An elegant, thoughtful survey of the parallel growth of America’s legal culture and the nation itself.
The dean of US legal historians traces the development of our vast and peculiar “legal culture.”
America has more lawyers than any other nation, and our obsession with laws and legal issues dominates the news media and even entertainment. Why is law so central to American society? To answer this question, Friedman (Law/Stanford Univ.; Crime and Punishment in American Society, 1993, etc.) sketches the relationship between the development of our society and the concomitant growth of American law from colonial times to the present. In the beginning, colonial lawyers adapted the broad outlines of England's complex quasi-feudal legal system to America's simpler circumstances, more egalitarian society (excepting slavery), and comparative superabundance of land. After the Revolution, the victorious founders sought to largely preserve colonial Anglo-American common-law traditions. Each new state had its own legislature, court system, and distinct body of law. However, in the 19th century, all pursued one goal with remarkable uniformity: the promotion of the growing national economy and infrastructure. Lawsuits brought by those injured by rapidly proliferating industrial machinery helped the growth of legal concepts of personal injury still with us today. Friedman outlines developments in family, race, and criminal law in which sea changes such as the idea of equality and the growth of a large-criminal justice infrastructure paralleled the growing complexity of American society. The 20th century saw the rise of an administrative welfare state that fundamentally transformed the nature of government, while notions of individual rights enforced by activist federal courts gave substance to promises of democracy and equality. Looking into the 21st century, Friedman ties the continuing explosive growth of American legal institutions and the legal profession to our nature as an “individualistic, consuming, wealthy society; a free market, free trade society; a society of plural equality.”
An elegant, thoughtful survey of the parallel growth of America’s legal culture and the nation itself.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-50635-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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