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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
In the early twenty-first century, courts have become versatile
actors in the governance of many constitutional democracies, and
judges play a variety of roles in politics and policy making.
Assembling papers penned by an array of academic specialists on
high courts around the world, and presented during a year-long
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar at the
University of California, Berkeley, this volume maps the roles in
governance that courts are undertaking and the ways in which they
have come to matter in the political life of their nations. It
offers empirically rich accounts of dramatic judicial actions in
the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, exploring the
political conditions and judicial strategies that have fostered
those assertions of power, and evaluating when and how courts'
performance of new roles has been politically consequential. By
focusing on the content and consequences of judicial power, the
book advances a new agenda for the comparative study of courts.
American methods of policy implementation and dispute resolution
are more adversarial and legalistic when compared with the systems
of other economically advanced countries. Americans more often rely
on legal threats and lawsuits. American laws are generally more
complicated and prescriptive, adjudication more costly, and
penalties more severe. In a thoughtful and cogently argued book,
Robert Kagan examines the origins and consequences of this system
of "adversarial legalism."
Kagan describes the roots of adversarial legalism and the deep
connections it has with American political institutions and values.
He investigates its social costs as well as the extent to which
lawyers perpetuate it. Ranging widely across many legal fields,
including criminal law, environmental regulations, tort law, and
social insurance programs, he provides comparisons with the legal
and regulatory systems of western Europe, Canada, and Japan that
point to possible alternatives to the American methods.
Kagan notes that while adversarial legalism has many virtues,
its costs and unpredictability often alienate citizens from the law
and frustrate the quest for justice. This insightful study deepens
our understanding of law and its relationship to politics in
America and raises valuable questions about the future of the
American legal system.
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.
This book describes a century of tremendous legal change, of
inspiring legal developments, and profound failures. The twentieth
century took the United States from the Progressive Era's optimism
about law and social engineering to current concerns about a
hyperlegalistic society, from philosophical idealism to the
implementation of democracy, the rule of law, and the idea of human
rights throughout the world. At the same time, law maintained its
status as the key language of governance in the United States, the
most "legal" of all countries, which has succeeded in making its
version of the state a point of reference around the globe.
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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