Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Law as a Means to an End
  • Cited by 146
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2009
Print publication year:
2006
Online ISBN:
9780511511073
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511511073
Subjects:
Law: General Interest, Area Studies, American Studies, American Government, Politics and Policy, Law, Politics and International Relations, Jurisprudence
Series:
Law in Context
Information

Book description

The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.

Reviews

' … an excellent treatment of a substantively interesting phenomenon, with real world implications. it is written in a lively, lucid manner, filled with fascinating titbits of information about its subject matter … an outstanding treatment of an important scholarly question with profound normative implications for American society.'

Source: Law and Politics Review

' … at once a high-paced historical thriller and a clamorous critique of contemporary US legal culture … Tamanaha is an energetic travel companion. We should be grateful for his political sensitivity and his willingness to trawl through what he sees as a kind of Dante's Hell.'

Source: The Cambridge Law Journal

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.