Customer Reviews

The Politics Of Law: A Progressive Critique, Third Edition

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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.

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.

"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.

A great blast from the past! A taste of the baby boomers in their full glory, when we all thought we were writing a theoretical basis for understanding the law that would have lasting power and would provide a basis for re-understanding the law. Ah well. Times have passed this all by. That's for sure. Read it and remember when...

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.