Review by Choice Review
Editors Caine and Harrington join nine other international sociologists, law professors, political scientists, and women's studies scholars in a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural examination of the role that lawyers' work "plays in shaping power relationships in society." Power relationships analyzed include those between state and capital and those relating to gender, race, and ethnicity with examination of the ways in which lawyers both shape and reinforce those relationships. The richness of these chapters is far too abundant to recount here, but some of the more interesting aspects include studies of the practice of law as a motivator of legislative change, the predominance of financial over productive capital, the shift of power from legislatures to the executive branch, and the flight of capital from formal courts to informal adjudication. Finally, this volume examines the extent to which it is possible for radical or progressive lawyers to work within the framework of modern legal practice. Extensive endnotes and a comprehensively inclusive bibliography only add to what is already a truly fascinating study of the intersections between law, politics, power, and society. Graduate; faculty; professional. M. W. Bowers University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
