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University of Michigan Law School

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Legal History

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1992

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Full-Text Articles in Law

I Hear A Rhapsody: A Reading Of The Republic Of Choice, Donald J. Herzog Jan 1992

I Hear A Rhapsody: A Reading Of The Republic Of Choice, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

Readers coming to another volume by Lawrence Friedman might well expect a tightly crafted legal history. But this book is quite different. It offers a sweeping account of the transformation of modern law, a synoptic overview of what is finally distinctive about our legal culture, even a broadbrushed portrait of Western individualism. It does so breathlessly, in prose style and velocity. It's sometimes an engaging read, sometimes a distressing one, but-and here's what really matters-never a persuasive one. Or, worse yet, when it is persuasive it's because of its poetic and ideological features, not any kind of rigorous analysis.


Abstract Democracy: A Review Of Ackerman's We The People, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1992

Abstract Democracy: A Review Of Ackerman's We The People, Terrance Sandalow

Reviews

We the People: Foundations is an ambitious book, the first of three volumes in which Professor Ackerman proposes to recast conventional understanding of and contemporary debate about American constitutional law. Unfortunately, the book's rhetoricinflated, self-important, and self-congratulatory-impedes the effort to come to terms with its argument. How, for example, does one respond to a book that opens by asking whether the reader will have "the strength" to accept its thesis? Or that announces the author's intention of "engaging" two of the most influential works of intellectual history of the past several decades-and then discusses one in two and one-half pages …