The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives) (Hardcover)

by Steven M. Teles (Author) "Political competition, as the epigraph of this chapter asserts, is mediated by the structure of the state..." (more)
Key Phrases: liberal legal network, conservative public interest law movement, liberal public interest law, Federalist Society, Supreme Court, Olin Foundation (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
In a terrific new book, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, professor Steven M. Teles charts the success of the conservative legal establishment over the past several decades. Digging past liberal clichés about an all-powerful Federalist Society tree fort, Teles charts a complicated countermobilization that took place in legal academia and conservative public-interest law, against law schools and a government in thrall with liberal ideas. He chronicles the rise of a multifaceted organizational and institutional structure that has become the only game in town.
(Dahilia Lithwick Slate )

Teles's book is . . . a piece of first-rate scholarship based on archival research and many interviews. . . . [T]he Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement is a fine piece of historical scholarship and an important contribution to understanding strategies for combating entrenched political and intellectual elites.
(Charlotte Allen The Weekly Standard )

Steven Teles . . . examines a complex phenomenon still playing itself out in The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. He does so thoughtfully and provocatively, and with access to key insiders and archival material. His book should be interesting to readers across the political spectrum. . . . Teles's book provides a panoramic, nonpartisan portrait of the sober and serious side of the conservative legal movement. In doing so, it can hopefully lead toward a respectful, constructive dialogue about the role of law in society.
(Ronald Goldfarb Washington Lawyer )

I am recommending Teles's book to all my liberal and progressive colleagues. . . . Perhaps if liberals and progressives pay enough attention to the lessons about problem-solving and adaptation taught in this valuable book, Prof. Teles will have an opportunity to write a sequel, The Renaissance of the Liberal Legal Network.
(Michael Avery Suffolk University Law Review )

Lawyers fill an important role in American democracy, as the conduit for transmitting social mores from the nation's elite to the people, and vice versa. How they do this is something sociologists have spent relatively little time researching, but Steven M. Teles has taken a step to remedy this by producing an engaging, insightful, and remarkably objective analysis of how the climate of legal ideas actually changes. His book is neither history nor polemic, but a scholarly study of how an ideological minority organized despite overwhelming hostility, knot an effective (if still minority) force against the prevailing orthodoxy. . . . [T]eles's book is an important and persuasive account of the growth and success of a corps of intellectuals who are challenging the hegemony of big government in American society.
(Timothy Sandefur California Lawyer )

Review
The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement provides an essential road map to the organizational mobilization of conservatives over the past quarter century.
(Al Gore, corecipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 358 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691122083
• ISBN-13: 978-0691122083
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #133,181 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fills a Big Gap, December 22, 2008

By	Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The author, a public policy professor at Maryland, has written the definitive study of the rise of conservative lawyers and entities to a position of legal dominance over the last 30 years or so. He has pulled together into one explanatory structure a number of diverse agents, so that we can see how they all interacted and contributed to this result. The book certainly cleared up my understanding of this phenomenon, which is essential to grasping political developments in this country over the last quarter century. Published by Princeton, the book is one of Princeton's outstanding "Studies in American Politics."

The initial introductory chapter I did not find particularly helpful and can be bypassed. The book begins to hit its stride in the second chapter on the "liberal legal network." It is helpful to have handy a copy of Laura Kalman's perceptive "The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism" to fully ingest the author's analysis. Basically, the author suggests, a combination of liberal legal groups (e.g., NAACP LDF; ACLU), elite law schools and their liberal faculty, the American Bar Association, and especially the Ford Foundation during the 1960's formed a potent coalition pushing the incorporate of liberal ideas into the law. This is, of course, also the era of Warren Court activism. Particular important in this regard was the "Gideon" decision which in turn led to the development of the Legal Services Program which unleashed numerous law suits pushing liberal ends in public interest litigation. Much of this activity was encouraged by generous support from the Ford Foundation. This activity generated a conservative response via conservative public interest law firms such as the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce. However, because of being controlled by business interests, lacking academic support, and making tactical mistakes, the first generation of conservative public interest firms generally was not successful.

A highly favorable development was the introduction of "law and economics" into legal analysis, and the two chapters devoted to this topic are among the best in the book. Particularly important in this regard are, of course, Judge Posner, Henry Manne (who established various programs at several schools and remade George Mason Law School), and the Olin Foundation, which becomes sort of the conservative Ford Foundation. Probably the strongest chapter in the book is devoted to the Federalist Society, which skillfully lays out its history, goals, and methods. The author is insistent that "boundary maintenance" separates the FS from its members'political activity, but I found this argument less than convincting. The FS did provide a network of highly skilled lawyers and faculty who generated vital legal analysis to support the conservative legal movement. So, when the second waive of conservative public interest law firms arrives in the late 1980's ("Center for Individual Rights" and the "Institute for Justice"), it is successful given the lessons of the past, the presence of the Federalist Society, the academic foundation laid by the law and economics movement, and highly effective leadership.

This summary touches upon but a bit of the richness of this fine volume. The author had done a superior job of research, including extensive interviews. Forty-three pages of extensive notes are included, but not a bibliography. It would have been helpful if the author had explained a bit more in detail what comprised "law and economics" analysis, but that is my only real complaint. This is not a book just for conservatives, which I certainly am not, but for anyone interested in gaining an understanding of this most critical development in American politics.