This is the fortieth anniversary edition of a classic of law and society, updated with extensive new commentary. Drawing a distinction between experienced “repeat players” and inexperienced “one shotters” in the U.S. judicial system, Marc Galanter establishes a recognized and applied model of how the structure of the legal system and an actor’s frequency of interaction with it can predict outcomes. Notwithstanding democratic institutions of governance and the “majestic equality” of the courts, the enactment and implementation of genuinely redistributive measures is a hard uphill struggle. In one of the most-cited essays in the legal literature, Galanter incisively demolishes the myth that courts are the prime equalizing force in American society. He provides a penetrating analysis of the limitations and possibilities of courts as the source and engine of large-scale social change. Galanter’s influential article is now available in a convenient, affordable, and assignable book (in print and ebooks), with a new introduction by the author that explains the origins and aftermath of the original work. In addition, it features his 2006 article applying the original thesis to real-world dilemmas in legal structure and consequence today. The collection also adds a new Foreword by Shauhin Talesh of the University of California-Irvine and a new Afterword by Robert Gordon of Stanford. As Gordon points out, “The great contribution of the article was that it went well beyond local and contingent political explanations to locate obstacles to social reform and redistributive policies in the institutional structure of the legal system itself.” Gordon details ways in which Galanter’s prophesies have come true and even worsened over four decades. Talesh catalogs the article’s place in legal lore: “seminal, blockbuster, canonical, game-changing, extraordinary, pivotal, and noteworthy.” Talesh introduces how repeat players gain advantages in the legal system and how “Galanter set out an important agenda for legal scholars, sociologists, political scientists, and economists. In short, “every law and legal studies student should be required to read the article because it contextualizes the procedural system as something more than a set of rules that should be memorized and mechanically applied.” A powerful new addition to the Classics of Law & Society Series by Quid Pro Books. Features active contents, linked notes, active URLs, and linked Index.

This book collects in a single volume Marc Galanter's seminal work, "Why the 'Haves' Come Out Ahead," with ten contemporary articles about Galanter's theory. The articles, which present new research results and synthesize work done over the past few decades, examine the lasting influence and continued importance of this groundbreaking work.

Though "modern Indian law" is actually of Western origin, Galanter here contends that independent India has accepted this mid-twentieth century legal system intellectually and institutionally. His thirteen articles, covering a wide range of issues in Indian society, explore the operation of modern Indian law and explicate the ways in which a complex body of formal law accommodates and adjusts itself to local conditions to which it is alien.

This anthology presents, for the first time, full texts of the twenty most important works of American legal thought since 1890. Drawing on a course the editors teach at Harvard Law School, the book traces the rise and evolution of a distinctly American form of legal reasoning. These are the articles that have made these authors--from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to Ronald Coase, from Ronald Dworkin to Catherine MacKinnon--among the most recognized names in American legal history. These authors proposed answers to the classic question: "What does it mean to think like a lawyer--an American lawyer?" Their answers differed, but taken together they form a powerful brief for the existence of a distinct and powerful style of reasoning--and of rulership. The legal mind is as often critical as constructive, however, and these texts form a canon of critical thinking, a toolbox for resisting and unravelling the arguments of the best legal minds. Each article is preceded by a short introduction highlighting the article's main ideas and situating it in the context of its author's broader intellectual projects, the scholarly debates of his or her time, and the reception the article received. Law students and their teachers will benefit from seeing these classic writings, in full, in the context of their original development. For lawyers, the collection will take them back to their best days in law school. All readers will be struck by the richness, the subtlety, and the sophistication with which so many of what have become the clichés of everyday legal argument were originally formulated.

“A powerful challenge to the prevailing constitutional orthodoxy of the right and the left . . . A deeply troubling and absolutely vital book” (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate). In this provocative book, Mary Anne Franks examines the thin line between constitutional fidelity and constitutional fundamentalism. The Cult of the Constitution reveals how deep fundamentalist strains in both conservative and liberal American thought keep the Constitution in the service of white male supremacy. Franks demonstrates how constitutional fundamentalists read the Constitution selectively and self-servingly, thus undermining the integrity of the document as a whole. She goes on to argue that economic and civil libertarianism have merged to produce a deregulatory, “free-market” approach to constitutional rights that achieves fullest expression in the idealization of the Internet. The fetishization of the first and second amendments has blurred the boundaries between conduct and speech and between veneration and violence. But the Constitution itself contains the antidote to fundamentalism. The Cult of the Constitution lays bare the dark, antidemocratic consequences of constitutional fundamentalism and urges readers to take the Constitution seriously, not selectively.

Cause Lawyers and Social Movements seeks to reorient scholarship on cause lawyers, inviting scholars to think about cause lawyering from the perspective of those political activists with whom cause lawyers work and whom they seek to serve. It demonstrates that while all cause lawyering cuts against the grain of conventional understandings of legal practice and professionalism, social movement lawyering poses distinctively thorny problems. The editors and authors of this volume explore the following questions: What do cause lawyers do for, and to, social movements? How, when, and why do social movements turn to and use lawyers and legal strategies? Does their use of lawyers and legal strategies advance or constrain the achievement of their goals? And, how do movements shape the lawyers who serve them and how do lawyers shape the movements?

Today’s justice system and the legal profession have rendered the “lawyer-warrior” notion outdated, shifting toward conflict resolution rather than protracted litigation. The new lawyer’s skills go beyond court battles to encompass negotiation, mediation, collaborative practice, and restorative justice. In The New Lawyer, Julie Macfarlane explores the evolving role of practitioners, articulating legal and ethical complexities in a variety of contexts. The result is a thought-provoking exploration of the increasing impact of alternative strategies on the lawyer-client relationship, as well as on the legal system itself.