisar Jan 1984

Miranda: The Case, The Man, And The Players, Yale Kamisar

Reviews

On the eve of America's bicentennial, the American Bar Association told its members of a plan to publish a book about the "milestone events" in 200 years of American legal history, and invited them to vote on the milestones to be included. When the balloting was over, Miranda v. Arizona1 - "the high-water mark" of the Warren Court's revolution in American criminal procedure2 - had received the fourth highest number of votes.3 I venture to say that if members of the general public had been asked to list the "most regrettable" or "most unfortunate" milestones in American legal history, Miranda …


Review Of Justice Without Law?, Whitmore Gray Jan 1983

Review Of Justice Without Law?, Whitmore Gray

Reviews

The title of this book refers to the stiving of communities of various types in different circumstances to develop "patterns of conflict resolution that reflected their common striving for social harmony beyond individual conflict, for justice without law." The author wants to document what he calls the search through three and a half centuries of American history for "justice beyond law, without lawyers or courts." Readers familiar with Auerbach's earlier book, Unequal Justice (62 A.B.A.J. 838 (1976)), will correctly assume that this is not a sympathetic view of the influence of bar and bench on the development of alternatives to …


Legal Theory And The Problem Of Definition, Philip E. Soper Jan 1983

Legal Theory And The Problem Of Definition, Philip E. Soper

Reviews

Natural Law and Natural Rights is a refreshingly direct book about some decidedly difficult matters. It is also a book that refuses to do homage to the complexity of its subject by limiting the topics covered. Here is virtually a mini-treatise in moral philosophy, with illuminating discussions on the whole range of human value and on a good part of the related range of metaethics, legal theory, political theory, and the problems of methodology in the descriptive social sciences.


Review Of Social Justice In The Liberal State, Donald H. Regan Jan 1983

Review Of Social Justice In The Liberal State, Donald H. Regan

Reviews

Bruce Ackerman's goal, in Social Justice in the Liberal State, is to provide a new foundation for liberal political theory. Ackerman is dissatisfied with both utilitarian and contractarian defenses of liberal political institutions. Indeed, he writes most persuasively when he is criticizing utilitarians and contractarians, though his criticisms are largely familiar.


A "Humanitarian" Approach To Individual Injury, Christina B. Whitman Jan 1981

A "Humanitarian" Approach To Individual Injury, Christina B. Whitman

Reviews

Individual injury law was once an important arena for the definition of shared values. It has increasingly become the domain of various species of systems analysts who measure legal results against external norms defined by such disciplines as economics. Although legal scholars continue to use the expectations and beliefs of ordinary men and women in fashioning rules for the redress of constitutional injuries, common-law scholars have become less willing to ground legal principles in moral consensus. There are notable exceptions. Among these is Professor Marshall Shapo, who, in two recent works, attempts to develop a legal analysis of injury that …


Review Of The Landrum-Griffin Act: Twenty Years Of Federal Protection Of Union Members' Rights, By J. R. Bellace And A. D. Berkowitz, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1980

Review Of The Landrum-Griffin Act: Twenty Years Of Federal Protection Of Union Members' Rights, By J. R. Bellace And A. D. Berkowitz, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Reviews

In the innocent closing years of the 1950s, the American public fastened on union democracy as the most burning issue of the day. No other subject produced as much mail for Congress. The 229-201 count by which the Landrum-Griffin bill was substituted for the House Labor Committee's bill on labor-management reporting and disclosure constituted the largest total vote in the history of the House of Representatives. Significantly, however, that vote had little if any bearing on union members' rights. What distinguished Landrum-Griffin from the Committee's bill was its stiff new curbs on picketing and boycotts. As Senator John Kennedy's advisor, …


Review Of Wiltshire Gaol Delivery And Trailbaston Trials, 1275-1306, Thomas A. Green Jan 1980

Review Of Wiltshire Gaol Delivery And Trailbaston Trials, 1275-1306, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

Ralph B. Pugh's handsome edition of Wiltshire gaol delivery and trailbaston trial rolls for the reign of Edward I provides a valuable resource for scholars of medieval crime and criminal law. The period covered bridges the era of the infrequent general eyres and that of the frequent circuits to try those being held on criminal charges. This transition period saw the development of various institutions and procedures designed to deal with a decline in social stability and an increase in criminal activity. To date, most scholarship has focused either on the workings of the mid-thirteenth- century eyre or on the …


Clash In The Classroom, David L. Chambers Jul 1979

Clash In The Classroom, David L. Chambers

Reviews

David L. Chambers reviews two books covering Brown vs. Bakke in The Washington Post. Chambers discusses ‘The Bakke Case: Politics of Inequality’ by Joel Dreyfuss and Charles Lawrence III, and ‘From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration’ by J. Harvie Wilkinson.


Review Of The Legal Needs Of The Public, , Richard Lempert Jan 1979

Review Of The Legal Needs Of The Public, , Richard Lempert

Reviews

Both the title, The Legal, Needs of the Public, and the subtitle, The Final, Report of a National, Survey, of this volume are, quite fortunately, inapt. The report does not seek to quantify the legal needs of the public or to determine whether "needs" are being "met," and we are told by both Barbara Curran in her preface and Spencer Kimball in his foreword that this "final report" signifies the beginning and not the end of data analysis. This study (which I shall call the ABF study) is a joint undertaking of the American Bar Association Special Committee to Survey …


Review Of Crime In England, 1550-1800, Thomas A. Green Jan 1979

Review Of Crime In England, 1550-1800, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

Crime in England, 1550-1800, is the second collection of essays on the social history of crime and the criminal law in early modern England to appear in recent years. Together with the essays in Albion's Fatal Tree (1975),' these offerings advance our knowledge of the subject considerably. To be sure, as G. R. Elton cautions, there are methodological problems in a field so new, and Elton's "Introduction" will serve as an excellent starting point for readers concerned with such matters. We must nevertheless recognize the accomplishments of the new school of socio-legal historians. The essays in this volume deal with …


Review Of Society And Homicide In Thirteenth-Century England, Thomas A. Green Jan 1979

Review Of Society And Homicide In Thirteenth-Century England, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

JAMES GIVEN has produced the first systematic book-length treatment of the sociology of medieval English crime. His work does not pretend to be comprehensive: it deals only with homicide. Nor does it cover more than a century, the thirteenth; the author has wisely left the earlier system of criminal law, based on private compensation, to other scholars, and he says just enough about late thirteenth- and early fourteenth- century social and legal change to suggest he believes that that period, too, must await its own interpretation. Still, the social history of homicide in the thirteenth century proves itself fascinating terrain, …


Review Of Contemporary Soviet Law: Essays In Honor Of John N. Hazard, Whitmore Gray Jan 1977

Review Of Contemporary Soviet Law: Essays In Honor Of John N. Hazard, Whitmore Gray

Reviews

This excellent collection of essays on Soviet Law was assembled to honor Professor John N. Hazard of Columbia University on the occasion of his sixty-fifth year, as well as the fortieth anniversary of his embarking on his study of the Soviet legal system. As an introduction to the contemporary essays, the editors happily chose to publish for the first time some of the letters Professor Hazard wrote to his sponsor in New York during his three years as a law student in Moscow, 1934-37. These excerpts are the jewel of the volume, and should certainly be read by anyone trying …


Review Of Encyclopedia Of Soviet Law, Whitmore Gray Jan 1975

Review Of Encyclopedia Of Soviet Law, Whitmore Gray

Reviews

The publication of this work is an occasion for real celebration. At last there is a standard reference book to which both initiated scholar and interested neophyte can turn for an excellent introduction to almost any point of Soviet law. Professor F.J.M. Feldbrugge of the University of Leiden and his collaborators have produced a volume which will surely serve as the point of initial reference and departure for all subsequent scholarship on Soviet law.


Review Of Crime And Public Order In England In The Later Middle Ages, Thomas A. Green Jan 1974

Review Of Crime And Public Order In England In The Later Middle Ages, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

Slowly but surely the history of English criminal law is being rewritten. Abundant monographs, articles and introductions to texts have appeared in the past couple of decades; many more are on the way. Work has gone ahead on the substantive law of crimes, on the procedures of the criminal law and its institutions andmore tentatively-on the social history of English criminal law. While medievalists have led the way, work is now being undertaken by early modern and modern historians as well.


Review Of The Judge In A Communist State: A View From Within, Whitmore Gray Jan 1973

Review Of The Judge In A Communist State: A View From Within, Whitmore Gray

Reviews

This is a rare book. It is full of real people and real life episodes. The author's almost incredible memory for the details of scores of cases and other legal incidents in Czechoslovakia in the 1950's makes this a remarkable contribution to the comparative-law literature. Those who are looking for theoretical controversy will not find it here, for this book is simply a generous slice of life in a communist country, as seen through the eyes of a remarkably perceptive, legally trained viewer. As the author says, it is "neither an indictment nor a glorification" (p. xi). The author is …


Review Of The King's Pardon For Homicide To A.D. 1307, Thomas A. Green Jan 1972

Review Of The King's Pardon For Homicide To A.D. 1307, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

NAOMI D. Hurnard's The King's Pardon for Homicide before AD 1307 is significant and instructive for both legal and social historians. The author has painstakingly pieced together the available evidence from a variety of classes of mediaeval English public records to achieve a clear statement of the law of excusable homicide, i.e., non-felonious but requiring a royal pardon. She has lucidly presented the procedure which marks out the legal life story of persons deserving pardon, from the pardonable slaying to the formal proclamation of the king's peace. But she has also accomplished much more. Through careful and generally sound use …


Review Of Law In A Changing America, Richard O. Lempert Apr 1971

Review Of Law In A Changing America, Richard O. Lempert

Reviews

This collection of essays, prepared as background reading for a conference sponsored by the American Assembly and the American Bar Foundation on the goals of the legal profession in the years ahead, begins and ends with a bow toward changing America. The first chapter is an attempt by sociologist Wilbert Moore, the only non-lawyer among the essayists, to sketch generally the patterns of social and political structure likely to pertain in the near future.