Clearly, the structure of authority in this country rests on how Americans understand the nature and relationship of law and politics. Law consists of pronouncements from the courts, but also of what we think of these pronouncements: should abortion be a choice or is it murder? Law is formed as much through the dynamic tensions that govern how these laws are received as through their official decree. Legal forms - contracts, property, rights - similarly do not reflect pre-existing or natural categories but themselves constitute social and political life because they dictate how we conceptualize our world. Even activists who seek reform inadvertently reinforce the traditional legal remedies against which they rally, oftentimes relying on legal institutions while claiming to be free of them. John Brigham's book focuses on four particular ideological movements and their strategies, including the emphasis placed by gay men on their rights during the legal struggle over the closing of gay bathhouses in the early years of the AIDS crisis and the radical feminist use of rage and radical consciousness in anti-pornography campaigns. The effect of law in politics, Brigham convincingly reveals, is constitutive precisely when political life finds its meaning in various legal forms.

This book examines theories of language for their contribution to understanding the interpretation of constitutional law by the Supreme Court.

In recent years widespread attention has been focused on decisions handed down by the Supreme Court that grapple with passionate issues: integration, school prayer, abortion, affirmative action. The appointment of new justices is a highly charged political event although the Court is supposed to be "above" politics. Amidst the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution and almost daily reports of major confrontations awaiting the highest court's judicial review, John Brigham presents a fresh and innovative examination of the U.S. Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional interpretation. Drawing on philosophy and anthropology, The Cult of the Court offers a social scientific investigation of an institution whose authority has come to be taken for granted. The author emphasizes that the Court is an institution and that its authority is founded less in the claim of legal expertise than in hierarchical finality--the assertion of political will, not of legal judgment. He shows how the Court has supplanted the Constitution as the authority in our political world and that what makes legal "sense" is affected by these factors of institutionalization, bureaucratization, and court-dominated constitutionalism.

Street-Level Sovereignty: The Intersection of Space and Law is a collection of scholarship that considers the experience of law that is subject to social interpretation for its meaning and importance within the constitutive legal framework of race, deviance, property, and the communal investiture in health and happiness. This book examines the intersection of spatiality and law, through the construction of place, and how law is materially framed.

"The strengths of the book are many. The theme is well conceived and argued. It is thought provoking and informative. The author has done his homework. . . . [and] does a good job of weaving his theme from chapter to chapter."
"--The Law and Politics Book Review"

"Highly recommended."
"--Choice"

"John Brigham's work is always at the cutting edge of law and politics research. This book is the clearest statement yet of the newest research direction, one that takes as its key words, 'constitute, ' 'discourse, ' and 'practice.'"
"--Martin Shapiro, School of Law, "University of California, Berkeley

Many of America's most important social and political movements--abolition, women's suffragette, civil rights, women's liberation, gay and lesbian rights--have organized in the shadow of the law. All are based in their theoretical opposition to the law. Yet at the same time, they are dependent on the laws that prohibit them. Law is thus formed as much through the dynamic tensions that govern how these laws are received as through their official decree.

Legal forms such as contracts, property, and rights also constitute social and political life because they structure our world. John Brigham here focuses on four ideological movements and their strategies, among them the struggle over the closing of gay bathhouses in the early years of the AIDS crisis and the radical feminist use of rage and radical consciousness in anti- pornography campaigns. The effect of law on politics, Brigham convincingly reveals, is pervasive precisely because political life finds its expression in a surprising variety of legal forms.