Editorial Reviews
Review
Martha Minow, Harvard Law School : How does this society view multiculturalism and how should the law respond to different social groups? This learned and witty book demonstrates that distinctive American responses to pluralism permeate law and literature, and only a finely textured sense of our history will permit us to understand our present and create a meaningful future. Keep company with this profound book; it will instruct your analysis, your aesthetic sense, and your heart.
Thomas C. Grey, Stanford Law School : The topic...'the law of associations not for profit' is important and neglected. Dean Soifer addresses it with imagination, insight, a depth of historical learning, and a charming style (bad puns and all) that brings the reader into conversation with an interesting, warm-hearted, and large-spirited interlocutor.
Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa, author of Women of the Republic : [Law and the Company We Keep] is a splendid example of the new legal cultural studies...an important meditation on the community and on the relationship between our traditions of individual rights and the claims that groups make for civil liberties.
Book Description
Whether we are black, gay, Republican, women, or deaf, our associations--whether voluntary or assigned--constitute crucial and inescapable elements of our identities. Both voluntary and involuntary groups have been important in American history--more important than is generally recognized. But these groups have never been adequately addressed by law, which has as its primary focus the relationship between the individual and the state. The company we keep, says the constitutional law scholar Aviam Soifer, is presumed to be each person's own business, and generally beyond notice of the law. But as America becomes a more varied country and issues arising out of multiculturalism threaten to divide us, it becomes essential, Soifer argues, to recognize rights under the First Amendment that will protect the crucial roles of groups and communities within the larger national community.
Legal doctrine and the outcomes reached in judicial proceedings will be more coherent if we acknowledge that groups qua groups have significant legal impact. The building blocks of any quest for justice must include the groups--social, political, professional, civil, interpretive, religious--from which we derive and apply ethical standards in search of a better life. The ability to step outside traditional doctrinal boxes that concentrate on relationships between individuals and government will help not only legal thinkers but every person to reason toward justice.
Using history and literature to explore the complex issues of individual and group rights, Law and the Company We Keep is the first sustained account of the presence and importance of groups in our legal culture. It confronts central questions about the multiple roles of culture and symbol in defining our groups, and through them, our lives.
Law and the Company We Keep
Law and the Company We Keep,Aviam Soifer,Harvard University Press,0674512987,Collective settlements,Culture and law,Freedom of association,General,Law,Law and legislation,Politics / Current Events,Public Law,Reference,Social Groups,United States,Law / General
English Books:
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