Law and Democracy in the Empire of Force

Law and Democracy in the Empire of Force PDF Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472116843
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The authors of this book share a concern for the state of law and democracy in our country, which to many seems to have deteriorated badly. Deep changes are visible in a wide array of phenomena: judicial opinions, the teaching of law, legal practice, international relations, legal scholarship, congressional deliberations, and the culture of contemporary politics. In each of these intersections between law, culture, and politics, traditional expectations have been transformed in ways that pose a threat to the continued vitality and authority of law and democracy. The authors analyze specific instances in which such a decline has occurred or is threatened, tracing them to "the empire of force," a phrase borrowed from Simone Weil. This French intellectual applied the term not only to the brute force used by police and soldiers but, more broadly, to the underlying ways of thinking, talking, and imagining that make that sort of force possible, including propaganda, unexamined ideology, sentimental clichés, and politics by buzzwords, all familiar cultural forms. Based on the underlying crisis and its causes, the editors and authors of these essays agree that neither law nor democracy can survive where the empire of force dominates. Yet each manages to find a ground for hope in our legal and democratic culture. H. Jefferson Powell is Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Divinity at Duke University and has served in both the federal and state governments, as a deputy assistant attorney general and as principal deputy solicitor general in the U.S. Department of Justice and as special counsel to the attorney general of North Carolina. His latest book is Constitutional Conscience: The Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision. James Boyd White is Hart Wright Professor of Law emeritus and Professor of English emeritus, at the University of Michigan. His latest book is Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force. "An extraordinary collection of provocative, insightful, and inspiring essays on the future of law and democracy in the twenty-first century." ---Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago "These thoughtful essays diagnose democracy's perilous present, and---more importantly---they explore avenues to democracy's rescue through humanization of law." ---Kenneth L. Karst, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA Contributors Martin Böhmer, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina M. Cathleen Kaveny, University of Notre Dame Howard Lesnick, University of Pennsylvania The Honorable John T. Noonan Jr., Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals H. Jefferson Powell, Duke University Jedediah Purdy, Duke University Jed Rubenfeld, Yale University A.W. Brian Simpson, University of Michigan Barry Sullivan, Jenner and Block LLP, Chicago Joseph Vining, University of Michigan Robin West, Georgetown University James Boyd White, University of Michigan

Law and Democracy in the Empire of Force

Law and Democracy in the Empire of Force PDF Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472116843
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
The authors of this book share a concern for the state of law and democracy in our country, which to many seems to have deteriorated badly. Deep changes are visible in a wide array of phenomena: judicial opinions, the teaching of law, legal practice, international relations, legal scholarship, congressional deliberations, and the culture of contemporary politics. In each of these intersections between law, culture, and politics, traditional expectations have been transformed in ways that pose a threat to the continued vitality and authority of law and democracy. The authors analyze specific instances in which such a decline has occurred or is threatened, tracing them to "the empire of force," a phrase borrowed from Simone Weil. This French intellectual applied the term not only to the brute force used by police and soldiers but, more broadly, to the underlying ways of thinking, talking, and imagining that make that sort of force possible, including propaganda, unexamined ideology, sentimental clichés, and politics by buzzwords, all familiar cultural forms. Based on the underlying crisis and its causes, the editors and authors of these essays agree that neither law nor democracy can survive where the empire of force dominates. Yet each manages to find a ground for hope in our legal and democratic culture. H. Jefferson Powell is Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Divinity at Duke University and has served in both the federal and state governments, as a deputy assistant attorney general and as principal deputy solicitor general in the U.S. Department of Justice and as special counsel to the attorney general of North Carolina. His latest book is Constitutional Conscience: The Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision. James Boyd White is Hart Wright Professor of Law emeritus and Professor of English emeritus, at the University of Michigan. His latest book is Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force. "An extraordinary collection of provocative, insightful, and inspiring essays on the future of law and democracy in the twenty-first century." ---Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago "These thoughtful essays diagnose democracy's perilous present, and---more importantly---they explore avenues to democracy's rescue through humanization of law." ---Kenneth L. Karst, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA Contributors Martin Böhmer, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina M. Cathleen Kaveny, University of Notre Dame Howard Lesnick, University of Pennsylvania The Honorable John T. Noonan Jr., Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals H. Jefferson Powell, Duke University Jedediah Purdy, Duke University Jed Rubenfeld, Yale University A.W. Brian Simpson, University of Michigan Barry Sullivan, Jenner and Block LLP, Chicago Joseph Vining, University of Michigan Robin West, Georgetown University James Boyd White, University of Michigan

Law and Democracy in the Empire of Force

Law and Democracy in the Empire of Force PDF Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472024426
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The authors of this book share a concern for the state of law and democracy in our country, which to many seems to have deteriorated badly. Deep changes are visible in a wide array of phenomena: judicial opinions, the teaching of law, legal practice, international relations, legal scholarship, congressional deliberations, and the culture of contemporary politics. In each of these intersections between law, culture, and politics, traditional expectations have been transformed in ways that pose a threat to the continued vitality and authority of law and democracy. The authors analyze specific instances in which such a decline has occurred or is threatened, tracing them to "the empire of force," a phrase borrowed from Simone Weil. This French intellectual applied the term not only to the brute force used by police and soldiers but, more broadly, to the underlying ways of thinking, talking, and imagining that make that sort of force possible, including propaganda, unexamined ideology, sentimental clichés, and politics by buzzwords, all familiar cultural forms. Based on the underlying crisis and its causes, the editors and authors of these essays agree that neither law nor democracy can survive where the empire of force dominates. Yet each manages to find a ground for hope in our legal and democratic culture. H. Jefferson Powell is Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Divinity at Duke University and has served in both the federal and state governments, as a deputy assistant attorney general and as principal deputy solicitor general in the U.S. Department of Justice and as special counsel to the attorney general of North Carolina. His latest book is Constitutional Conscience: The Moral Dimension of Judicial Decision. James Boyd White is Hart Wright Professor of Law emeritus and Professor of English emeritus, at the University of Michigan. His latest book is Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force. "An extraordinary collection of provocative, insightful, and inspiring essays on the future of law and democracy in the twenty-first century." ---Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago "These thoughtful essays diagnose democracy's perilous present, and---more importantly---they explore avenues to democracy's rescue through humanization of law." ---Kenneth L. Karst, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA Contributors Martin Böhmer, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina M. Cathleen Kaveny, University of Notre Dame Howard Lesnick, University of Pennsylvania The Honorable John T. Noonan Jr., Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals H. Jefferson Powell, Duke University Jedediah Purdy, Duke University Jed Rubenfeld, Yale University A.W. Brian Simpson, University of Michigan Barry Sullivan, Jenner and Block LLP, Chicago Joseph Vining, University of Michigan Robin West, Georgetown University James Boyd White, University of Michigan

Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in International Law

Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in International Law PDF Author: Charlotte Ku
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521002073
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Table of contents

Imperial Democracy

Imperial Democracy PDF Author: David Starr Jordan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description


Living Speech

Living Speech PDF Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827531
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Language is our key to imagining the world, others, and ourselves. Yet sometimes our ways of talking dehumanize others and trivialize human experience. In war other people are imagined as enemies to be killed. The language of race objectifies those it touches, and propaganda disables democracy. Advertising reduces us to consumers, and clichés destroy the life of the imagination. How are we to assert our humanity and that of others against the forces in the culture and in our own minds that would deny it? What kind of speech should the First Amendment protect? How should judges and justices themselves speak? These questions animate James Boyd White's Living Speech, a profound examination of the ethics of human expression--in the law and in the rest of life. Drawing on examples from an unusual range of sources--judicial opinions, children's essays, literature, politics, and the speech-out-of-silence of Quaker worship--White offers a fascinating analysis of the force of our languages. Reminding us that every moment of speech is an occasion for gaining control of what we say and who we are, he shows us that we must practice the art of resisting the forces of inhumanity built into our habits of speech and thought if we are to become more capable of love and justice--in both law and life.

Heracles' Bow

Heracles' Bow PDF Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299104146
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
The law has traditionally been regarded as a set of rules and institutions. In this thoughtful series of essays, James Boyd White urges a fresh view of the law as an essentially literary, rhetorical, and ethical activity. Defining and elaborating his conception, he artfully bridges the fields of jurisprudence, literature, philosophy, history, and political science. The result, a new approach that may change the way we perceive the legal process, will engage not only lawyers and law students but anyone interested in the relationship between ethics, persuasion, and community. White's essays, though bound by a common perspective, are thematically varied. Each of these pieces makes eloquent and insightful reading. Taken as a whole, they establish, by triangulation, a position from which they all proceed: a view of poetry, law, and rhetoric as essentially synonymous. Only when we perceive the links between these processes, White stresses, can we begin to unite the concerns of truth, beauty, and justice in a single field of action and expression.

Freedom in the World 2018

Freedom in the World 2018 PDF Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538112035
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1265

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Book Description
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

The Two Faces of American Freedom

The Two Faces of American Freedom PDF Author: Aziz Rana
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674266552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.

India in the Shadows of Empire

India in the Shadows of Empire PDF Author: Mithi Mukherjee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019908811X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
This book explains the postcolonial Indian polity by presenting an alternative historical narrative of the British Empire in India and India's struggle for independence. It pursues this narrative along two major trajectories. On the one hand, it focuses on the role of imperial judicial institutions and practices in the making of both the British Empire and the anti-colonial movement under the Congress, with the lawyer as political leader. On the other hand, it offers a novel interpretation of Gandhi's non-violent resistance movement as being different from the Congress. It shows that the Gandhian movement, as the most powerful force largely responsible for India's independence, was anchored not in western discourses of political and legislative freedom but rather in Indic traditions of renunciative freedom, with the renouncer as leader. This volume offers a comprehensive and new reinterpretation of the Indian Constitution in the light of this historical narrative. The book contends that the British colonial idea of justice and the Gandhian ethos of resistance have been the two competing and conflicting driving forces that have determined the nature and evolution of the Indian polity after independence.

Liberty and Security

Liberty and Security PDF Author: Conor Gearty
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745669980
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.