An entertaining addition to the growing shelf of books about the
discontents of lawyers and, by implication, the rest of the
citizenry who has to put up with them. Glendon (Rights Talk, not
reviewed), a professor at Harvard Law School who started her legal
career as an associate at a large Chicago law firm, offers an
extremely interesting - if somewhat rambling and ultimately
inconclusive - mixture of personal anecdote and sociological theory
to describe purportedly profound changes in the legal profession
over the past half-century and the effect of these changes on our
democratic society: the rise in the number of lawyers, the
burgeoning caseloads (one federal judge refers to himself as the
"Terminator" because of the need to get matters over with rapidly,
often at the cost of reflective justice), the economic pressures
that have, in some eyes, reduced professionalism in favor of market
imperatives and created the rise of an adversarial class of lawyers
who accede to their clients' every wish. Glendon solemnly quotes
Gibbon with respect to another empire where the growth in lawyers
and legalism coincided with a decline and fall in the spirit of law
that makes republican government viable; yet the author is neither
as pessimistic nor as whiny as Sol M. Linowitz in his recent lament
(The Betrayed Profession, p. 372). She does, however, raise many
more questions than she answers, and her premise of seismic shocks
to the foundation of the profession remains just that: premise
rather than proof. Over 20 years ago, S.F.C. Milsom demonstrated
that the growth of the Anglo-American common law comes not from
some idealized development of legal principles but from the
everyday work of lawyers attempting to find new solutions for their
clients' problems. In light of that historical perspective, it
remains to be seen whether alterations to the legal profession and
society since the early 1960s are as cataclysmic as Glendon
characterizes them. Well written and thought provoking, if not
totally convincing. (Kirkus Reviews)
Mary Ann Glendon's A Nation Under Lawyers is a guided tour through
the maze of the late-twentieth-century legal world, in which even
lawyers themselves can lose their bearings. Glendon depicts the
legal profession as a system in turbulence, where a variety of
beliefs and ideals are vying for dominance. Dramatizing issues and
events through stories of lawyers and laypersons caught up in the
currents of change, she provides a frank assessment of the people
and ideas that are transforming our law-dependent culture.
General
Imprint: |
Harvard University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
March 1996 |
First published: |
March 1996 |
Authors: |
Mary Ann Glendon
|
Dimensions: |
235 x 156 x 21mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
352 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-674-60138-3 |
Categories: |
Books >
Law >
Laws of other jurisdictions & general law >
General
|
LSN: |
0-674-60138-6 |
Barcode: |
9780674601383 |
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