Looking Back at Law's Century / Edition 1

by Austin Sarat, Bryant Garth, Robert A. Kagan

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801439575
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/29/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College and President of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. He is the author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition. Bryant Garth is Director and Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the coauthor, with Yves Dezalay, of The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States. Robert A. Kagan is Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of California, Berkeley. His many books include the forthcoming Regulatory Encounters: Multinational Corporations and American Adversarial Legalism.

What People are Saying About This

Paul Schiff Berman

Looking Back at Law's Century is noteworthy because of the important contributions made by major thinkers approaching law from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives. This is an outstanding collection.

Editorial Reviews

Rather than a historical survey Looking Back at Law's Century is a series of provocative arguments about the ways that the law shaped and responded to areas of U.S. and international society—for better and worse—during the twentieth century.... Looking Back at Law's Century aggressively crosses disciplinary boundaries between rhetoric, anthropology, history, and political science, enlivening and deepening debates about citizenship, human rights, racial and gender injustice, and the United States in a transnational context.

H-Net Reviews - Lee Bernstein

"Looking Back at Law's Century is noteworthy because of the important contributions made by major thinkers approaching law from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives. This is an outstanding collection."

Paul Schiff Berman

"Rather than a historical survey Looking Back at Law's Century is a series of provocative arguments about the ways that the law shaped and responded to areas of U.S. and international society—for better and worse—during the twentieth century. . . . Looking Back at Law's Century aggressively crosses disciplinary boundaries between rhetoric, anthropology, history, and political science, enlivening and deepening debates about citizenship, human rights, racial and gender injustice, and the United States in a transnational context."—Lee Bernstein, San Jose State University. H-Net Reviews, Dec. 2002.

"Looking Back at Law's Century is noteworthy because of the important contributions made by major thinkers approaching law from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives. This is an outstanding collection."—Paul Schiff Berman, University of Connecticut School of Law

"Looking Back at Law's Century is a provocative and compelling book. I opened it eagerly, my curiosity stirred by the topics addressed by the luminous group of contributors, and my initial excitement was sustained throughout the volume."—Amy Dru Stanley, University of Chicago

From the Publisher