The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism [Hardcover]

Professor Laura Kalman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0300063695 | ISBN-13: 978-0300063691 | Edition: 1St Edition

The tenets of legal liberalism have been undermined, and legal scholarship is in a state of crisis, says Laura Kalman in this new intellectual history of constitutional theory. She explores how liberal law professors have come to enlist other disciplines in the attempt to legitimize their beliefs; how lawyers, law professors, and historians have cooperated in some recent Supreme Court cases; and how these professionals can work together more effectively as activists.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Laura Kalman, author of two prior works on legal theoretical history, has produced perhaps her finest work to date in The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism. The book traces the path of a school of thought known as legal liberalism, beginning with its roots in the realist movement that arose in the 1920s and continuing through the movement's height in the 1960s when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a series of rulings based on legal liberalism that precipitated wide-scale social reform. Yet the book is about more than the path of this legal theory; it moves into a higher debate of law's place alongside politics and history. It also takes a hard look at the discipline known as law, a discipline that by its nature should be as clear as black and white, but that increasingly is not.

Review

In a larger sense ... The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism is about a major discontent of the modern world: a sense of loss of traditional moorings....This book will surely add to [Kalman's] reputation as a leading intellectual historian of American law. -- New York Times Book Review, Calvin Woodard

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1St Edition edition (June 26, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300063695
• ISBN-13: 978-0300063691
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,951,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining, but dense, look at the insanity of modern legal thought., January 28, 2006

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R. Price "caesar_42" (Liverpool, New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism (Paperback)

In her wonderful book, Kalman examines how legal theorists have attempted to justify legal liberalism in the post-war era. Legal liberalism is the idea that courts can bring about societal change through enforcing nationwide policy. The structure of this book is fairly simple; Kalman examines how theorists have attempted a variety of different means to justify legal liberalism in different decades. These have included history, moral, and political theory. Kalman grounds her examination firmly in how law schools became enmeshed in the academic university and began to look towards other professional disciplines for lessons, such as anthropology, history, political science, and sociology. As a historian, Kalman concludes with a lengthy discussion of the interrelationship between history and law and the possible strengths of mixing the two.

This is a generally interesting book, but it tends to be dense at times, particularly in the discussions of postmodernism and the effects on legal thought. However, the density is not Kalman's fault; it is the natural result of a legal academia striving for a replacement to the (false) certainty that classicism once provided. I would recommend that this book be read in conjunction with William Wiecek's The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought because it provides a firm analysis of the classical model of legal thought, the collapse of which has created the void that legal theorists have attempted to fill over the last 60 years.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Legal Liberal Academic Establishment Examined, April 29, 2009

By 

Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism (Paperback)

This book was first published in 1996. It has assumed new importance recently given that several book-length studies have emerged focusing on the recent rise and impact of the conservative legal movement. Most notably, this trend is represented by Teles' insightful "The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement." While Teles and others focus on a number of issues, e.g., legal public interest law firms, the Federalist Society, and the rise of the liberal legal network, in addition to the academic legal establishment, legal academia is the primary focus of Kalman's analysis. To really understand what the conservative legal movement was reacting against, this book is essential, even though somewhat dated.

Kalman argues that legal liberalism became established in the period following the Warren Court's decision in "Brown," and fully supported an activist Supreme Court that implemented liberal goals. She also ties it to the topic of several of her other books, the legal realist movement which debunked many legal myths and argued for an experimental approach to law. As defenders of Brown, the legal liberals devoted much effort to promoting an activist Court and its role in making policy. Kalman, as usual, is quite effective in discussing the contrasting arguments on this issue, covering folks like Bickel, Henry Hart, Wechsler, Ely and Frankfurter. Was the Court meant to be composed of "Platonic Guardians" or did this undermine democracy? By the 1970's, legal liberals were more interested in reconciling judicial activity with democracy, by searching for objective foundations, looking at interpretivism, and suggesting text-based theories of interpretation. Also during this period, the conservative law and econmics movement, and process theory, presented challenges, as did later epistemological and hermeneutic theories. This intense academic polarization, Kalman suggets, led to many turning to history as a method to resolve these arguments about ultimate values--Kalman characterizes this as a "love affair with the past"-- which gives rise of the "republican revival" so prevalent in the historical writing of the 1970's and 1980's (e.g., Pocock).

So ends Part I of the book that runs about 165 pages. Part II (running about 80 pages) is a discussion of how lawyers and historians have and should interact--a topic upon which Kalman had some firm views. While this is a vital topic as well, it is less germane to the present dialogue that is occurring about the development and impact of the conservative legal movement. It obviously does relate to the interpretative theories of folks like Justice Scalia and other Court conservatives; but I think the present value of the book lies more heavily with helping us understand the academic legal establishment and its history up to the founding of the Federalist Society and other conservative legal instrumentalities. To the uninitiated, Kalman's method of focusing upon arguments made in books and articles, and the counterarguments, may seem like reading an endless book review. But this is how academics develop and defend their theories, and attack competing views, so paying close attention to this mound of material is not only appropriate but necessary, and Kalman is excellent in trying to make sense out of, and organize, it. Kalman, as usual, has done extensive research; she includes 113 pages of notes (but no bibliography) which constitute almost a book in themselves. In many ways, this is Kalman's most challenging book, but well worth sticking with her discussion of this vital topic.

4.0 out of 5 stars Complex and informative, but slowly growing outdated, February 9, 2012

By 

Samuel J. Sharp - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism (Paperback)

This is a well researched (over 100 pages of notes for 246 pages to text) intellectual history of liberal legal thought since the 1960s. The story focuses almost exclusively on law school professors and thus is very different from Steven Teles' account in "The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement" which focused more on organizations than on individuals. Although the history recounted by Kalman is complex and dense at times, the story is generally about legal liberals striving to find some justification for an active, powerful, rights-enforcing Supreme Court (Warren Court) while defining some judicial or interpretive principles that would limit a court's ability to issue decisions opposed by liberals (like Lochner or rulings of the Burger Court). The infighting on the left to accomplish that goal makes for very interesting reading and Kalman tells this story well throughout Chapter 4. The legal academy's turn to history following earlier forays with linguistics and other disciplines constitutes the closing chapters of the book. Originalism, law and economics, and conservative legal thought in general make brief appearances, but the book ends before the Rehnquist/Roberts Court can be discussed. For that reason, an update to this book would be valuable. Overall, this book will appeal to philosophy-minded readers who have a strong background in constitutional thought. General readers might find the book's focus narrow and inaccessible.