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Rating: 
Summary: A little too basic, a little too smarmy
Review: Although I mostly enjoyed this work, I have three main problems with it:1) It is too basic -- while it gave glimpses of the philosophical state of US law, it never felt like it fully plunged into a discussion of it. Instead, there is a never ending litany of facts, cases, and historical cirumstances. With so slender a volume, you can either take a fact based approach or a "what does it all mean" interpretative approach. This is fact based. This would be a great book for a high school junior, but anyone who reads the paper would be familiar with most of the contents. 2)Too isolated -- the US has a very unique legal system. I have some sense why this is so from the first chapter here. Yet, I was hoping for more international comparisons on just how different and unique the US really is. 3)Liberal smarmyness -- here I'll simply quote "A child is kidnapped, raped, murdered -- and the angry grief of millions turns into some draconian new law which responds psychologically (if not logically) to the publics demands ... "Megan's Law" insists that sex offenders register and be made known to neighbors, if necessary. It is a kind of leper's bell around the neck of men once convicted of sex crimes." I have rarely encountered such a smarmy and elite liberal tone. A case is not made for the point of view. Your agreement is simply assumed. Why, of course, such a "draconian" act must be simply psychological cotten candy given out to an uninformed child like public. A 12 year old here in Boston was murdered last weekend by one of your "leper's" ... . Unfortunately, the state didn't enforce the law and the "bell" wasn't rung. Maybe her fate would have been different. But, from your tone, I suppose this simply indicates my emotionalism and lack of informed understanding.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyed it more than I expected
Review: As I read through this pithy summary of American law, I was continually impressed by how rarely I disagreed with this obviously-liberal author's interpretations. Only when he suggested that the jury is still out on whether welfare reform has worked did I wonder what planet he's from. What I found most intriguing was his suggestion that law is a (sometimes lagging) representation of the views of those with influence in society. For me, an "original intent" guy regarding Constitutional law, that was an interesting new thought. Despite its title, this is a very interesting book, and a short easy read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Legal Primer for All
Review: Lawrence Friedman has a way to start up his Introduction to American Law class at Stanford. On the morning of the first class, he buys a _San Francisco Chronicle_, and simply shows the class the paper and reads the headlines. If it is interesting enough to get in the paper, he demonstrates, the story will mention a law, a proposal for a law, something a policeman or judge has done, what the President says about a legal situation, and so on. "In the world we live in - in the country we live in - almost nothing has more impact on our lives, nothing is more entangled with our everyday existence, than that something we call the _law_." So he writes in _Law in America: A Brief History_ (Modern Library), a concise account of how law has affected American society and vice versa. That the two are deeply connected is not an original theme, but Friedman's book is a superb primer on how the law came to be the way it is in our country, and how it came to be so particularly important here. Friedman goes to the source of our law, the English _common_ law system, in which judges created laws as they decided various cases and set precedent. (Most European law systems are based on _civil_ law, whose ancestor is Roman law. A civil law system is based on codes, huge statutes that, theoretically, the judges cannot add to nor subtract from, but only interpret.) Our local laws were originally made for close knit communities in which everyone knew each other. They were interested in punishing sin as a crime. The punishments afforded included branding and whipping, which besides being painful, would mark the recipient as the community saw him; shame and stigma worked for the community better than loss of freedom. Friedman traces the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and the lack of legal recourse for factory employees harmed on the job. It was not until the twentieth century that an employee could count on compensation for a job injury. The protectionism of twentieth law has paralleled the growth in national government as opposed to local government. The economy unified (a mall in Florida looks the same as one in Alaska), and styles are national rather than local. The Rehnquist Supreme Court has shown some interest in "breathing life into the corpse of the dead doctrine of state's rights," but given the grants that the federal government enjoys overseeing and the huge body of federal regulations covering minute areas of enterprise, and given the spotlight that the president himself enjoys, it seems unlikely that the center of attention will shift back to the states. Friedman's examples and his brief explanations of important decisions are excellent. He includes capsule histories of such phenomena as slavery and the civil rights movement, as well as the increasing rights given to women, Native Americans, and homosexuals. His discussion of divorce then and now along with the philosophy concerning common law marriage is an engaging summary. His smoothly-written book is valuable for anyone who is curious about how our laws and enforcement got to be so important and so distinctly American.
Rating:
Summary: I like it.
Review: Professor Friedman's book is subtitled "A Short History" of American Law. The book does indeed take a historical approach, but its subject is more the nature of American law than its detailed history. Professor Friedman describes how our law has become what it is and the sources of change in the law. The theme of his book is that law follows social and economic changes. It responds to the needs that people in society assert. At the beginning of the 21st Century, we live in a large, pluralistic, technologicaly complex, impersonal and interdependent country. We are all dependent upon the actions of other people whom we don't know and don't control to meet even the most basic needs of our daily lives. The growing complexity and bulk of our laws, in economic relations, family law, criminal law and much else changes in response to social needs and mores. In addition, there has been a move towards centalization -- for people to look to the Federal government as a source of law and as an aggresive participant in social change and in the satisfaction of needs. Given his basic claim that law follows society, Professor Friedman provides a short, useful, overview of law in the colonial period pointing out how societies were smaller, more homogeneous in terms of culture and religion and more able to use more intimate, so to speak, forms of social control than those available to the current administrative state. He follows this with a good discussion of law and economics which suggests how and why the focus of tort law has changed from protecting growing business to protecting workers. A section on family law explores the effect of changing sexual mores, among other matters, on the nature of law. There is a discussion of the changing nature of race relations and of the role of the modern large welfare state. The book is clearly written. It is thoughtful and provocative in that Professor Friedman sets out a thesis and proceeds to expound and defend it in his exposition of American law. His book is not and does not purport to be a full, complete treatment of American legal history. It is possible too that the nature of legal change and the interrelationship between law and social change is more complex and multi-layered than the book takes it to be. This book is a short, good introduction to American law which should stimulate the reader in his or her own thinking.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating and informative
Review: Supposing that this book would be another one of those banal Law 101 type of introductory text books, I proved myself wrong by breezing through the entire book within one day. I simply couldn't put the well written book down. By well written, I meant that the author really mastered in organizing the book so it is easily followed and comprehended, and in eliminating the jargon, the unnessary legal structures, and case studies that could only confuse the readers. Upon finshing the book, I not only learned about the infrastructure of the American legal/judicial systems and their development concisely, but also was educated on the very socio-cultural environment, the one and the only american society, this system was conceived and nurtured in.
Rating:
Summary: A Long Essay on the Shifting Law in America
Review: The Modern Library Chronicle Book series continues on its merry way with another valuable addition to its series. Lawrence M. Friedman has contributed Law in America (A Short History) that is not exactly a traditional history but more an quick and easy to read examination of the importance of the law in America and how it not separate from society but actually an integral part of its surrounding culture, not leading but not entirely led by this zeitgeist. The author touches on many important court cases to back this theory but he also broadens the very concept of law beyond the court room and expands it to include, appropriately, the government in all its aspects, from the Senate to police officers, from the Food and Drug Administration to marriages. He also show the ongoing centralization of the law in America, particularly through the Supreme Court, despite limited attacks on this by the recent Supreme Court. This is an essay that will prove fascinating to the non-specialist.
Rating:
Summary: A Basic History of American Law
Review: This book provides a very basic overview of the U.S. legal system. It is short, and a quick read without any jargon or difficult concepts. This book would be ideal for a person who is not from the US, but who wants to know about how our justice system works and why it works that way. Much of it is a bit too basic for most US citizens who had Civics in high school and who watches Law and Order obsessively. I did learn a few things, though, so anyone who is interested in the US legal system (which, as anyone who watches Law and Order knows, can sometimes be quite complicated) might want to take a look if they want some of the more obscure rules and customs explained.
Rating:
Summary: A Basic History of American Law
Review: This book provides a very basic overview of the U.S. legal system. It is short, and a quick read without any jargon or difficult concepts. This book would be ideal for a person who is not from the US, but who wants to know about how our justice system works and why it works that way. Much of it is a bit too basic for most US citizens who had Civics in high school and who watches Law and Order obsessively. I did learn a few things, though, so anyone who is interested in the US legal system (which, as anyone who watches Law and Order knows, can sometimes be quite complicated) might want to take a look if they want some of the more obscure rules and customs explained.
Rating:
Summary: Law for the populous
Review: This is a really good, easy to read book about the history of law in the US, from its origin to its interpretation to its practice. As is mentioned in the book, politics and law are necessarily (and rightly) intertwined. Maybe all the left-leaning comments that some other reviewers mention went over my head (or maybe I just agreed with them), but I found this book to be a great explanation of how the system that guides our lives as American citizens was developed, and how it works today. As I mentioned before, it is surprisingly easy to read, and a little fun as well. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about how the world we live in really works.
Rating:
Summary: USA Legal System From The 1600's To The Present
Review: This is an excellent basic book on the evolution of our legal system for over 300 years. The sections of the book describing the colonial period were outstanding. The book shows how our legal system was derived from the English Common Law and how it differs from the legal systems in many parts of Europe. It details the evolution of the legal system from England to our American colonies even showing how the system evolved differently in each colony.
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