Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
1995
Publication Information
40 Am. J. Juris. 411 (1995)
Abstract
In these two lively, elegant, and lucid books, Mary Ann Glendon points to an increasing bloody-mindedness in our society, and argues persuasively that law and lawyers are in great part to blame for it. It seems that we are constantly pelting each other with non-negotiable demands backed by the threat of litigation, and that our legal profession has become too venal or too lacking in moral fiber to tell us to lighten up. The first part of the argument is presented in Rights Talk, the second in A Nation Under Lawyers. Both parts are presented with passion, charity, and a rueful wit, accompanied, especially in the latter volume, with apt reminiscences, and thumbnail sketches of important background figures from Locke and Blackstone through Holmes and Llewellyn to Unger and Kennedy. Glendon is not afraid to express warm admiration for her favorite teachers, or to quote bad student evaluations from her own classes. She tells interesting stories about people who sue their upstairs neighbors because the children make too much noise, and even finds a man who brought a classic law school reductio ad absurdum to life by suing the date who stood him up. At the same time, she makes her case on several levels of theory, and supports it with comparisons of European and Canadian material.
Recommended Citation
Robert E. Rodes,
Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse and A Nation Under Lawyers (Book Review),
40 Am. J. Juris. 411 (1995).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1093
