Stewards of Democracy: Law As a Public Profession (New Perspectives on Law, Culture, and Society)
- Book Review,
by Paul D. Carrington
From Booklist
Carrington, who teaches at Duke University Law School and has served as a legal advisor to the federal government, is attuned to the continuity between education, philosophy, and the legal profession. He's also attuned to the impact of that continuity on the larger social and political order and focuses his book on the role of lawyers in U.S. political history. Despite popular dislike of lawyers, Carrington's own faith in the profession is "redeemed when lawyers and judges subordinate their own political preferences to those expressed by the institutions of representative self-government." In this regard, he focuses on some of the giants of the profession: Thomas M. Cooley, Louis D. Brandeis, Ernst Freund, Learned Hand, and Byron White. These were men who were aware of their public responsibilities and could mediate the interests of the democratic majority and the monied class, and/or other minorities, with a non-self-interested bias toward the public good. This book is a worthy read for those interested in the intersection of legal personalities and U.S. history. Vernon Ford
Book Description
Argues that judges, lawyers, and law schools should emphasize experience and character over reason or arcane learning, to create a more democratic legal profession in tune with the public interest. Stewards of Democracy beckons judges and lawyers to a professional tradition supportive of the institutions of self-government. It challenges the beliefs of many American judges, legal scholars, and law teachers that political decisions can often best be made by high courts who are independent of the citizens they purport to govern. Among those challenged to reconsider their roles are the Supreme Court of the United States, eminent legal scholars, and distinguished law schools, which reinforce one another in the belief that they know best how Americans should live. The careers of Thomas Cooley, Louis Brandeis, Ernst Freund, Learned Hand, and Byron White are considered as examples of the contrary tradition respectful of democracy as the source of the political, economic, and social stability required to sustain other valued rights.
Card catalog description
"Stewards of Democracy is the celebration of a moral tradition famously observed by Alexis de Tocqueville through the eyes of Francis Lieber, a Prussian emigre, who in antebellum times wrote of political ethics, hermeneutics, and comparative constitutional law as aspects of the moral duties of American lawyers and judges. The profession's duty is to unify this tradition by nurturing and protecting the institutions of self-government that directly affect the stability of our complex social order and the protection of all our legal rights."--BOOK JACKET. "Thomas Cooley, perhaps the lawyer most respected by nineteenth-century Americans, is presented as a primary exemplar of the dutiful tradition. Much of the book is an account of his career as judge, scholar, teacher, and founding chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission."--BOOK JACKET. "Carrington contends that the dutiful tradition marked by the careers of the five exemplars is threatened by the mutually reinforced tendencies of the Supreme Court and other high courts, of highly respected legal scholars, of the most honored of our law schools, and of noted legal journalists."--BOOK JACKET.
About the Author
Paul Carrington teaches civil procedure at Duke University Law School. From 1985 to 1992 he served as reporter for the Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, advising the Conference and the Supreme Court on changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Buy from Amazon
Compare Prices
|
|
Home
