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The functioning of the U.S. government is a bit messier than
Americans would like to think. The general understanding of
policymaking has Congress making the laws, executive agencies
implementing them, and the courts applying the laws as written - as
long as those laws are constitutional. "Making Policy, Making Law"
fundamentally challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that no
dominant institution - or even a roughly consistent pattern of
relationships - exists among the various players in the federal
policymaking process. Instead, at different times and under various
conditions, all branches play roles not only in making public
policy, but in enforcing and legitimizing it as well. This is the
first text that looks in depth at this complex interplay of all
three branches. The common thread among these diverse patterns is
an ongoing dialogue among roughly coequal actors in various
branches and levels of government. Those interactions are driven by
processes of conflict and persuasion distinctive to specific policy
arenas as well as by the ideas, institutional realities, and
interests of specific policy communities. Although complex, this
fresh examination does not render the policymaking process
incomprehensible; rather, it encourages scholars to look beyond the
narrow study of individual institutions and reach across
disciplinary boundaries to discover recurring patterns of
interbranch dialogue that define (and refine) contemporary American
policy. "Making Policy, Making Law" provides a combination of
contemporary policy analysis, an interbranch perspective, and
diverse methodological approaches that speak to a surprisingly
overlooked gap in the literature dealing with the role of the
courts in the American policymaking process. It will undoubtedly
have significant impact on scholarship about national lawmaking,
national politics, and constitutional law. For scholars and
students in government and law - as well as for concerned citizenry
- this book unravels the complicated interplay of governmental
agencies and provides a heretofore in-depth look at how the U.S.
government functions in reality.
Year by year, law seems to penetrate ever larger realms of
social, political, and economic life, generating both praise and
blame. Nonet and Selznick's Law and Society in Transition explains
in accessible language the primary forms of law as a social,
political, and normative phenomenon. They illustrate with great
clarity the fundamental difference between repressive law, riddled
with raw conflict and the accommodation of special interests, and
responsive law, the reasoned effort to realize an ideal of
polity.
To make jurisprudence relevant, legal, political, and social
theory must be reintegrated. As a step in this direction, Nonet and
Selznick attempt to recast jurisprudential issues in a social
science perspective. They construct a valuable framework for
analyzing and assessing the worth of alternative modes of legal
ordering. The volume's most enduring contribution is the authors'
typology-repressive, autonomous, and responsive law. This typology
of law is original and especially useful because it incorporates
both political and jurisprudential aspects of law and speaks
directly to contemporary struggles over the proper place of law in
democratic governance.
In his new introduction, Robert A. Kagan recasts this classic
text for the contemporary world. He sees a world of responsive law
in which legal institutions-courts, regulatory agencies,
alternative dispute resolution bodies, police departments-are
periodically studied and redesigned to improve their ability to
fulfill public expectations. Schools, business corporations, and
governmental bureaucracies are more fully pervaded by legal values.
Law and Society in Transition describes ways in which law changes
and develops. It is an inspiring vision of a politically responsive
form of governance, of special interest to those in sociology, law,
philosophy, and politics.
In the first edition of this groundbreaking book, Robert Kagan
explained why America is much more adversarial-likely to rely on
legal threats and lawsuits-than other economically advanced
countries, with more prescriptive laws, more costly adjudications,
and more severe penalties. This updated edition also addresses the
rise of the conservative legal movement and anti-statism in the
Republican party, which have put in sharp relief the virtues of
adversarial legalism in its ability to empower citizens, lawyers,
and judges to mount challenges to the arbitrary or unlawful
exercise of government authority. "This is a wonderful piece of
work, richly detailed and beautifully written. It is the best,
sanest, and most comprehensive evaluation and critique of the
American way of law that I have seen. Every serious scholar
concerned with justice and efficiency, and every policymaker who is
serious about improving the American legal order, should read this
trenchant and exciting book." -Lawrence Friedman, Stanford
University "A tour de force. It is an elegantly written,
consistently insightful analysis and critique of the American
emphasis on litigation and punitive sanctions in the policy and
administrative process." -Charles R. Epp, Law and Society Review
How much does regulation matter in shaping corporate behavior? This
pathbreaking, in-depth study of fourteen pulp manufacturing mills
in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand reveals
that steadily tightening regulatory standards have been crucial for
raising environmental performance. But while all firms have shown
improvement, some have improved more than others, many going
substantially beyond compliance. What explains the variation in
compliance? It's not necessarily the differences in regulation in
each country. Rather, variation is accounted for by the complex
interaction between tightening regulations and a social license to
operate (especially pressures from community and environmental
activists), economic constraints, and differences in corporate
environmental management style. Shades of Green provides the most
extensive and systematic empirical study to date of why firms
achieve the levels of environmental performance that they do.
How much does regulation matter in shaping corporate behavior? This
pathbreaking, in-depth study of fourteen pulp manufacturing mills
in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand reveals
that steadily tightening regulatory standards have been crucial for
raising environmental performance. But while all firms have shown
improvement, some have improved more than others, many going
substantially beyond compliance. What explains the variation in
compliance? It's not necessarily the differences in regulation in
each country. Rather, variation is accounted for by the complex
interaction between tightening regulations and a social license to
operate (especially pressures from community and environmental
activists), economic constraints, and differences in corporate
environmental management style. Shades of Green provides the most
extensive and systematic empirical study to date of why firms
achieve the levels of environmental performance that they do.
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